Thank you, Dr. Fisher. Working hard on the steps. It is very informative and helpful to listen to your talk. Well as a IMG who also believes coding and programming as an essential tool, I belive supplemental application materials are also useful to have the whole image. Hope to see you on the otherside. Yiacob T. Kibret Myungsung Medical College, AA, Ethiopia
Our system is broken. One obvious way to solve this is to open up, many, many more residency slots, but that would entail Congress increasing its funding through Medicare substantially along with a cap on the number of programs an applicant can apply to (100, maybe, unless they don't get any interview offers after a certain amount of time, in which case they would be allowed to strategically apply to some more). This would reduce the number of applicants any given program sees so they can more thoroughly evaluate the candidates, who would actually want to go there and offer them an interview. it would also prevent overapplying and hogging by the most competitive students who wouldn't want to go to certain programs, anyway. Another possibility is to do away with residency programs being funded through Medicare in general and force hospitals to pay and compete for medical residents the same way they do for Nurse Practitioners fresh out of school.
There are many differing ideas and schools of thoughts regarding these issues. Thanks for sharing yours. It will be interesting to see how the process evolves!
Dear MAR team, Couldn't find a way to connect to you so commenting here, your videos are amazing, I managed to get 268 on step 1, but 240 on step 2 ck, because I had given step 2 first. I'm in a huge dilemma as to whether to apply for match 2022 or wait for another year as I have no USCE or US LoRs. Although I've been involved in extensive research, including Phase 3 trial of covid-19 vaccine in India and aim for a good IM residency in US. Some of my friends there say, it's a waste of money to apply without any USCE, as hardly any good programs will interview me. Can you provide your valuable input into this matter? Also, can you provide me your email or any other form of contact if that isn't too much trouble for you? With the most sincere regards, Obaid
Hi! You can always reach out to us at support@matcharesident.com =) To answer your question, you can definitely apply to programs without having USCE and US LoRs, but it is true that having these items significantly strengthens your application. If you wanted to apply, we'd suggest focusing mostly on programs that do not require USCE to have the best chances at Matching.
Dr Fischer mentioned that HCAs do not offer visas? From what I found on FREIDA/ residency explorer, they do allow J1 sponsorship through ECFMG, could you please clarify that, thank you.
According to our information, which we get by contacting the programs directly, there are several HCAs that accept the J1 visa. You can find these in your Customized Residency List(s).
Ehhh capping the number of programs everyone can apply to would be helpful for American med grads. It would only hurt programs that can only attract FMGs. That issue is on the programs, not the applicants.
Having low scores and attempts doesn't always mean that the student didn't prepare well for the exam. It's unfortunate that they get filtered out without looking at other portions of the application. These exams are meant for licensing purposes. Basically, your future career goals of becoming a specialist are determined by scores of a multiple-choice exam and not your skills. If you watch motivational videos, they always say never give up, but I guess this saying doesn't apply to the residency application process as you get filtered out in a click of a button due to your scores. Basically, just give up applying to the US residencies if you have low scores or attempts as you are worthless in the eyes of the program directors in my opinion.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. There are many programs that do not have strict score cutoffs and that choose to view applications holistically. For some programs, however, that are very competitive and/or receive a massive volume of applications, there has to be some means of filtering applications. Dr. Fischer is definitely *NOT* saying to give up because of a low score or attempts - you should focus on finding programs with requirements that are aligned with your applicant criteria.
Well I hope to get an interview with Dr.Conrad Fischer some day in future. I like his judgement and perspective on things , he is directly on point always. He is a good mentor in teaching ethics and physiology believe me 😎💥.
