What to do Between Now and Match Day
Written by Lindsey Ulin, MD
Congratulation’s applicants you’ve made it to the final stretch of interview season! Match Day is only about 2 months away, or even sooner for urology and ophthalmology. You may be wondering what can I be doing during this time? Here are some ideas:
Finish up interviews At this point in the season interview and zoom fatigue are common. If you have interviewed at enough programs to match based on input from advisors and previous match data, consider canceling interviews out of fairness to other applicants. If you are going to cancel, please do so as soon as possible. Program coordinators and administrative staff are truly the heroes of interview season!
Reach out to residents
Now that you’ve seen more programs, you may have new questions since your interview day. Us interns and residents really mean it when we say feel free to reach out! We’ve all been where you are currently and want to help you make the best decision for yourself.
Thank your letter writers
Letter writers are invested in your journey and success! An email or handwritten thank you is always appreciated. This doesn’t have to be done immediately but could serve as a check-in once you’ve wrapped up interview season or after matching.
Talk through your rank list with friends, family, and advisors
The team that got you to it will help you through it! Think out loud with your support system.
Attend open houses & info sessions
Will going to these drastically change your rank list? Probably not but it never hurts to gather more information to help you make your decision. Additionally, it may remind you why you were excited about a program and give you another chance to try to gauge vibes- admittedly easier said than done virtually.
Although the program you rank #1 may change as you finish up interview season, it doesn’t hurt to draft a letter of intent with your current top program now. I want to emphasize you should only send one but writing drafts can help inform your thought process. While writing drafts of LOIs to my 1st and 2nd choice programs (knowing I would only send one) I realized it was much easier for me to write the letter to my top choice. This initially was a surprise, but further validated my final decision. Do not worry about receiving a generic reply or no response back. Check out this template to write a letter of intent here!
Plan for Match Day
After submitting your rank list, the outcome of match day feels very much out of your hands. Many of us in healthcare enjoy some degree of planning, preparation, control, etc. It’s impossible to know what March will look like with covid, but there is a good chance match day will be largely virtual again this year. I want to encourage you to plan the parts of match day you can control (with the caveat of maintaining covid precautions). Do you want to find out where you matched from your email inbox, or have a trusted person appointed to print the email out and put it in an envelope? If you do the latter ask someone with a good poker face who will not give it away before you open it! What food and decorations do you want there? Consider making a match day playlist. If you ever needed a reason to get a new outfit, match day certainly is a great one!
Home stretch applicants, you’ve got this!
