Hello M-0s!

I’m writing this for anyone who goes through what I experienced with the 2026 Match, and to show a real example of that everything will be okay :)

I applied general surgery and didn’t Match, I was absolutely devastated and went through probably the worst month of my entire life until I got a post-match offer for emergency medicine from a program I rotated at during 4th year.

Fast forward to now, almost a month into intern year and I’m the happiest I have ever been. I absolutely love my job, my class is amazing and we’re all friends and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

We can’t see the future and when we’re going through hell that’s all we can focus on. But for anyone who doesn’t match their dream specialty this year just know that the biggest blessing of your life might just be waiting around the corner for you.

Best of luck to everyone :)

Maybe throw in ophtho

(Note that U = Unsatisfactory with LCME standards)

STUDENT TESTIMONY 1:

I’m posting this because I know there are others going through some version of what I’ve been through, and right now we’re all isolated; which I think is exactly the point. They don’t want us to talk to each other.

I won’t name names or get into my own case specifics here. But I want to lay out the patterns I’ve seen and heard about repeatedly, because if it’s happening to enough of us, it stops being “individual circumstances” and starts being something else:

Rules changing after the fact. Requirements and standards applied retroactively, so you find out the goalposts moved only after you’ve already missed them.

A new, retroactive USMLE bar. A bootcamp led by people without USMLE experience, trying to fail you even if you pass the USMLE??? They’re now requiring a score of 76 or higher on 2 NBME and the CBSE self-assessments before they’ll authorize a student to take Step 1 (a threshold being dropped on people who are already deep into the program). And even if they accidentally authorize you to take your exam and you do, they can dismiss you for not following instructions even if you pass. All so you don't ruin their metrics. 

Dismissals that don’t feel like they followed real due process… decisions coming down without the notice, hearing, or appeal you’d expect from a fair process.

A climate of fear. People are afraid to ask questions, afraid to push back, afraid to even compare notes with each other. Also, they are counting on you voluntarily dropping out because once you do you cannot fight them and this injustice.

That last one is the part I keep coming back to. They don’t want us talking to each other, and I believe that’s deliberate. The moment we compare notes and get organized, we stop being isolated individuals who can be worn down one at a time and we become a force they actually have to answer to. I think they’re counting on our frustration and our humiliation to keep us quiet and keep us apart.

And let’s talk about the optics. While all of this is happening, there’s a steady stream of awards and public celebration coming out of the administration (our President’s accolades keep getting announced and amplified). I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the timing. But from where we’re standing, it feels like a smoke screen: keep the spotlight on the trophies and the good news so nobody looks too closely at what students are actually living through. You can celebrate as loudly as you want but it doesn’t change what’s happening to the people in your own classrooms. Which, may we add, is affecting students at all levels. It is not just MS2s studying for their Step but also MS1s with poorly made exams and school without personnel (or willingness) to fix this mess.

Here’s the context that matters: the school is currently fully accredited but on probation with the LCME. That’s not a rumor, it’s posted on SJB’s own website and we were all summoned to meet our dean this past December 4 regarding WHY. Incredible that the bureaucratic mess they have created is overshadowing actually supporting the students who are here and have to put up with all this incompetence. 

They’re counting on us staying silent and separate. Let’s not give them that.

You’re not crazy, and you’re not alone.

STUDENT TESTIMONY 2:

I’m also a current student at San Juan Bautista and completely agree with my classmate. 

In addition:

• The School gave students Neuro without even having a Neuro professor, despite having an entire year to find one and having a hospital next door that specializes in Neuro. Incredible but true. 
• The same occurs with Immunology. The previous (and widely beloved by faculty and students) immunology professor was fired without any valid reason in December after 28 years of teaching at the School. Many months later, no immunology professor has been found. 
• An underlying reason is that the dysfunctional work environment at the School is common knowledge in the medical community, so no one wants to teach there. 
• The Associate Dean of Pre-Clinical Sciences, Wilson Veras, is a tyrannical figure who fires professors without cause and berates faculty and students, creating a climate of fear at the School. He is the person who’s really in charge of first and second year and is running the medical program to the ground. 
• Many students would be surprised if San Juan Bautista gets reaccredited by the respective authorities if things continue in this manner (it is currently ON PROBATION by the LCME). 
• There is a severe lack of transparency at every level; there is simply no accountability or due process and while supposedly there are committees for everything, no one knows who the members of those committees are and faculty are afraid to say when asked. 
• Nothing has been done so far because the upper administration is absent from everyday decisions at the School, leaving Wilson Veras to rule the School alone with his delusions of grandeur. 
• Many will ask why we choose to go public with all of this. It is because many people have tried to warn the respective accreditation authorities, but they only allow complaints if you fully disclose your identity. People have already been fired and dismissed at San Juan Bautista for expressing their opinion, so this puts faculty and students at real risk of retaliation. 
• To prospective students: the School is a mess, go somewhere else. 

