I thought the hardest part was getting into medical school. I did not really understand matching, but I knew obviously you had to do a residency. I am starting medical school in the fall and I want to spend my 4 years doing whatever I can to match with a good EM program, and then if not good
ANY. I am already stressed by reading threads on scrambles, or not matching at all. I am doing the HPSP, so I know that I have to match military and civilian. I also know that if I match military there is low chance of doing civilian. I am glad about that because I do not want to do civilian. (I know I am talking to much sorry) My question is what things can I do to have a strong application for EM please?
Thank You and congrats to all of you!!!!!!!!!!!!
Several things
1) You do not apply military and civilian with HPSP. You have to apply military, and most of the time you have to apply just to the military. You have the option to ask the military to let you apply to civilian residencies instead of (not in addition to) military GME. They almost always say no to this.
2) The military match has different odds than the civilian match. The odds, as well as what you need to do to improve your odds, vary depending on the service you choose, but what they all have in common is that EM is WAY harder to get in the military than in the civilian world. The increased difficulty of EM is by far the biggest difference between the military and civilian match. Thought you should know now, while you can still get out of HPSP, so that you can't whine about it later.
3) That doesn't matter much, though, because you don't know what you want to do yet. I know you think you do, but you don't, and you won't until you've rotated on everything. Lots of people liked the idea of EM who realized that they ultimately didn't like the pace, the cynicism, the high risk of litigation, the terrible patients, etc. You may end up liking family practice, or surgery, or radiology. Work to keep your mind, and your options, open.
4) To keep your options open, do research (if you have time), keep your grades up, and kill the boards. When you get to third year honor your classes try to get through a lot of cores rather than screwing around with electives so that you've seen everything before getting to the (early, December) match. For the military you're also going to need to spend a month doing an 'audition' rotation at each of the sites you want to rank or you really decrease the chances of matching at those sites. That's all you need to do and all you can do anyway.
