Saturday, September 9, 2017

Selecting a program to apply to PART 3

This is the method that I myself used in applying to programs. I am not saying that this is the best way to select programs to apply to, however I had certain restrictions; I'm not made of money, loool. My goal was to find programs whose criteria I met.  Below are the steps that I followed:

1) got a list on matcharesident that was based on my scores
2) I looked through all of these and picked only the programs that had about 50% imgs in their program
3) took a list of all the programs that are in my state and added it to the list from matcharesident
4) After that I went to the website of each of these programs and combed through the information there. Most programs list what they are looking for. I made sure I fit their criteria. I had a CS failure so all the programs that insisted on having a one time pass I took them off my list, unless I had a specific reason to still apply and try my luck.

At the end of these steps, while my goal was to apply to 200 programs, I found only 130 that passed my filters. I applied and the rest is history.

The end goal of applying is to match so use the best method that in your opinion will put your application in front of programs that will like you AND you will like. Plan out how you will apply, do not just pick randomly. Of the three methods -1) applying to every program in your specialty, 2) applying to programs that alumni from your school matched in, 3) using the filters I mentioned- none of them are right or wrong. Pick the one that suits you best.

Selecting the right programs to apply to PART 2

Are you ready for ways to select programs to apply to number 2. The first method is one that I mentioned in the prior post. The second method is one that another friend used. He was able to get a decent amount of interviews that way.

The method he applied to places that graduates from my school applied to. The wonderful thing about our school in particular is that they keep a record or list of places that the schools graduates matched into. He combed through those records and selected some to apply to.

The good things about this method is that he got a lot of interviews. Now, it could also be linked to not having a single failure on his step exams on his record so take it with a grain of salt. Secondly, he saved money since he did not apply to every program in his specialty. Applying to about 200 programs means you will spend about 5000$. Imagine family medicine has upwards of 400 programs and you want to apply to all of them. Lastly, if you know the person that matched into the program they could put in a good word for you.

The cons of this method is you are limited to places where your fellow graduates matched into. You might miss out on places where you might be a good fit. Also, its tedious going through program by program.