My recruiter seems to know hardly anything about this. I was thinking of doing HPSP through the Air Force, but from what I've read on here I have seriously been rethinking this. Must you do a military match first? They can make you do something before your residency too? I'm pretty confused about this all. When do you start paying back your commitment?
Ha ha. I wish I had this forum to ask this question to about 8 years ago. I wouldn't be sitting at this computer in the Middle East typing this if I had. The reason he doesn't seem to know anything about this is that he doesn't know much about it. He has no idea how either the military or civilian match works. And what he does know he won't tell you because if you really knew how it worked, you wouldn't sign up. Here is how it works if you're lucky:
Early in your fourth year of medical school, instead of going to rotate at someplace you want to do your residency, you go rotate at a military hospital so you can make a good impression. As part of that rotation, you interview with the residency program director and emphasize to him how much you want to do your chosen specialty but then politely inform him you want to do a civilian residency. About this time the list of anticipated civilian deferrals in your chosen specialty and service comes out and hopefully they are actually letting somebody defer this year. You then fly at your own expense to the other programs in your service and specialty and interview, telling them the same thing. You begin applying to 10-50 civilian programs (at your own expense) and lining up interviews. You make your military "rank list", listing civilian deferral first, then the other military programs in your specialty and send it in. Then you begin doing civilian program interviews. You probably do 4 or 5 of these and then you get the results of the military match in mid-December. You are somehow lucky enough to get one of the deferral spots and continue attending your civilian interviews, rank your top choices and get your top choice. You spent 3-5 years away from the military, and then when you come on active duty, you owe 4 years (for a 4 year HPSP scholarship.)
You'll notice that is a long and much more arduous process than your civilian counterparts go through. Not only are they able to rotate at places they actually WANT to match at early in their 4th year, but they don't have to hassle with the military match at all. Here are the additional places in the process you can get screwed over:
1) You don't understand that the military match is not a computer, it is 3-5 people sitting around a desk determining if and where you'll train in your chosen specialty. They choose based on a vague point system that gives way too much credit for prior service, research, and "potential as a military officer" as well as how much they like you.
2) There simply may not be any civilian deferrals in your chosen specialty in your service that year. In fact, they may not want anyone in your chosen specialty at all, or they may want so few it turns out to be much more competitive than in the civilian world (the year I applied there was a 50% match rate in the military, 93% in the civilian world in my specialty.)
3) You may not be chosen to be trained in your specialty and are forced into a crappy military internship + a GMO tour.
4) You may be put into a military residency program rather than given a civilian deferral.
5) You may have waited until you heard from the military match before applying to and interviewing at civilian programs, be given a deferral, and not have a chance to take advantage of it.
Choosing a specialty and matching is stressful enough without getting the military involved. Do yourself a favor and wait to join the military until you are done with medical school. You can still join then and get money to pay back your loans (it is called the FAP program.)
Good luck with your decision.
