Waiting for Match Day

March 1st is here and I'm a combination of excited to find out where I'll be training for OB/GYN residency and nervous about the unknown. There's still a little over 2 weeks before Match Day so in the meantime I'm trying to sit back and enjoy my relaxed schedule.

For those who don't know how the residency application process/match works (ahem me during the first two years of medical school), here's a quick little breakdown. In June, July and August, all 4th-year medical students put together an application to residency programs through the ERAS (Electronic Residency Application Service). Applications are due on September 15th* which is when residency programs can begin reviewing applications. An additional component of the application is completed by the student's medical school and uploaded to ERAS on October 1st. Interview offers are sent anywhere from September 15th*-early January (but the vast majority are sent in October with some specialty specific exceptions). Late October - early January is known as interview season. It's common to go on 12 interviews, but lots of people go on 15 or more. Once interviews are over, we have to decide how to rank the programs we interviewed at in order of most desirable to least desirable based on many different factors. We're given lots of time to decide, and our final list was due on February 22*. Residency programs submit their own lists ranking all of the candidates that they interviewed and then submit them to the same place we submit ours, the NRMP (National Residency Matching Program). Both sets of lists are submitted by or before February 22nd*. A computer program uses both lists to assign applicants to residency programs. Applicants find out if they matched on March 13th*, but don't find out where they matched until March 17th*. So from February 22nd - March 17th* is largely a month of just waiting.

So here I am waiting to find out what program I'll train at for four years, what city my husband and I will live in for 4 years, waiting to see if I'll be close to family or far away, wondering if we'll buy a house or rent an apartment, wondering if our new home will have cold and snowy winters, hot summers or be somewhere in between. It's a unique position to be in and makes you realize your complete lack of control at this point in the process. Sure, you chose where to apply and how to rank the programs, but nothing is a sure thing at this point. I could match anywhere in my list and I won't know until Match Day. So I'm accepting that March 17th* will be a life-changing surprise and trying to embrace the uncertainty that my future holds.

*Dates are specific to this year's Match

Oh and here's a link for the NRMP's video on how the Match algorithm works for anybody interested: http://www.nrmp.org/match-a-to-z/video-tutorials/about-the-matching-algorithm-tutorial/