Genuine question about applying to multiple med school cycles vs match

[UnsureAboutLife]

Super sorry in advance because this is probably a really stupid question but its just something I am genuinely curious about for a while now and haven't been able to find an easy explanation on the matter.

I lurk a lot, and I see a lot of people post about either average or below average stats and a lot of the advice is usually to wait another year, improve your application, then apply again. And although that is probably solid advice for most of these cases, as someone who nearly lost her mind with 1 application cycle (it wasnt the studying, mcat or any of that, it was mostly the constant repetitive nature of the supplemental applications and just pure stamina grind that you have to do for however many weeks/months you do this) not to mention if you already have bad stats that you had a rough application cycle, you likely wont be able to improve them THAT much in a year, so you have to apply widely AGAIN which means thousands of dollars down the drain every cycle, etc. Yet a lot of med students actually do that and I have come to realize it is more common than I used to think. Now my question can't med school grads also kinda do that same thing with residency match? I could very much be wrong here, but it is my understanding that residency matches (even for the ****tiest of carribean schools) is still higher percentage wise than the percentage of med school applicants that get admitted into ANY medical school, let alone their top choice (was it 40%?) It is also my understanding that if you dont match your top choices you can basically then apply for unfilled positions after the initial match and then if even then you dont get anything, you can look at your stats and address them and then try again next year. So how is that different than the med school process? I mean, I completely understand that going through 4 years of time and money for med school is a lot more intense than the 1 year post bacc into masters program into whatever you would need to do to apply to med school again but honestly, it seems like stat wise unmatched grads seem to be in the better boat than down on their luck applicants. I could be completely talking outta my ass here and thats why I wanted to come on here and get some perspective on why so many people here talk about how going to a school with like an 85% match rate is infinitely worse than the endless limbo many med school applicants get in (many with even offers from low tier schools or foreign schools that they are discouraged from going to)

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Goro]

Applying to residency is applying to a job.
Applying to med school is applying to a professional school.

 

[UnsureAboutLife]

Applying to residency is applying to a job.
Applying to med school is applying to a professional school.

It cant really be that simple. As someone who has applied to many jobs (most being incredibly technically demanding with an interview process with 8+ engineers sometimes and multiple recommendations) I would take job applications a million times any day over school applications

 

[Rapsidy]

It’s completely different and the stakes are MUCH higher matching for residency.

You are potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt if you don’t match, and your ability to pay it off is severely limited without a match/future doctor position.

If you don’t match and then don’t SOAP your ability to just try again next year drastically decreases in most cases. You can’t fix red flags like a failed step one/two or repeat years, and you have to network your ass off to find people willing to take a shot on you when they literally have around 400-1000 applications for every single resident spot.

People literally end their lives over not matching.

I would redo medical school applications 10x over and have less anxiety and fear about not getting accepted than I would about not matching.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Ask @wysdoc and all the Texas TMDSAS applicants about matching into schools...

 

[obiwan]

We called it the scramble back in my day when you found on that Monday before match day whether or not you matched. As stated above, having to scramble/SOAP is something that you would not wish upon even for your enemies. It is truly a clusterf**k of a situation having to send off applications on the fly to random programs that you literally find out that day that have open spots that may not necessarily be desirable programs and/or locations. It is something that can truly alter the trajectory of your entire professional career

 

[Med Ed]

Starting medical school is sort of like performing a bowel resection. The exact starting time often isn't so terribly important, but once the patient is under and you've got two yards of intestines strewn about a sterile field, you can't exactly knock off to play the back nine. The first incision marks a point of no return.

Not matching is sort of like being an unsold loaf of bread. Sure, you can go back on sale the next day, and you're pretty much the same as you were before, but now you're competing with all the new loaves that just came out of the oven.

 

[TragicalDrFaust]

Just to address something you mentioned early in your post, if you need to reapply it's recommended that you wait a year. So if you applied 22-23, it's best to apply 24-25 and not 23-24, for the reason you mentioned, that you cannot improve an app in half a year when you're busy applying.

Matching is not an easy process but there are as many spots are there are applicants roughly. So you may not match where you want but you will match. Around 95% of 4th years match, depending on if they're coming from MD, DO or international medical schools. Whereas about 40% of medical school applicants are accepted each cycle, meaning that it's typical to be rejected rather than to be accepted. Being in the 5% who didn't match means there were spots but no one wanted you and usually indicates serious red flags.

The stakes are also different. If a medical school applicant fails to be accepted, they can use their undergrad degree for another ok job or apply to an professional school with lower admission standards. If a medical student doesn't match, their MD/DO degree is not very translatable. The substantial cost of a the degree does not command a commensurate salary unless you match. Some people find decent jobs and better than they would have gotten with their BA or BS, but will still struggle to pay off their loans.

Subjectively the limbo of being a reapplicant feels bad and is it's true that it's time and energy intensive. But for a lot of people, that can't measure up to the financial ruin of paying for a medical degree that you can't use.

 

[Melchizedek]

It is also my understanding that if you dont match your top choices you can basically then apply for unfilled positions after the initial match and then if even then you dont get anything, you can look at your stats and address them and then try again next year.

Your understanding here is wrong. You don't get to apply to unfilled positions (called SOAPing) only because you don't match your top choice.
If you don't match your first choice, you still can be matched to any program you rank from #2 down to however many programs you ranked total.

If you don't match AT ALL then you are allowed to SOAP.

Many of the programs that have unfilled positions available in SOAP, are unfilled for a reason. They are usually the programs people don't want to go to.

