I suspect we've all heard of it, "Match Day," the day when, precisely at 12 noon on the third Friday of March, med school graduates all across the country all
open their letters at the same time, letters telling them where their residency destinations will be.
That's the way the notification system works.
More on the system (from Wikipedia):
" ... programs (such as hospitals) review applications (the med school grads) and invite selected candidates for interviews held between October and February. After the interview period is over, applicants submit to the NRMP (National Resident Matching Program) a "rank-order list" of programs where they wish to train. Similarly, residency programs (the hospitals) submit a rank order list of applicants they prefer to train."
"(Match Day) is on the third Friday of March each year."
"On the Monday prior to Match Day for the Main Residency Match, applicants find out from the NRMP if (but not where) they matched. Applicants who match to a training position must wait until the Match Day on Friday to learn the location of that position. Applicants who do not match to a training position in the Main Residency Match may be eligible to obtain an unfilled position through the Match Week Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program that concludes on Thursday, the day prior to Match Day." And from a website:
"An M.D. degree is a wonderful thing. Before anyone will let you treat patients on your own, however, you have to go for more training to become the specific kind of doctor you want to be. It’s called residency training ..."
"The nonprofit National Resident Matching Program combines all the ranked lists of about 34,000 soon-to-graduate medical students (and recent grads), and all the (openings of the) directors of the programs that have about 30,000 residency spots open in any given year ... It’s so complicated, and so well-designed, that the researchers who came up with the concept got the Nobel Prize in Economics."
" ... medical schools get to download top-secret lists of which students matched to which residency program. They print out a letter for each student. Each letter goes into a sealed envelope which cannot be opened until noon on Match Day."
"Students all over the U.S. (and from overseas who want to come to the U.S.) open their envelopes at the same time ... Tens of thousands of young doctors find out their fate at the same time."
"There are exceptions: students who want to become urologists or ophthalmologists or pursue a career as a military physician use a different process and find out their residency match in the winter." (The reason for this, according to one website I consulted, is because " ... two specialties, ophthalmology and urology hold an “early” match ... (because) .... these are also some of the most competitive residency specialties and the hardest to get into").
"Some students who don’t match into any of their chosen programs have to try to match again after the initial matching is over. Most will find a spot in a program that has slots still open even after initial process. It’s not ideal, but they’ll still be able to start residency with their classmates."
"As soon as you find out your "doctor destiny," it’s time to figure out where you’re going to live in your new city. Residency positions start in June or July, and Match Day happens in March. It’s a fast turnaround, but hospitals help guide their new residents through it."
"Depending on what specialty students choose, it could be three to seven years before they are through with training and can practice medicine on their own. Or even longer."So that's the process, how recent med school grads make their ways into a residency program somewhere. It sort of is similar to going to a job interview, and then waiting to hear back whether it was successful or not. Except that here the new doctor goes to several possible new jobs (hospitals, clinics, etc.) to interview, and a computer gets involved with ranking and comparing everybody's preferences, including the institution's, and "hooking up" future resident A with hospital B.
I suspect that most, or maybe even all of us, at some point or another in our lives, have been in a position like these med students. That is, filled with the high stress of awaiting a decision, perhaps one also in letter form, to be delivered to us the next day, and one that will dramatically impact our lives. Oh my, the stress of that evening before, preceding the revelation to be made at noon the next day!
But eventually the letter is
opened, and the stress ends, and for many there are joyous moments (medical graduates
opening "the letter," and hopefully finding out that they are going to where they wanted to go!)
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=medical+match+day+site%3awww.youtube.com&docid=13911501801277&mid=de6f826174c876327cd3de6f826174c876327cd3&view=detail&form=vire