What new hell is this?

[HouseofWool]

You seem to have a different/inside perspective about the match process that others don't have. Maybe you're trying to be helpful, but you're coming off as very pessimistic and discouraging.

Please don't read this as long time members circling the wagons around one of our own. Moonlight is one of the most gracious and empathetic people I know. If she says something makes her spidey senses tingle, she is usually spot on.

Honestly, I would agree that 4 interviews just isn't enough and you need to dig through his application to see what is going on. Applications are there to remove people from the pool, not put them in. It could be any number of things, Step scores, grades, personal statement, LOR, anything. Any one of those being less than stellar means not getting a shot at a competitive residency. Having a Plan B does not mean that you are giving up hope of matching, it just means being prepared.

I am a jaded and bitter hag as I have watched my ex go through the match several times (for a host of reasons) and he keeps making stupid mistakes - namely limiting his geographic region.

Hang tight, do your research and possibly broaden the application pool a bit either by adding addl ENT slots or trying for a prelim year.

[jennschwaz]

Our marriage, our faith, our baby, our philosophy.

I thank God for these things, which are keeping us grounded through this craziness.

Things are looking up, even as the rejections roll in.

Thanks for all of your input and advice.

I'll let you all know what happens.

-Grace

[diggitydot]

Please don't take this thread as people dog-piling on you. A lot of us had to find shit out the hard way and would have gladly given up an appendage for someone to have shown us the same kindness of being very straightforward.

Even though we BARELY know you, we care. You're one of us now. We watch out for our peeps and are crazy protective. We don't want any of our members, even newbies, to experience the heartache of corrective hindsight. We'd rather you be pissed at us than to fail you by not giving you information that could change your course of action in enough time to do so.

We're not being dicks. I promise.

[spotty_dog]

Lots of good vibes coming your way! Things in medicine so often have a way of working out for the best, even when they seem out of control or even dire. In your third trimester, I'm sure every fiber of your being is craving stability and predictability as you are getting close to the nesting phase! Maybe just focus on baby right now and let the rest of the insanity wash over you. Hang in there.

(I was 9 weeks pregnant on Match day 2006. DH and I cried together when we learned we'd be raising our baby thousands of miles from anyone we knew in a city we'd never in a million years choose to live in. But once we got to know it, it wasn't a bad place, we forged our little family tightly because we had to lean on each other, and he got amazing training that allowed him to land a dream job when he finished training. It really does work out.)

[alotofyarn]

Our marriage, our faith, our baby, our philosophy.

I thank God for these things, which are keeping us grounded through this craziness.

Things are looking up, even as the rejections roll in.

Thanks for all of your input and advice.

I'll let you all know what happens.

-Grace

All the important things! Please do stick around and know that we're rooting for you!

[HouseofWool]

All the important things! Please do stick around and know that we're rooting for you!

Hellz bellz, we're all still rooting for my ex even though he doesn't have a snowballs chance in Hades of matching. We are a determined group, if nothing else.

[Meenah]

Wishing you the best! Collectively we are an amazing group of people with an unbelievable amount of knowledge and experience to get you through every stage of this process. There is a reason that many of us are still here many years after training!!!! Stick around and know that we are all here for you.

[MrsK]

It's November 6. He will get information about SOAP, but honestly your response is what I find alarming. You seem to be the only person on this thread and in our educational/professional circle who thinks we are "certainly going to end up in the middle of nowhere in a specialty he never wanted to do" if we don't have a Plan B totally figured out on November 6. Besides, if he doesn't match in ENT, that's when our Plan B will come into play. We're a level-headed and intelligent couple in our late 30s, not a couple of desperate 20-something kids.

You seem to have a different/inside perspective about the match process that others don't have. Maybe you're trying to be helpful, but you're coming off as very pessimistic and discouraging.

I have to agree with the matching anywhere is better then trying to match again the next year, your odds go down significantly if you are not a graduating med student.

There are a lot of voices on here with a lot of experience. I very much agree that it only takes one and if his home program is high on him that may be all he needs but being prepared is good. My husband is almost 10 years removed from the match, 10 years - he went to a conference a few weeks ago and ran into a doc from his med school, 10 years later they were still giving him a hard time for not staying for residency. If his home program is as high on him then he shouldn't have a problem matching but be prepared for all scenarios.

Hang in there.

I'm chiming in late here. Speaking as (1) a long-time member of iMSN who has been lock-step on the training/residency path with Moonlight, (2) someone who had an established career and researched options in all of the 48 conjoined United States in anticipation of The Match, (3) the spouse of a former accountant who changed careers and first entered The Match in his 30s, and (4) the lone psychiatry spouse active in iMSN. . . . The Match can be brutal regardless of specialty or qualifications. Unfortunately, there is no way to explain this without sounding pessimistic. I don't know many people who have not been beat up a little by The Match. Some of us have been beat up more than others. It's likely that many of the active members here have seen the worst case scenarios as people who have an easy time don't go looking for support. Frankly, I wish I'd found this group before The Match as I was so naive; my own brother had been through medical school and residency and I still had no idea how irrational and heartless The Match process is.

