Match Day 2016

Happy Monday! Match Day 2016 was actually on the 18th, but I saved the news for today because I was at clinic/wanted to live life and spend time with family/friends this weekend. Besides, this was perfect material for another weekly Medical Mondays!

I’ve kinda been throwing in teasers here and there for a while now, from how I’m choosing my residency to quotes from the interview trail, and examples of things that I was asked…

(Truth be told, I wrote up most of this post beforehand and just left the “match” part blank since I cannot in fact predict the future.)

Applications/Interviews

I went through an initial panic (“What if no one wants me?!”) when I was first applying and applied to some that I wasn’t reallyy thinking of going to.

My dean is a wonderful lady, and told me to snap out of it and to apply for places where I really wanted to go, including my reach programs, so I went for em’! I’m super glad I did, because I ended up getting interviews from programs that I didn’t think would actually give me the time of day.

Dream big, m’friends! The worst they can say is no!

# Programs Applied: 30

# Interview Offers: 16

# Interviews Attended: 15

My last interview was on January 15th, so I’ve essentially been waiting from then til March18th to find out where I’m going!

I got to go to a Match Day celebration! (My school doesn’t do one, so I “crashed” the one at the place where I’m rotating!)

Rotations

# Audition Rotations Completed: 5

My sixth one got cancelled due to scheduling difficulties, which led to me not being able to get to the interview, so I hung out for an extra two weeks with an ENT in private practice specializing in Allergy/Immunology!

Here are day-in-the-life’s of the rest!

• Family Medicine + working in Sports Medicine during the Little League World Series
• Family Medicine in rural-ish Pennsylvania
• Inpatient Family Medicine in North Carolina
• Family Medicine in rural Arizona
• Internal Medicine in California

# Days Rotations Missed: 1.5

I used almost all my vacation days to go on interviews so I wouldn’t miss any days of my rotations. The 1.5 days I missed was for my first interview! My preceptor gave me an extra half-day off and told me to go knock their socks off, saying that he was sure they’d love me. :]!

Travel

(From August to January.) To check out my travels this year and see what the entirety of [my] 4th year was all about, go here!

# States Traveled: 9

# Miles Driven*: 3754.5

# Miles Flown*: 7660

In an effort to save money, I also stuffed 4 interviews into 3 consecutive days…across 3 different states (North Carolina, New Jersey, California). It actually ended up working out (thankfully), and negated the need to fly back and forth across the country, but if you can avoid that and save yourself the stress…probably a great idea.

Expenses

$$$ Spent*: $3314.55

Told you there was a good reason to give up my apartment and become “homeless” for a year–look at all the money I saved! (Barely makes a dent in the cost of going to medical school, but it did help to alleviate the application fees and whatnot?)

*The miles driven, miles flown, and money spent only account for how much I traveled/paid for to get to my audition rotations and interviews.

Whittling Em’ Down

I decided to skip the AOA match in favor of the ACGME match because most of my favorite programs were either ACGME-only or dually-accredited. I emailed the dually-accredited programs and explained my situation–all of them were very understanding, and just moved my name to the other match.

This was somewhat of a gamble on my part because most dually-accredited programs had a certain number of slots for DO students, meaning that it was in my benefit to do the DO match if I wanted to go there. I also got super-strong hints from 4 programs, but…I decided to take the chance.

# Programs on My Rank Order List: 12

But in all honesty, do you guys really even care about all these statistics? Where am I going/spending my next 3 years!?!

Who am I getting “married” to!?

Matched: #1!!!!!!

(I got into my first-choice program!!!)

I’m so, so excited to announce that I’ll be spending my next 3 years at the same place where I went to grad school! :D! This means that I’m not completing my westward trajectory and returning home just yet, which, I’ll be honest, I am a little sad about, because these past few months at home/near-home and getting to see my friends/family have been really nice…but I liked this program too much to not rank it first. <3

SO EXCITED. <3

A photo posted by Farrah @ fairyburger (@fairyburger) on Mar 19, 2016 at 2:26pm PDT

We went on a celebratory hike up Mission Peak over the weekend! :] Proud to say that I only almost-fell just once!