This is getting out of control

I just need to vent this out since I can’t tell me family…

I’m a 30 yr old IMG MD graduated 2021, went through 2 years of residency but was not able to finish. Currently working in the US as a registered nurse for a year and a half now. I lost my spark and passion of becoming a doctor (taking the USMLE Step 1 &2) I have all resources to study and have studied everyday but inconsistently. Retention is barely there and my attention span is 3 mins. My family really wants me to take the exam and my husband is rushing me to decide whether to take it or not due to my inconsistency.

It has been mentally tough in the past 4 months of battling with my own internal conflict. I just want to be free.

USDO doing an away rotation in a competitive specialty at a prestigious academic institution. I feel like my application is quite subpar compared to the applicants who typically match at this program. However my application isn’t completely dog shit either. I have a respectable step 2, some extracurriculars and some research. I was shocked I was offered an away in the first place and my sole goal was to secure an LoR. I wasn’t even planning on applying to this program for residency due to being severely limited by the number of signals.

However, the PD pulled me into their office today out of the blue just to tell me my performance has been very impressive thus far and my hard work is not going unnoticed. Now I feel like this is something the PD would say to every visiting student but I have a strange feeling this might be different as they invited me into their office to tell me in person. This could’ve been communicated through an email. Also one of the fellows at this program whom I’ve gotten quite close with told me the PD mentions my name frequently and speaks highly of me. Do y’all think I may actually have a snowballs chance in hell of getting an interview and potentially even matching or should I just brush off the whole interaction as business as usual. I really do love this program after experiencing it for the past 3wks and would gladly rank it #1 if given the opportunity. This program has a history of taking DOs, albeit not a super high number, so I don’t think my application would be auto-rejected.

Entered med school hoping to do ortho, but dropped the idea as an M3, based on some preclinical difficulties, lack of research, and finally after getting a high pass on my first rotation (surgery)

From that point on it felt like things have gone my way a bit more, although nothing crazy. I ended up getting 4 honors and 2 more high passes to end my third year. I also just got my step 2 score back, 265. I do still have a strong mentor in orthopedics from my gap year. No red flags on my app

Unfortunately, I have no research (4 pubs from undergrad, 0 in med school, 0 in orthopedics). Little to no familiarity with my home ortho department as well.

I know I would have to take a research year, but my school had a deadline to request a leave of absence (RY) that has already passed. So it looks like I would have to graduate and then take my research year afterwards or something along those lines, where I would have to crush research in just a few months and try and set up 4-5 aways.

I liked my family medicine rotation as well, and would be happy with a dual-app or SOAP into fam med as a “worst case scenario.”

It feels like my odds are probably around 30% to match given all these obstacles. Feels more and more worth the risk as each day passes. But would like to hear if anyone has advice, has had experience, or heard about something like this before. 

I saw the original video before it went viral that that nick kid posted and then I also saw the video of the person telling him to take it down, and thought it was dramatic and really representative of how boring and uptight medicine can be with how offended this creator got at nicks video.

Because I do social media I think that people don’t allow people to have fun online and if you’re not directly harming patients, or making fun of an actual patient, that people should really lighten up. But then also common sense is that if an attending of the specialty you’re talking about, tells you, you should probably take the video down, you should take the video down.

I’ve had videos I thought are funny, but I realize they’ve been hurtful and so when I’ve gotten any comments about them, I just took them down just to be safe. So when Nick put the video back up. That’s where I kind of lost sympathy for him. Because you already had a major creator tell you it wasn’t a good idea.