I learned the hard way that it is a lot more difficult to match than any level-headed, intelligent, person would anticipate. As a rational person, it is really hard to accept how difficult it can be to match in any program anywhere in the U.S., nonetheless in your preferred geographic location. Rational people make plans and prepare and expect things to be fair. You said something before that indicated you thought it would be easy to match in psych. Well, my dh didn't match in psych and this was during the bad old days of "the scramble." We made plans and made back-up plans and ended up with our Plan E -- as in, our Plans A, B, C, and D did not work out. Our Plan E was a general rotating internship in an undesirable geographic location that resulted in a lot of hardship, disruption/dissolution of my career, postponement of other personal goals, etc. Then, after completing the internship, we got a psych residency and spent four more years in an even more undesirable geographic location.

At the end of the day, it is all good. My husband finished residency, we are still married, we have two children and a third on the way, he got a post-training job that really excites him, we have nice house in the suburbs and, really, I have everything I ever wanted. But it required a surprising amount of flexibility and I found myself faced with decisions and sacrifices that I never imagined would be required of me. I also learned a lot about myself and our marriage through the process. In retrospect, I'm embarrassed by some of the things I agonized, cried over, and insisted upon though the training process. The most important thing is to keep your eye on your primary goal and be willing to take a meandering path to get there.

[BonBon]

Welcome!! You're in the middle of a difficult period. We're here for you!

Please visit the other forums so we can get to know each other better.

[ladymoreta]

I don't know many people who have not been beat up a little by The Match. Some of us have been beat up more than others.

Isn't that the truth?... I joined iMSN during intern year, and the year after that, it seemed like all the iMSN MS4s matched at their #1 spots. It was crazy! I didn't know of anyone IRL who had matched at their #1. (Granted, we weren't that social with other med school people.)

Anyway, back to the OP. Please don't feel like we're ganging up against you. I think we all started out trying to be a little too positive, and maybe it wasn't realistic, then we wanted to make sure that your DH does in fact match, because we really do care about you. Sometimes we all have lots of opinions we want to share, and it can seem like dog-piling. We don't mean it that way! Please stick around, and keep us updated.

[poky]

Isn't that the truth?... I joined iMSN during intern year, and the year after that, it seemed like all the iMSN MS4s matched at their #1 spots. It was crazy! I didn't know of anyone IRL who had matched at their #1. (Granted, we weren't that social with other med school people.)

Wow, really? It felt like almost EVERYONE we know from med school matched at their #1. There were a few that didn't, but most of them seemed to. We didn't, of course, but we're now glad we didn't. Things do often seem to work out for the best eventually.

[jennschwaz]

Don't worry, y'all, I'm still here. Not going anywhere. I do take all of your advice seriously, even when its with a grain of salt. I know that no disrespect and only support are meant by your advice. And I'm pretty thick-skinned myself (that comes from years of dealing with constant rejection myself, thanks to a "career" in theater, and also from working in the operating room for the last seven years!)

I got to speak with an insider about my husband's situation today (another fringe benefit of working in the same OR doing ENT surgery at a major medical center for 7 years). We can now feel certain that there is absolutely nothing out of order with DH's application. So at least that question is answered. It seems like the most likely reason for his lack of interviews is an across-the-board raising of the Step1 score cutoff for consideration for interviews that programs have had to resort to, thanks to the absolute inundation of applicants this year (my supposition, corroborated by my insider).

The options we're discussing now are applying for a prelim year vs. doing a research year without graduating (meaning he'd technically still be a senior med student during the application process one year from now). We're also talking about the reality that if he doesn't match in ENT this year, his chances of doing so next year are microscopic, so what might he be happy doing instead...maybe gen surg followed with an endocrine fellowship with the goal of becoming a thyroid/parathyroid surgeon. That way he could still be balancing clinical and surgical work while working with the part of the anatomy that he likes best.

Like I said, I'll keep you posted, and when I'm not busy reading parenting books and updating my online baby registry, I promise to visit the other boards in this forum and get more involved.

Thanks sincerely,
Grace

[ladymoreta]

Wow, really? It felt like almost EVERYONE we know from med school matched at their #1. There were a few that didn't, but most of them seemed to. We didn't, of course, but we're now glad we didn't. Things do often seem to work out for the best eventually.

Haha yeah, but now that I think about it, I only knew like 2 other couples, so I guess my view was skewed... We were hoping for somewhere in our top 5 and ended up with #3. (Good thing because our #1 program choice got messed up when a hurricane hit the city. Thankful to have dodged that bullet!)

[alotofyarn]

when I'm not busy reading parenting books and updating my online baby registry

This has SO been me for the last several months. I think I might have been a little obsessed with the registry, and people didn't even buy that much from it! Always looking for good parenting books too! So far I've read Baby Wise, Happiest Baby on the Block, Bradley Method, Baby Bargains and I'm about to start Milk Memos.

[scrub-jay]

This has SO been me for the last several months. I think I might have been a little obsessed with the registry, and people didn't even buy that much from it! Always looking for good parenting books too! So far I've read Baby Wise, Happiest Baby on the Block, Bradley Method, Baby Bargains and I'm about to start Milk Memos.

Milk Memos is what I send new moms who are going back to work and planning on pumping. That book kept me company in the lactation room in my first few weeks back at work after my first was born. While I'm off-topic... We love Penelope Leach's "Your Baby & Child"

To the OP - It sounds like you are on track with contingency plans. May you never need them, but still better to have them.