There will be some tough questions to answer as you begin your
personal selection process. For example, should you go with your
love for a particular area of medicine, or should you seek a
position in a specialty where an IMG has a better chance? There
are no easy answers to these questions. Rather, you should look
realistically at your own competitiveness based on your USMLE
scores, the strength and sources of your letters of
recommendation, how recently you graduated from medical school,
how persistent you can afford to be in pursuing your first choice
field, and how flexible you can be in applying to programs of
different types and geographic locations.
One alternative to switching from a competitive to a less
competitive field is to apply to more than one specialty during
the same match cycle: the specialty of your dreams as well as a
fall-back field in which you might have a higher likelihood of
being matched. However, if this is your plan, you must be very
organized when completing your ERAS application because this will
require you to write two personal statements and may also require
that you assemble two sets of recommendation letters. It is very
easy to misdirect documents in ERAS and thus make embarrassing,
if not fatal, mistakes in terms of sending the wrong documents to
each type of program. You must also be prepared to do double duty
when researching programs. In other words, applying to two
specialties demands nearly twice the work, organization, and
paperwork. If the added demands result in doing a half-way job in
preparing for both sets of applications, this will decrease your
chances for a residency in both specialties. If you do decide to
pursue several specialties during the same match, you should also
be prepared for interviewers to ask if you have done so, and then
have a thoughtful explanation for why you chose to do this. All
programs want residents who are uniquely committed to their
specialty, so once you admit to having applied to more than one,
you may have a more difficult time satisfying their concerns
about which specialty you really want.
