Match Ceremony

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I really don't think you needed to answer those questions - that was very insensitive of the prior poster. I'm sorry you've had such a tough week.

Be specific: what the **** was insensitive in my questions? She brought it up on an anonymous board. I was inquiring as to how the scramble into anesthesia happened especially considering how competitive it is, and whether she ranked all the 14 schools she interviewed at, and anything she could describe about the relative competitiveness of the residencies she applied to...how is that insensitive?

I doubt if she wants to answer any other questions, but given the various options described in this thread (scramble into a transitional year, or do research, and then re-enter the match next year), I am curious if in the panic this week if she considered doing something else for the next year and reentering the match for ortho surgery? She describes ortho as her "lifelong ambition" so it does beg the question...it is also a cautionary tale for everyone to have a backup game plan in place in case you don't match - maybe anesthesia was her backup strategy, and if so, that is great.

She says 14 interviews are "a lot." I have seen people on other threads who interviewed at twice that many programs, begging the question: what is considered "a lot" of interviews for competitive specialties? Any useful "rule of thumb" on how many programs to apply to/interview at, along the lines of what is suggested for applying to medical schools?

Finally, to Ashers: thanks for your answers. I find it very helpful, and I assume others do, too. Good luck.

 

[Ashers]

Be specific: what the **** was insensitive in my questions? She brought it up on an anonymous board. I was inquiring as to how the scramble into anesthesia happened especially considering how competitive it is, and whether she ranked all the 14 schools she interviewed at, and anything she could describe about the relative competitiveness of the residencies she applied to...how is that insensitive?

I doubt if she wants to answer any other questions, but given the various options described in this thread (scramble into a transitional year, or do research, and then re-enter the match next year), I am curious if in the panic this week if she considered doing something else for the next year and reentering the match for ortho surgery? She describes ortho as her "lifelong ambition" so it does beg the question...it is also a cautionary tale for everyone to have a backup game plan in place in case you don't match - maybe anesthesia was her backup strategy, and if so, that is great.

She says 14 interviews are "a lot." I have seen people on other threads who interviewed at twice that many programs, begging the question: what is considered "a lot" of interviews for competitive specialties? Any useful "rule of thumb" on how many programs to apply to/interview at, along the lines of what is suggested for applying to medical schools?

Finally, to Ashers: thanks for your answers. I find it very helpful, and I assume others do, too. Good luck.

By critiquing my answers you're not going to get me to answer any more. You do not know me, my situation, my thought process, or much else about me.

 

[Steiner]

This tread reminds me of that game you play in kindergarten where you whisper something to the person next to you and then wait and see how what you said gets distorted by the time it comes back to you.

All I asked was who is going to attend their schools match and look where it is now.

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

Be specific: what the **** was insensitive in my questions? She brought it up on an anonymous board.

Basically the whole tone - it came across like you were grilling someone (who just went through every med student's worst nightmare) because you felt like her answers might give you some personal gain.

 

[BoneNibbler]

Do you think the stereotype of jock men in orthopedic surgery hurt you? I could see them being dismissive of a woman.

Thats what I was thinking too. Or perhaps the interviewed schools were highly ranked, and she was the worst candidate who interviewed (not saying she was just saying a possibliiety).

Ashers I am so sorry and hope you love anesthesia! It is my backup if i dont get into ortho.

BTW did you apply to any residecies in ortho that were lower tier?

 

[njbmd]

Why should people be forced into a specialty they don't like? We busted our asses to get into medschool and we're busting them to match. FMGs have to jump through a lot of hoops to train here, and if they want those PC slots so desperately, God bless them. I sure as hell hope I'm not shunted into something rural because of some sort of xenophobic/Good Ol' American Country Doc mentality.

No one is "shunted" into anything. You control your fate and many people screw the process by not knowing how to optimize their chances of matching. The MATCH is not like applying for medical school and a bit more like applying for a job. I don't care if you have a 260 on Step I and honors in every class that you took. If my residents don't like you and feel that you would not be an asset to our program, you won't match in our program. They have to be able to work with you on a day to day basis. Needless to say, you can also fail to impress the faculty member who interviews you too if you don't have good interpersonal skills. Our interviews involve questions from both a faculty member and chief resident at the same time. We use both junior faculty and senior faculty too.

Our program had no problem filling this year and didn't have any categorical or prelim slots open. We didn't take any FMGs (haven't in 5 years) and we are quite happy with the folks that chose us high enough on their ranklist to get here.

People don't match for a variety of reasons with many of them having to do with a less than distinguished medical school record, and poor interview skills along with poor performances in their third year rotations. Phone calls from chairmen do not make much of a difference with us. We are looking for people who can get the job done and get along with their teams as surgery is very much a team-oriented residency. Everyone has to pull their weight.

We have a M/F ratio of 60/40 and age range from 25 to 36. (The 36-year-old was the oldest applicant this year and we are happy to have this person. Some are married with families and some are single. Several did audition rotations and did quite well and thus we are happy to have them in the program.

