Blogging with The Doctor Job

Kelly is one of the staff of writers for The Doctor Job. Do you need your personal statement edited, or do you need help in writing one from the beginning? Click here for more information.

If you are a medical student or an FMG, finding out that you didn’t Match can feel overwhelming. What can you do? Is it you? Did you fail? Are you doomed?

Don’t worry. You still have plenty of options, and maybe you can turn things around if you make sure that you’re properly informed and educated. Here are a few tips that might help you in the future.

• Even after the Scramble, positions may open up. There are many upcoming interns and residents who did Match that may drop out, change their minds, or have something happen to their situation that keeps them from showing up in July. From now until August, you should be in constant contact with every program that interests you to make sure that if they lose one of their incoming residents, you’re there to get your resume and personal statement and application faxed to them instantly.
• If you are a foreign medical graduate, make a concerted effort to get some more clinical experience. Volunteer, low pay, whatever you need to do. Don’t be afraid to go door to door with a resume and brief letter until you’ve hit every clinic and practice in town. Make sure your resume is perfect by US standards and that your cover letter is in flawless English, though. Once you get that clinical experience, make sure you get a letter of recommendation from every US physician with whom you worked.
• Assess your interviewing skills. If you are too shy or too aggressive, or even somewhere in the middle, you may have turned off the program director from the beginning. Most major cities have people who work from home doing career coaching. Spend the time and money to get a session or two with them - learn what your weak spots are, and figure out how to overcome them. You want your next interviewing experience to be amazing.
• Redraft your personal statement, as well. It may very well be that your thesis wasn’t clear enough or your concepts were cliched and trite. Try a totally different approach, or use a service to make sure that yours is absolutely perfect.
• Research the Match. Read the information that is released about it so that you understand the process exactly. Assuming that you know the process is careless.
• Learn about your specialties, too. You might find out that your specialty is so hard to get into that with your grades, background and USMLE scores, you are better off trying a different specialty.

Some of these may seem obvious. But the important thing is to take a step back, look at what you’ve done in the past and see if changing some of those things will help you in the future. One thing is for certain - you will never Match if you continue to do the exact same thing each year. Improving your skills, improving your application, and improving yourself is the only way to make sure that next year is a rousing success!

William here. Go read <a href=”http://pandabearmd.com/blog/2006/03/22/the-residency-match-part-3/
title=”Panda Bear, MD” rel=”external”>Panda Bear, MD’s blog</a> for an excellent discussion of the Match, as well.