Sharing an inspiring story of an IMG who matched into an IM program with just ONE INTERVIEW. The experience is from an anonymous applicant.
Posting as received:
"Matched with 1 IV!
I know it’s really hard to go through this process again and again and ‘try harder’ is much easier said than done! All I want to do today is let those who didn’t match know and believe that there’s hope. If I can match, so can you!
This was my first cycle so I can’t really say I understand how difficult it is to do this again for the 2nd or 3rd or 4th time. All I know is that even the thought of going through it again used to scare me like crazy. But really all the time I spent stressing over it like a crazy person could have been put to much better use now that I think of it and I insist all of you do the same. It all works out in the end, it really does!
I scored 240 on step 1 and I planned to go for peds or IM. I was doing great on my step 2 CK nbmes and the self-assessment forms on uworld but I ended up with a 218 on the real exam! I felt like I was done and this was it, I wasn’t going to match. Unfortunately the week of my exam I had fallen sick and was on medications and yeah everything just went downhill from there. Finally, I tried to move on, took the CS exam and passed it. I started prepping for the season and felt like nothing was going to worth it all the way from May 2019 to the 16th of March 2020.
I had 4 USCE, am a GC holder, YOG 2018, but no step 3 and no research. Applications went through in September. I applied to 80 IM programs and 30 Peds programs. I waited like crazy, every day, for an Interview. I remember lying curled up in bed with my phone next to me just praying my phone would give me an email notification and it would say you have an interview. All I received were rejections. This went on till the 20th of November. I received my first and only IM interview - a place I had not rotated before nor did I have any contacts. It took place 3 days later. By this time, I’d lost all hope of receiving any interview or matching so I hadn’t even prepared myself for it at all. Anyway, the interview went really well. A lot of ppl told me to be myself, YET handed me a list of questions and answers to ‘practice’. Personally, I felt like that was very weird because how can I be myself if I’m saying things that I haven’t thought about it, things someone else had written down. I went through them but on the day of the interview, I was, in all honesty, being MYSELF. I’m the kind of person who laughs through my conversations, laughs at my own jokes, looks at the person but also looks around, does a lot of eye movement, a lot of hand movements and sometimes sound like I’m a 15-year-old, regardless of who I’m talking to. I couldn’t act like a robot and so I didn’t. The second doctor who interviewed me told me he was really happy to see that I was being very open and jolly. Now I can’t say I did the right thing because I don’t have that sort of experience with multiple interviews, I’m only saying it worked for me. But I don’t see why being yourself in the true sense could ever go wrong.
Anyway, interview season is over and its February and I have to certify my ROL and I’m still devastated, I’m almost certain that things are not going to work out for me. Waiting till the 16th of march was the most impossible thing I’ve ever been through.
On the 16th, I couldn’t believe I had matched! With just one interview, just one program in my ROL! It’s possible guys, it’s so very possible to match with the scores I had, to match with 1 interview, to match without research! All these red flags that kept haunting me for so long!
So please please please believe everyone when they say dont lose hope, miracles happen and things work out in the end! Dont compare yourselves to others, dont think you can match if you only have certain number of interviews or 260s on the steps or whatever the stats say! You’re much more than all of that! God bless and stay safe!"