Your senior has entered one of the most exciting and anxiety-provoking phases of medical school education! After the T3 clerkships have been completed, the senior student must take and pass the second national licensure exam, known as Step 2. The score on this exam might determine what specialty a student will choose, as some competitive specialty programs (such as neurosurgery or dermatology) may screen candidates on the basis of the exam score. Nationally, fourth-year students are also vying for spots in one-month “away rotations” in their anticipated specialty, hoping that this experience and exposure at another institution may lead to a subsequent interview for a residency position. Additionally, T4 students have mandatory rotations in Emergency Medicine, Radiology, as well as sub intern/acting intern requirements and various other elective hours to complete to fulfill graduation requirements.
But all of these responsibilities pale in comparison to the stress of the MATCH. The MATCH, which started in the 1950s, serves as an organized way of matching graduating medical students to a postgraduate (residency) program in the specialty of their choice. After students have applied and received interviews to various programs during their senior year, both the applicant and the programs rank each other in February 2023. The computerized ranking system then determines the “best fit.” On March 17th at 10 am, all students in the MATCH learn simultaneously by email where they are headed next year for training in their specialty. There are some exceptions: if your student is applying to Urology, Ophthalmology, or is a HPSP(Military) student, they are notified several months earlier.
The preparation and strategy for this pivotal March event begins early all over the country. In the summer, your student was interviewed by our Associate Dean for Student Affairs, and the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE) was completed and uploaded for each student along with the student’s transcript. Additionally, seniors must submit a special type of academic resume (curriculum vitae) along with a personal statement clearly describing why they have chosen that particular specialty. Students must also solicit letters of recommendation from physicians who have worked with them. All information is then released to training programs all over the country on September 28, 2022. Programs review each applicant’s materials and decide whether the student will merit an interview. Due to COVID, all interviews have been held by Zoom since 2021 and the same national process will apply this year. While the remote interview process reduces the risk of COVID and saves students money, it increases anxiety for those more comfortable with an in-person setting. As a result, our Department of Student Affairs staff arranges “mock interviews” by Zoom to assist our students by critiquing their performance and providing a video for review. October through January is interview season and waiting for an email offering an interview is quite anxiety-provoking because it could arrive at any time or not at all. Since the students may rank only those programs at which they have interviewed, obtaining interviews is essential to success. We’ll cover more of the MATCH as well as graduation plans in the next newsletter.
See where our students matched last year: https://medicine.tulane.edu/student-affairs/match-day/match-results-archive
More MATCH 2022: https://medicine.tulane.edu/student-affairs/match-day
