It may seem surreal, but you’ve made it to one of the final hurdles on your journey to becoming a doctor. Acceptance and rejection no longer define the application process. Instead, the residency application process is about matching and not matching. While you still have a lengthy, time-consuming process ahead of you, you should take solace in the fact that, no matter what, you’ll almost certainly end up somewhere that will take you one step closer to that M.D. suffix.

Applying to residencies is not unlike the med school application process. You’ll send letters of recommendation along with your CV and a personal statement. Your medical school will send along your transcripts, your Medical School Performance Evaluations (MSPEs), and your licensing exam grades. 

If you’re a student reading this early on in your med school career, be sure to begin identifying the specialties that interest you and consider performing research in those subfields. Many of the more competitive specialties require a deep level of engagement with the subdiscipline. 

If you’re a med student reading this later on in your med school career, make sure that the specialty (or specialties) you’re planning to apply to reflect your research background and interests. The content of your CV should align with that of the personal statement and the specialties to which you're applying. Considering these components together enables you to cinch all the application components together. 

The application usually opens on September 1, and since applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, it’s best to get your application as close to this date as possible. In late fall/early winter, you’ll also begin interviewing with different programs.

Interview season follows a similar structure to that of the medical school application process, but since this is a matching process, this interview season is as much an opportunity for you to get to know the residency programs that interest you as much as it is an opportunity for residency programs to evaluate your capability. 

Once you’ve completed the interview process, you’ll submit your rank order list, which is an ordered list of the residency programs that most appeal to you. If you have a significant other, there’s also a couples ranking system, which you can find out more about in the resources below.

Concurrently, schools you’ve interviewed with will also begin ranking you. The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), which runs the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) will run algorithms to try to place you with your highest-ranked programs. In early March, you’ll find out on a Monday if you’ve been matched with one of your ranked programs (but not which one). 

If you haven’t been matched, and you’re applying for a particularly competitive field like plastic surgery, you may opt to take a year interning and researching for a plastic surgeon, giving you a leg up in next year’s ranking system. 

You can also take part in the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP), colloquially called The Scramble, where you spend the next four days interviewing and applying to programs that still have open spots. That Friday, everyone will receive notification of which programs they matched with, and hopefully you’ll have some time to celebrate.

The process is lengthy but should mentally be a bit easier than applying to medical school since you probably have taken advantage of the resources that medical school provides to really refine the areas in which you want to become an expert.