One young man was a bit lower in terms of academics but was a hit with the resident staff. They literally "lobbied" the faculty to rank him and we did. Again, we had people with excellent academics that we didn't rank. I am sure that they found slots elsewhere but they were not for our program.

To those who are applying for next year:
Start your applications early and do your best in your third-year rotations, even the ones you don't like. It's all about getting a good medical school education and not about what you like and don't like.

Make sure that you get your letters done and that they reflect your true performance. If you piss off the chief resident or intern on a service, it's likely going to be reflected in your letter. Rotation evals have a strong subjective component that you don't want to ruin because you can't keep your mouth shut or because of laziness.

Make sure that you apply to a good cross section of programs and that you have enough interviews to be able to rank a minimum of 10 programs where you actually have a shot. It's OK to rank a dream program high but you have to be realistic or you will find that you don't match.

When you interview, you need to be sure that you know how to do this. If you have poor social skills, show arrogance etc, you are not going to match. Most programs allow input of residents and they have a good idea of who they want to work with and who they don't. Good personal hygiene helps here too along with just being a cordial person. If you don't know how to act in a job interview, you have a year to go to the career center at your school and get this figured out.

Many people who don't match (especially those who thought they were "slam dunks") don't realize that they come off as someone that others don't want to work with or didn't completely understand that the match process is quite different from getting into medical school in the first place and made some tactical errors that cost them. Everything counts and one small thing can knock you out of the running. Those small things add up and you are sitting there the Monday of Match-week with a computer message that says "We are sorry, you didn't match".

It's not the end of the world to scramble but your choices can be limited. There is also nothing wrong with doing a preliminary medicine or surgery year (doing a good job) and entering the Match the next year in what you want to go into in the first place. The thing that you don't want to do is panic, take any residency position that open and find that it's not what you want to do or in something that you hate. The location then become a non-issue because you are going to be miserable.

 

[Ashers]

Thats what I was thinking too. Or perhaps the interviewed schools were highly ranked, and she was the worst candidate who interviewed (not saying she was just saying a possibliiety).

Ashers I am so sorry and hope you love anesthesia! It is my backup if i dont get into ortho.

BTW did you apply to any residecies in ortho that were lower tier?

Programs were all over the country (East to West, North to South). Some of the top 10 academic programs, some small community programs.

*

Edit: I am now very happy with my decision.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

This is the misstatement in your post. The boards aren't a gauge of quality. They set a minimum. Most people agree that these test very little as to what is actually required, and are only meant to be a very minimum set of standards, not something you can point to and say you are "qualified". (In fact, the boards are going to be shuffled around in a few years in part to not play as much of a role in residency selection, because they were never meant to demonstrate quality, aptitude etc. The LCME requires a TON of other things to happen during U.S. med school for you to graduate "qualified", and folks trained under other systems may or may not have all of these components. So yes, I would say that there are folks who pass the boards and can still be very unqualified. You have to look at what the board is meant to do (create a set of "minimum standards", a floor, upon which other requirements are built), not assume it is an adequate measuring stick of qualification.

I disagree. If that were the case, the board would just be a pass/fail exam like the bar exams in law. It is manifestly not this and it is quite clear that someone who got a 260 is worlds apart from someone who got a 190, although both passed. Perhaps the step 1 does not measure aptitude, but it does measure mastery of the first 2 years' material and the students' work-ethic and conscientiousness, and thus is likely to be predictive of work ethic and dedication to mastering the material during residency.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

No one is "shunted" into anything. You control your fate and many people screw the process by not knowing how to optimize their chances of matching. The MATCH is not like applying for medical school and a bit more like applying for a job. I don't care if you have a 260 on Step I and honors in every class that you took. If my residents don't like you and feel that you would not be an asset to our program, you won't match in our program. They have to be able to work with you on a day to day basis. Needless to say, you can also fail to impress the faculty member who interviews you too if you don't have good interpersonal skills. Our interviews involve questions from both a faculty member and chief resident at the same time. We use both junior faculty and senior faculty too.

Our program had no problem filling this year and didn't have any categorical or prelim slots open. We didn't take any FMGs (haven't in 5 years) and we are quite happy with the folks that chose us high enough on their ranklist to get here.

People don't match for a variety of reasons with many of them having to do with a less than distinguished medical school record, and poor interview skills along with poor performances in their third year rotations. Phone calls from chairmen do not make much of a difference with us. We are looking for people who can get the job done and get along with their teams as surgery is very much a team-oriented residency. Everyone has to pull their weight.

We have a M/F ratio of 60/40 and age range from 25 to 36. (The 36-year-old was the oldest applicant this year and we are happy to have this person. Some are married with families and some are single. Several did audition rotations and did quite well and thus we are happy to have them in the program.

One young man was a bit lower in terms of academics but was a hit with the resident staff. They literally "lobbied" the faculty to rank him and we did. Again, we had people with excellent academics that we didn't rank. I am sure that they found slots elsewhere but they were not for our program.