Start here about his most recent video:

But we already talked about that, my issue is that he went online now saying that it’s everyone’s fault but his own. And he never took any accountability for his video being wrong, or the fact that people were hurt by it, even if it wasn’t his intention. Intent always does not match impact, and as a creator, but even more so as a doctor, I think that you should recognize that, and I thought that his entire video was him victimizing himself, but never taking accountability for the people he could’ve victimized.

I’m glad he’s in a better mental space, and I hope that he gets a mental help that he needs. But I was hoping for some accountability in the video and seeing a bunch of people that aren’t even in the community or in the space say how we should immediately forgive someone who didn’t just make a single mistake. But double down on his original take, and is now tripling down it’s just interesting to me.

But I’m glad he was not stripped up his medical license lol because I thought that that was dramatic

My school assigns us M4s to "specialty advisors" for the purpose of residency application advising. My specialty advisor, a child psychiatrist, told me to either apply family med only or dual apply if I'm really dead set on ending up in psych. I really want to do child psych, which requires getting into a psych residency first.

I know my application is super weak academically. I have 3 giant-ass red flags, and I'm not confident that I can score well on Step 2. I repeated M1, took a year off between M1 attempts, and failed my first Step 1 attempt. I didn't honor any core rotation, including psychiatry or family med. However, I high passed 5/7 M3 rotations. I'm so fucking proud of myself for high passing surgery even though I cried morning and night because I'm a weakling who couldn't handle the hours. I don't think family med is *bad* or a "backup" specialty for me. I think I'd be ok SOAPing into FM if I didn't match psych.

I want to be a child psychiatrist more than I want to be an FM physician. Apparently the rest of my application is good. I wrote my essays on explaining my extended school time (LOA) and a significant hardship my first M1 year. I wrote a "strong" personal statement. It's just disheartening to hear that I should give up on psych from a psych advisor. His statement about dual applying felt like he was implying that I'll match FM instead of psych even if I dual apply. Idk, I'm just frustrated that I've come this far with a dream only for the dream to be crushed at the very end.

Rebooting this post from 2 years ago, now that everyone and their mothers on Reddit are recently writing up posts on how to score 270s

Emphasis should be on someone you personally know or a friend's friend.

For me, recently went to my friend's wedding, and her hubby's best man apparently scored a 281. He's in fellowship now, so obvi this was several years back. Groom just slipped it out when drunk and hyping him up on the dance floor, but most of the audience were med people so our jaws dropped lol

Just got a 300 on step, top 10 US MD. 7/7 Honors and AOA. Am I cooked? I was thinking about applying anesthesia as a back up if I didn’t get a score good enough for anesthesia. Plz let me know what u think. Thanks.

Hello I hate that I have to post this and I understand my step score isn't the worst, but am genuinely crashing out.

Got my step 2 score today, 245. Was predicting around a 260. USDO, honors on surgery, peds, family, and rural (lol our school has that as a rotation). Step 1 and Level 1 pass first attempt. 2 first name pubs, 7 posters. Solid leadership, volunteering, and we secured a decently sized grant to start an underserved mobile health clinic with my medical school's home university. Have really good rec letters but was told the writers need to be known to the PDs otherwise they don't even read them. I know that might be an exaggeration, but doing my rotations in a small rural hospital it wasn't really something I had control over. Have 3 total gen surg aways and will definitely do my best. Knowing this, just kind of feel lost on how to proceed I know gen surg is within reach but how do I go about getting letters and the connections required to practice in a bigger city? I got a VSLO at a large academic center which im on right now, and 2 more at university based community hospitals. I don't really care about academic vs community based programs, my only preference is to live and work within a large city at a program with a lot of operative opportunities for the residents.

If anyone was in a similar situation or could shed some light on how to proceed to make sure I can still pursue surgery at a program I would be proud to be a part of, I would truly appreciate some advice.

I just wrapped up my first year and despite consistently performing above my class average I feel like I’m not really learning anything. Everything I’ve learned up to this point feels like a bunch of random facts, many of which I forget shortly after exams. I keep telling myself this isn’t when you learn to become a clinician but I still find myself feeling like I’m not getting a big picture understanding of medicine. Looking for any advice from people who have had similar feelings during didactics. Reassurance or advice on how to differently approach the material would be greatly appreciated.

