The 4th Year Episode #2

Confused about 4th year? This episode is for you!

On this podcast, we usually probe practicing physicians with questions about their specialty, how they chose it, and for advice about long-term career planning. However, for this episode we’re going to do something a little different. The topic of today’s show is not about a specialty, but rather about the 4th year of medical school, that final year through which we all must pass en route to residency.

In fact, the goal of today’s episode is to cover all the ins and outs of what you’re supposed to do during 4th year, when you’re suppose to do it, how you’re supposed to do it, and in some cases why you might do it one way versus another. And the crew here to tell us all about it is a group 4th students, Roy Swanson (ophthalmology), Marco Swanson (plastic surgery), and Dana Canfield (obstetrics and gynecology), who have just successfully navigated the Match and have a job waiting for them come July 1st!

This is a wide ranging conversation that starts at the end of 3rd year and takes the listener through the completion of 4th year. A complete list of discussion topics for this episode can be found here, but includes:

Introductions [2:44]
Start 4th year discussion [15:32]
Acting internships (+ away rotations) [26:01]
Away rotations [1:04:25]
Visiting Student Application Service (VSAS) –> now the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) [1:12:47]
Letters of recommendation [1:15:05]
Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) and personal statements [1:38:00]
The Step 2s (Clinical Knowledge and Clinical Skills) [2:02:24]
Residency interviews [2:34:20]
The rank list and the Matching algorithm [3:07:35]
The Match and Match week [3:24:49]
Supplemental Offer of Acceptance Program (SOAP) aka “the scramble” [3:26:40]
Life post-Match [3:33:49]
Final comments from the gang [3:43:37]

Special thank you to Katie Bedard, MD; Alice Yu, MD; Gary Parizher, MD; Kelly Manger, MD; and Karishma Habbu, MD for their help in formulating the discussion topics.

And an extra special thank you to Kristol Das, MD for sitting patiently through a dry run of the interview to identify missing topics and to make sure the 4th Year Episode would flow properly 🙂

Please enjoy with Roy, Marco, and Dana!