browneye said:
We had 3 reapplicants from my medical school this year, and they all matched. All 3 were qualified in terms of scores and application (looking at the average match stats), things just didn't pan out for them last year. They did not give up hope.
2 out of these 3 did a transitional year internship at an easy going institution, which allowed them to swap around their schedules and/or plan ahead of time to have "elective" time and/or vacation during the months of November and December allowing them to go on interviews. The other person did a pre-residency fellowship at a well known institution.
Either way, they didn't do extra research beefing up their application. One simply finished up the research that he had been working on in med school and presented at ARVO. I think they just applied more broadly than before.
Now that they've matched, the 2 that will be finishing their internship in June, will either moonlight, or relax for a year, and the 1 that did the pre-res fellowship will do an internship. Again, I stress that these people were qualified and definitely ranked last year, but didn't match.
I am the guy who chose to do the pre-res fellowship (Hey Browneye) and I think it really helped. I did the ocular pathology/research fellowship at the University of Utah and it has been a great experience. You get your name on plenty of research and lots of interesting projects which strengthen your app.
I will give a general description of the year and if anyone wants more details feel free to PM me. The pathology aspect ends up really only being about one day a week. One of the main things you end up doing is helping with IOL research, either in rabbits or in cadaver eyes. The research group works with many companies (Alcon, AMO, Visiogen, Calhoun, Allergan, etc) who are designing new ocular devices/medications, mostly IOLs. Some of the work going on is very interesting and makes for great conversation starters during interviews. You also have a chance to do surgery after some of these studies. You obviously don't do the surgery on the study rabbits/eyes (these companies have this crazy thing about having an experienced surgeon do the work) but often there are extras. So far this year I have done seven phacos, start to finish (no broken capsules, phew!). It has been a very good learning experience.
You also do analyses of endopthalmitis outbreaks at various surgical centers across the country. As part of an ASCRS grant, any center that has an outbreak can send detailed info about the various cases to the Moran eye center and we analyze what was going on and try to find a cause.
You also have plenty of opportunities to write up case reports on your own. I will be presenting a case at ASCRS this spring and will be submitting a related paper to JCRS.
One very nice thing about the fellowship is that it is paid. The base salary is $10,000, but you end up making much more than that. There are a couple of ways to make more-- first of all there are 1-2 days a week that you can do H&P's on patients coming in for cataract surgery, and you are paid hourly for this. Time is built into your schedule for doing this, so you are not skipping out on something important to be doing it. Also, you can take call for the eye bank. Basically it is home call, and when there is an organ donor you go enucleate and then excise the corneas and prepare them for transplant. So basically I will end up making at least $25,000 this year, which is enough to cover living expenses and pay for some of the insane cost of interviewing.
The fellowship has a great reputation and an excellent match rate. There is usually 2-3 fellows/year, and only two haven't matched over the ~15 years that the fellowship has existed.
The fellowship is basically designed for ophtho applicants who did not match for whatever reason. If anyone is interested, PM me and I will give you details on how to apply, this is the time of year that the new fellows are chosen.
Good luck to all you who didn't match, I feel for you, hang in there and things will work out.
