<p>Turns out that waiting really is the hardest part. I’m going to drive myself crazy before this is over.</p>
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<p>Agree. Much worse than waiting for Med school admissions. Stress level is high here.</p>
<p>Good luck to all waiting to hear tomorrow…</p>
<p>He matched!!!..phew…</p>
<p>^^^Congrats to your S!</p>
<p>Matched into both of the programs that I needed to. That’s all I know.</p>
<p><em>commence more waiting</em></p>
<p>Congrats to ncg and eadad’s S!</p>
<p>What is a resonbly good score for Step 1?</p>
<p>The national average is around 222 or so. The average USMLE score for applicants who successfully matched into radiology, derm, ENT, neurosurg is 240-245.</p>
<p>My son matched. Like NCG, I suspect that’s all he really wanted to hear. While he has locational preference (strong) and program preference (mild), just matching is the biggie. All the programs will make he an anesthesiologist. Congrats to the others.</p>
<p>Congrats to everybody and thanks for scores, NCG. I wonder if there there is any correlation between MCAT and Step 1 scores?
In regard to matching (very far for us), is there possibility that there is no match at all? If so, then what they do?</p>
<p>There is a correlation, much like there is a correlation between SAT scores and MCAT scores. The most selective med schools have the highest average USMLE scores (not surprisingly).</p>
<p>There is no chance that the match won’t be around in 3-4 years. The match has been around for approx 50 years, before there were even computers. It’s withstood lawsuits and everything that has come to oppose it. It’s safe to say it’ll still be around when your daughter applies for residency.</p>
<p>Successfully matched!</p>
<p>NCG,
By “no match” I meant that particul Med. student do not match to any single place, then what they do?</p>
<p>There is a new system this year called SOAP. Basically, it’s a second mini-match between the programs that didn’t fill and the applicants that didn’t match. As you can imagine, the applicants that didn’t match aren’t of the top quality, neither are programs that don’t fill (particularly in competitive specialties). It can happen to anyone. I go to a pretty competitive med school and we still had around 6 or so last year who didn’t match (usually because they were applying to plastics/derm or got bad advising or didn’t rank enough programs).</p>
<p>^Thanks, very helpful. D. started eliminating some specialties because of stringent requirements, the most selective ones are gone from her list, so she has no idea, but she is only MS1, hopefully she has time. It is nice to know about SOAP. They still end up MDs, the rest is not so important. It would be an aweful situation if one does not match at all, at least there is some way to go to some residency, top. middle. or whatever seems to be secondary consideration.</p>
<p>Congrats to all who found out they matched today!</p>
<p>I have to admit, the thought of not matching and having to go through SOAP terrifies me. Which is why, despite my Step I being above the average for my chosen specialty, I’ll be applying to and ranking a crap-ton of programs 
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<p>This is an interesting article about the match: [Nervous</a> Medical Students Await Next Week’s Match Day](<a href=“http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2012/03/nervous-medical-students-await.php]Nervous”>http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2012/03/nervous-medical-students-await.php)
Its wrong in one regard - match day this year is Friday, not Thursday, due to the new SOAP program.</p>
<p>According to the article Icarus just posted:
The average number of positions per residency program is slightly less than 7(6.75 exactly.) Imagine that an applicant needs to sort out which of these 4000 programs to apply to and many of these programs admit very few. It is just stressful.</p>
<p>An analogy: Can a high school student imagine that there are 4000 “colleges” and the “class size” of each college is only 6 or 7 students?</p>
<p>I remember DS once told us that, if the student is not interested in getting into a competitive specialty, (s)he could get into the residency program provided by his/her home institute with a very high probability. Is there any truth in this or is he misled? It seems to me that it is too good to be true.</p>
<p>I heard DS is now a “student section leader” (whatever this title means) of a relatively non-competitive specialty in his MS1 program. (He is interested in this specialty now.) I have no idea whether it will help him get into that specialty in the end. His bigger concern now is that, it appears that, for many research groups at his school, the PI wants the student to be in that group for multiple years (esp. for the last year), or not in his group at all. It is sort of like that the PI of a research group expects the freshman in college who just sets his/her foot on the campus to commit four years to his research group.</p>
<p>Congrats to NCG and EaDad’s DS! Way to go!</p>
<p>NCG, Can you get matched at several programs or is there limited number where you can get matched?</p>
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<p>In general surgery, 5 is considered a good sized program. Many are 4 or smaller and there are a few (honestly, not many) with 6 or 7…one of the largest is his home program with 13 and that is truly an outlier as far as program size but since it serves one of the biggest trauma centers it’s somewhat understandable.</p>
<p>i heard there were 11 unmatched derm spots this year. is this unusual in a competitive specialty?</p>