To those who are applying for next year:
Start your applications early and do your best in your third-year rotations, even the ones you don't like. It's all about getting a good medical school education and not about what you like and don't like.

Make sure that you get your letters done and that they reflect your true performance. If you piss off the chief resident or intern on a service, it's likely going to be reflected in your letter. Rotation evals have a strong subjective component that you don't want to ruin because you can't keep your mouth shut or because of laziness.

Make sure that you apply to a good cross section of programs and that you have enough interviews to be able to rank a minimum of 10 programs where you actually have a shot. It's OK to rank a dream program high but you have to be realistic or you will find that you don't match.

When you interview, you need to be sure that you know how to do this. If you have poor social skills, show arrogance etc, you are not going to match. Most programs allow input of residents and they have a good idea of who they want to work with and who they don't. Good personal hygiene helps here too along with just being a cordial person. If you don't know how to act in a job interview, you have a year to go to the career center at your school and get this figured out.

Many people who don't match (especially those who thought they were "slam dunks") don't realize that they come off as someone that others don't want to work with or didn't completely understand that the match process is quite different from getting into medical school in the first place and made some tactical errors that cost them. Everything counts and one small thing can knock you out of the running. Those small things add up and you are sitting there the Monday of Match-week with a computer message that says "We are sorry, you didn't match".

It's not the end of the world to scramble but your choices can be limited. There is also nothing wrong with doing a preliminary medicine or surgery year (doing a good job) and entering the Match the next year in what you want to go into in the first place. The thing that you don't want to do is panic, take any residency position that open and find that it's not what you want to do or in something that you hate. The location then become a non-issue because you are going to be miserable.

One quick question: you can assess whether the person will fit well with the program just on the basis of a few interviews? I'm not a very outgoing person and not the best with cracking jokes, my conversation is usually pretty serious, but I don't think that means I can't work well together with other people. Just how exactly do you assess a proper fit to the program, then? Or are the more introverted people basically screwed?

 

[Mr hawkings]

One quick question: you can assess whether the person will fit well with the program just on the basis of a few interviews? I'm not a very outgoing person and not the best with cracking jokes, my conversation is usually pretty serious, but I don't think that means I can't work well together with other people. Just how exactly do you assess a proper fit to the program, then? Or are the more introverted people basically screwed?

That why rotating though the places you would like to go is so important. I'm sure after 4 weeks with you, they will know if they want to work with you regardless of your interview skills.

 

[njbmd]

One quick question: you can assess whether the person will fit well with the program just on the basis of a few interviews? I'm not a very outgoing person and not the best with cracking jokes, my conversation is usually pretty serious, but I don't think that means I can't work well together with other people. Just how exactly do you assess a proper fit to the program, then? Or are the more introverted people basically screwed?

There is a proper method to having good interview skills that do NOT involve "cracking jokes" or trying to pretend that your personality is something that it isn't. If know that you have little experience with job interviews or you are not sure of your skills, you have some time to acquire satisfactory interview skills or hone the ones you have.

You would be surprised how much a skilled interviewer can acquire from an interview in addition to spending the day with a prospective applicant. After all, none of us who do this "fell out of the stupid tree" yesterday. There are more than one or two interviewees who definitely believe that their acting skills are good enough to hide their personalities. These folks will generally not come off well.

None of the people that we matched this year would be people that I would describe as overly "outgoing" or "joketers". If you honestly believe that these are the qualities required of a person seeking a professional position, I strongly encourage you to get some career couseling before you enter the process in a future year.

I AM saying that nerves or just plain stupidity-in most cases- can get the best of one or two people and that these folks won't match with us no matter what boards scores/grades. If you think that this might be the case for you, then get some interview practice so that your nerves don't get the best of you.

I AM also saying that you can do a bit of preparation (ask your department chair, residency program director at your medical school) about programs, do some research into what type of program you would like, prepare a strong ERAS with well-written letters and have (or secure) good interview skills which will help you match into a program that will be good for you. You also need to be sure that you are competitive for the specialty that you choose so that you will get enough interviews to rank enough places to get matched.

Applying for residency is not a time to guess about the process but is something that is different from medical school application and is something that many folks need some guidance in getting accomplished (your medical school should do this for you). It takes more than last minute filling out ERAS but is something that you do largely over the course of your third and fourth year when you are doing your rotations and getting letters from your preceptors and being mindful that you have to learn as much about the entire process as possible.

You don't have to change your personality or take on some personna to do this. For the vast majority of people, presenting themselves in a cordial and business-like manner will be more than adequate. Residency interview is not about telling an interviewer what you think they want to hear but about answering the questions as honestly as you can and not doing stupid things.

Residency matching is about getting enough interviews across the board to have a good shot at matching. It's equally bad to interview at 10 to 15 places where you are marginally competitive (competitive enough to interview but not for the program to rank) because they are not likely to rank you no matter how highly you rank them.