Yup, my job was taken by AI

I just spoke to my school about taking a research year, and they said I would have to withdraw to do that. I was under the impression it would be a formal process or something like a leave, but I was told I would have to completely withdraw. Does that reflect poorly on residency applications even though I'm doing it for something productive and beneficial to my application? How should I go about this? Should I not take the year at all?

Link: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbEbMefBcw-/

Quick Video Summary (Non-biased):

• Nick Baumel posts a response video in which he states he attempted suicide and was hospitalized requiring ICU-level for "cardiogenic shock."
• He states his followers and primary demographic that views his videos are overwhelmingly female (approx. 80%) with a smaller subsection of gay and bisexual males.
  • He states he is an LGBTQ student as well.
• He responds that the physicians that criticized him did not know who he is, who his demographic, nor is identity.
• He says he is heartbroken and this incident "shattered" his identity.
• He actually shows screenshots and an email picture.
  • The screenshot text messages are anonymous but the person texting him claims to be a Mayo physician and the texts appear to have some vague threats of violence but are mostly scribbled out:
    • "Little twink b*tch"
    • "You'd need a doctor you little p*ssy" (after the guy said he would slap Nick B)
• Baumel asks "Did they want me to harm myself. . . what's the point of this?"

There are some specialties that everyone knows are high paying like spine surgery, CT surgery, derm, cardiac EP and others that are relatively lower. However the one specialty I can't really wrap my head around is ophtho where people keep making wild claims one way or the other. Online on SDN/reddit etc early career ophthalmologists say the sky is falling, field has been taken over by PE, private practice groups are demanding massive buy ins with starting salaries in the low 200s, production pressure has never been higher, reimbursement has been slashed to the bone. But IRL, the ophthalmologists at my school seem to be some of the most financially successful academic attendings, on par with the other subspecialty surgeons. I know two kids in my med school class who have ophthalmologist parents and both grew up fabulously wealthy. In theory this tracks because if you can take home the technical fees from owning an ambulatory surgery center you should be able to pull > $1M a year easily. There are online reports of everything from struggling solo PP owners who folded shop after taking home less than $150k profits per year all the way to high volume cataract grinders making 2-3 million. MGMA type data isn't super helpful since it only includes employed physicians and the PP owners don't really report their figures.

What is the reality of ophthalmology? I feel like there is something I'm missing because there is no way this specialty would be so mega competitive if it was actually true that salaries have crashed to $220k and PE has completely taken over.

Rising M4 at a USMD who had a very nontraditional path into med school and who dealt with adversity during med school. I want to give back to students who maybe struggled early on and want a more structured approach to studying as well as give general advice/support/mentorship as well. Dual applying Surgery and EM. Please DM me if interested. I will be checking back in a few weeks to see if anyone is interested.

hi! rising m4 and nyc native and was wondering what the likelihood is for me to match into programs like LIJ-forest hills and nyp-methodist brooklyn for IM? i'm not shooting for Sinai, NYU, Columbia, etc and am ok with more community programs but is there a resource/filter i can use on Residency Explorer to narrow it down?

i know this is the med school subreddit but genuinely feel like i bombed comlex.... i counted around 80 questions right and maybe around 30 wrong so its not looking good considering i cant remember the rest of the exam. i go to a school w a low pass rate, had a low mcat, and was avg in med school... wanted to take step but idk what to do. literally want to sleep for 3 weeks

not sure if i should even attempt step 1 at this point if im not smart enough to pass comlex. this whole thing is just a mind fuck and i start rotations in a couple days and will get pulled off if i dont pass. want to cry lol

Figured this would be a good time for everyone to start sharing their best tips and tricks for the application process. What do you wish you knew before submitting? Any advice on applications or just surviving the whole thing? 🙏🙏🙏

For anesthesia specifically
If so, how many points below?

I’ve vaped all day every day, every second basically, for 6 years. Now that I started medical school, I know it’s not sustainable, bc it affects appetite and diet, so not eating and sleeping in med school will be brutal. However, medical school is fast paced. I’ve dealt with withdrawal symptoms before, and I know I cannot function while studying and doing medical school things with withdrawals. What should I do? Should I wait till after my exam In a couple weeks, then go cold turkey ? What if my next exam’s grade gets affected bc of withdrawals. This may sound silly to a lot of people, but it’s a very serious problem in my life rn. Idk what to do, and I’m at a crossroads