This is kind of an interesting question and something that appears to be much different with SOAP this year.
In previous years, it was pretty typical for people who matched advanced but not prelim to call NRMP and find out what city they matched in (they will tell you) on Monday, then go straight to the Dean's office at their med school and have them contact the student's home prelim/TY programs and then programs in the city where the student matched advanced (including the advanced program PD if it's obvious), trying to help them get a spot, generally before the scramble even began. There were about half a dozen folks in my class who were in this position and all but one had a prelim spot in place before the scramble started. Note that these are not always spots that were in the scramble but were sometimes extra spots created for that particular student.
With SOAP, the rules seem less clear. I don't doubt that this same thing happened this year but it seems (anecdotally...based only on what I've read here) less common.
It's the neuro folks who are getting the most screwed. They can only do an IM prelim (or a TY that has >6 months of IM). And in general, neuro applicants tend not to be as "competitive" as other prelim requiring applicants (derm, gas, rads, rad onc, etc) who can just get a surg prelim, suck it up for a year and move on with life.
