Many of you who know me personally have realized that I have been traveling around the Midwest and East coast interviewing for residency and intern year. This process is filled with medical school specific lingo, so I thought I would break everything down for you with a few definitions and timelines:

Intern Year (PGY-1): This is the first year of your residency. Residency is the training you do after completing 4 years of medical school. You are a doctor in the official sense that you have an MD degree, but you are still not truly independent. In fact, you are at the bottom of the ranks when it comes to residency, or also known as, postgraduate medical education. PGY-1 stands for post graduate year one.

Residency (PGY 1-7): Residency is a post graduate medical education program that specializes in the field of your choosing. Residencies vary in length and intensity and whether or not your intern year is combined with your overall residency training. For example, in dermatology and anesthesiology you do a separate intern year from your residency, for a total of four years (1 intern + 3 residency). For other specialties such as general surgery, you do everything under one combined program for anywhere between 5 to 8 years. People choose their residency based on their interests and then apply specifically to that track.

Interview season: In the summer prior to your final year of medical school you submit a standardized application with all of your medical school grades, awards, publications, community service, school activities, board scores, and personal statement to residency programs that you are interested in. This is called ERAS – Electronic Residency Application Service. Generally people apply to one type of residency; but, those who are applying to a very competitive area of medicine where they are at risk of not matching, people can choose to apply to two separate fields such as: orthopedic surgery and General surgery; or medicine and dermatology. Once you submit your application in the summer, and early fall you receive interviews and then visit different institution to interview for their residency programs. In dermatology you have to complete interviews for both your intern year and also for your dermatology residency which are separate. Organizing and completing your interviews takes time, advanced planning, and financial support to pay for travel, lodging, food, and also to deal with the headache of taking time off of medical school in general. It seems like it would be pure awesomeness – and the opportunity to interview is such an honor – but, the season comes with expenses and exhaustion!

Rank list: The rank list is a system where you are allowed to rank any program at which you interviewed from your favorite program, ranked as #1, to your least favorite program, that you would rank last. The length of your rank list varies from person to person and depends upon how many programs you interviewed at, and it also the competitiveness of the specialty to which you are applying. In general, the more competitive the specialty, ideally the more interviews and consecutive ranks that you will require in order to match. And medical students applying to “less competitive” specialties can get away with interviewing at fewer places. It seems that all specialities are becoming more and more competitive, so the quotes indicate that these comparisons are all relative, and slightly arbitrary. However, official rank lists were February 20th, and after that date, you’re unable to change anything about your list. At the same time you are making your list, the programs/universities that you interviewed at are ranking their favorite applicants in a similar fashion – their most desired applicant as #1 and so on…

The Match: After you certify your rank list, there is a brief period of waiting time. During this time an algorithm runs which functions to pair applicants to their preferred program in a way that optimizes everyone’s choices – both the applicant and the resident. It is difficult to explain but it has been used for years and there is a pretty good video that describes this process. It apparently won a Nobel prize or something! This waiting period can be an anxiety provoking time knowing that an algorithm chooses your fate, but it is in place to level the playing and designed to favor applicant preferences over programs. For example, just because a program ranks you #1 doesn’t mean they can sweep you away from a program you prefer over them.  LINK to how it works!

The Monday before Match Day you receive an email that tells you if you matched (We remember Paul’s Match Monday!) through the algorithm or if you have to scramble. Scrambling means frantically searching for a residency which may or may not be in your specialty of choice, but it is another opportunity to find a residency for some reason you did not match.

MATCH DAY: Friday, March 15, 2019 at noon, all medical students across the nation receive an envelope that reveals where they have matched!  When Paul went through this, he walked up to the front of a room full of his classmates and opened his envelope in front of a microphone – talk about the ultimate rush!  At the University of Pittsburgh, we all get our envelopes at the same time and sneak away in a corner to open them.

There are only a few days left until Match Day!! I’ll let you know where we land!

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