Today is Match Day. Today, thousands of medical students across the USA will be given a sealed envelope containing a description of where they will be going for residency. At noon, in every medical school, they will gather to simultaneously open those envelopes. These students have spent months applying and interviewing for various programs. Many will have spent hundreds of dollars and hours on applications, interview suits, travel expenses, and retail therapy in the pursuit of a place to give them the training necessary to become a board-certified physician. (For my own interviews, I drove up to Boston, flew out to Texas, and trekked from Detroit across half of Michigan, all in the span of a month, and my journey was considered less involved than most.)
Nearly a month ago, these students submitted a final list of their programs in order of preference, and the same programs submitted a similarly ranked list of applicants. Over the past month, both sides have simply been waiting for a single, centralized computer system to work its way through an algorithm and literally assign applicants to programs. It is radically different from applications to undergraduate, graduate, or even most professional schools, where the applicant (in the best scenario) is able to select from a variety of accepting programs and weigh offers and counter-offers.
The Match is a singular, contractually binding decision, a mandate of sorts. There is no negotiation, no secondary option. [Read more…] about Match Day: On Call