Waiting a year and improving your application for medical school means doing things like re-taking course, taking additional courses, doing research work, or finding a job to boost your resume.

These things are not feasible to medical students applying for residency. Step/COMLEX cannot be retaken for a better score unless you outright fail the first time which is a bigger problem than a low score. There are no "additional courses" to a med school curriculum that would boost a GPA. There is no job that will outweigh the fact that you are outside of your original match year.


I've heard of students who are applying for a super competitive residency (Ortho, Optho, Plastics, CT Surg, etc.) be told to defer graduation and do a research year. This is only due to the competitiveness of the fields, not because the student has previous red flags like a STEP failure.

I could be completely talking outta my ass here and thats why I wanted to come on here and get some perspective

I love that you admit this and yet.....

It cant really be that simple. As someone who has applied to many jobs (most being incredibly technically demanding with an interview process with 8+ engineers sometimes and multiple recommendations) I would take job applications a million times any day over school applications

Try to argue back that your opinion about job applications and school applications is valid.


Not getting into med school is nothing like not matching.

 

[Angus Avagadro]

OP, if you don't match, then don't match in the SOAP, you aren't eligible for medical training license to practice within your residency. No license, you can't work as a doc. A couple states allow a med school grad with no training license to practice in undeserved areas under supervision, just like a NP. Far from ideal or wha you paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to accomplish. BTW, don't match? Student loans come due anyway. Becoming a physician has several phases. Pre med, med school, residency, unrestricted license, then board certification. Most pre meds have limited understanding of the process. Stay with SDN to learn about the process as the Match Game is changing rapidly. To match well, the best advice is to play well. Like in Golf. Don't like the results? Play better.

 

[Tenk]

It’s very hard to go unmatched unless one of two things happen.

1) you have multiple red flags (ie fail classes/boards, have some institutional thing on your app, etc).
2) you aren’t realistic in your chances (ie below average student applying only plastics or derm).

Assuming you go to a US med school, pass all your classes and boards and apply to a specialty where your grades/scores fit, you should have no problem matching. This is in stark contrast to applying to med school where an average-below average student may have incredibly hard time getting an acceptance.

 

[LizzyM]

I'm going to simplify this:

It is exceedingly uncommon (<5%) for a US MD M4 to not match at all.
Compare this to MD admissions where ~57% to do not get any offers of admission.

If an M3 or rising M4 sees the handwriting on the wall and suspects that it will be hard to match, they might take a research year and then go forward.

 

[GoSpursGo]

More or less agree with all that has been said, the med school application and residency matching processes are totally different. Not trying to be rude, but it is a little difficult to tell exactly what your question is.

Super sorry in advance because this is probably a really stupid question but its just something I am genuinely curious about for a while now and haven't been able to find an easy explanation on the matter.

I lurk a lot, and I see a lot of people post about either average or below average stats and a lot of the advice is usually to wait another year, improve your application, then apply again. And although that is probably solid advice for most of these cases, as someone who nearly lost her mind with 1 application cycle (it wasnt the studying, mcat or any of that, it was mostly the constant repetitive nature of the supplemental applications and just pure stamina grind that you have to do for however many weeks/months you do this) not to mention if you already have bad stats that you had a rough application cycle, you likely wont be able to improve them THAT much in a year, so you have to apply widely AGAIN which means thousands of dollars down the drain every cycle, etc. Yet a lot of med students actually do that and I have come to realize it is more common than I used to think. Now my question can't med school grads also kinda do that same thing with residency match? I could very much be wrong here, but it is my understanding that residency matches (even for the ****tiest of carribean schools) is still higher percentage wise than the percentage of med school applicants that get admitted into ANY medical school, let alone their top choice (was it 40%?) It is also my understanding that if you dont match your top choices you can basically then apply for unfilled positions after the initial match and then if even then you dont get anything, you can look at your stats and address them and then try again next year. So how is that different than the med school process? I mean, I completely understand that going through 4 years of time and money for med school is a lot more intense than the 1 year post bacc into masters program into whatever you would need to do to apply to med school again but honestly, it seems like stat wise unmatched grads seem to be in the better boat than down on their luck applicants. I could be completely talking outta my ass here and thats why I wanted to come on here and get some perspective on why so many people here talk about how going to a school with like an 85% match rate is infinitely worse than the endless limbo many med school applicants get in (many with even offers from low tier schools or foreign schools that they are discouraged from going to)

Reading between the lines I *think* you are trying to argue that going to the Caribbean and taking your chances with what appears to be a still reasonable match rate rather than continuing to reapply--is that correct? If so, the fallacy here is that the "85% match rate" that these foreign schools only take into account the students who actually get to apply. There is a tremendous amount of attrition at these schools, from students failing the poorly-designed preclinical courses, to failing USMLE step 1 or 2, to any number of other landmines associated with Caribbean med school education. At a US med school they will generally do whatever they can to help you if you stumble academically on the way; in the Caribbean, they will dismiss you on the spot at best, and at worst string you along to keep collecting your tuition and THEN find a bogus reason to dismiss you later in school to preserve their match rate. Further, included in the "85% match rate" is students who match at 1-year preliminary IM or surgical spots, which often lead nowhere and result in an inability to become board certified in anything.

The risks associated with Caribbean schools is not so much that you won't succeed in the match, but moreso that you will not even get to try and match. And even if you do manage to make it through the gauntlet of Caribbean medical school, your options for matching will be severely limited.