<p>Quick question: I just recently heard about the Residency Match program, and was wondering if it actually matched you to a specific specialty? For instance, if you wanted to become a plastic surgeon, but was matched to an internal medicine residency, would this restrict you from becoming a plastic surgeon? Or does this mean that it matches you to the specialty of your choice at a specific university?</p>
<p>Match is a complicated computer algorithm that matches students to programs using mutual preference as the key factor.</p>
<p>During the late summer/early fall of the fourth year, students begin applying to residency programs in their desired specialty, at hospitals (that they would like to spend the next 3-7 years of their life) that have programs in those specialties. </p>
<p>As the fall and winter proceed students will be invited for interviews, and begin travelling for those. You get to take time off your rotations to do so, and depending on the specialty, some programs may actually pay for your room and travel costs. In Late January (maybe early Feb) the majority of students submit a Rank order list of their preferred programs to the National Residency Match Program. The NRMP also receives similar lists from the residency programs, all the data is entered and the computer algorithm takes over, spitting out the results in, as I said, 6 minutes. Then in March, all the results are released (2nd thursday?), most medical schools actually have a big ceremony where everyone announces where they are headed. </p>
<p>Some residencies are competitive to get (derm, ortho surgery) others are not (Pathology, Physical Medicine, Psych), and some are so numerous that it is impossible not to get matched somewhere (peds, medicine). However, the competition at the "top" programs in any specialty are guaranteed to be competitive. Programs that are in geographically desirable location also tend to be a little bit more competitive. Competitiveness means the average USMLE scores, letters of rec, extracurriculars and grades are all outstanding.</p>
<p>dang! and I thought the whole doing extracurriculars thing ended after you got into med school. Do med students actually have time to do extracurriculars during the school year, or do they primarily do that during the summer (or both)?</p>
<p>Is research the primary extracurricular that exists for med students or are there others? I'm only asking because shadowing a doctor, etc. that pre-meds do seems like it is integrated into the medical school curriculum, even in the first year.</p>
<p>It's not nearly as "necessary". And most students will have far fewer EC's than they had in college. </p>
<p>There are organizations for things like AMA, AMSA, and various specialty interest groups. I happen to be on the board for the student run clinics at my school (<a href="http://www.unmc.edu/SHARING%5B/url%5D">www.unmc.edu/SHARING</a>)</p>
<p>See the match site at <a href="http://www.nrmp.org/%5B/url%5D">http://www.nrmp.org/</a> for a complete description of policies and procedures. Note that not all specialties fill positions through the primary match (e.g., ophthalmology).</p>
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The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) is a private, not-for-profit corporation established in 1952 to provide a uniform date of appointment to positions in graduate medical education (GME). It is governed by its board of directors. Five medical/medical education organizations and four medical student organizations nominate candidates for election to the board: the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), the American Medical Association (AMA), the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the American Hospital Association (AHA), the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS), the AAMC Organization of Student Representatives, the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), the AMA Medical Student Section, and the Consortium of Medical Student Organizations. Each year, the NRMP conducts a residency match that is designed to optimize the rank ordered choices of students and program directors. In the third week of March, the results of the match are announced.</p>
<p>The NRMP is not an application processing service; rather, it provides an impartial venue for matching applicants' and programs' preferences for each other consistently. Each year, approximately 16,000 U.S. medical school students participate in the residency match. In addition, another 17,000 "independent" applicants compete for the approximately 24,000 available residency positions. Independent applicants include former graduates of U.S. medical schools, U.S. osteopathic students, Canadian students, and graduates of foreign medical schools.</p>
<p>In 2005, the NRMP enrolled 3,813 programs in the match, which altogether offered 24,012 positions. A total of 31,862 applicants participated in the Match. Of those, 15,308 were 2005 graduates of accredited U.S. medical schools and 16,554 were Independent Applicants.
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<p>what happens if you don't get into a residency? are you completely screwed?</p>
<p>Students that don't match find out the day before the revealing that they haven't matched to any of the programs on their rank-order list. They, with the help of their medical school, go through what is commonly referred to as the "scramble". They begin searching for programs that didnt' fill all their openings. There are definitely students who don't get matched in the first go round (last year about 6% of US seniors didn't match in the first go round). </p>
<p>But, that said, I'm willing to bet that all US Seniors end up somewhere (one of the benefits of staying in the US for med school). It may be completely different than where they were hoping and in a very different specialty than they were planning (most will likely find a spot in an Internal Med residency). This is particularly true for people applying to the most competitive residency fields (Ophthamalogy, Ortho, Derm). Now it is important to remember that a lot of fields require a transitional year for the first year out. So someone may match or scramble to a transitional year program and then go through the match again to find a spot in the competitive field they didn't get into the prior year. There's a lot of convoluted stuff I could bring up but it's not that important until you're actually in med school.</p>