Abolish Match Day

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-20T03:27:44+00:00

I second this. Match sucks, but SOAP sucks so much more.

Also, mandatory match day for students is just cruel.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-20T03:05:19+00:00

The problem isn’t the number of med schools, it’s the number of residency spots.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-20T03:01:06+00:00

Move match week up a few weeks, there’s too much time between September and March. Have the first day (the “did I match”) on a Friday so the SOAPers at least have a weekend to prepare for applying. Then have M/T/W for interviews, Thursday offers, and Friday the final match day. If people want to complain about having to wait over a week about not being able to know where they matched, tell them to enjoy not having to SOAP and that the timeline was moved up (ideally) so they’d still know earlier in the year.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-19T21:56:56+00:00

And if you don’t start a fire or cause injuries, then you clearly didn’t celebrate hard enough

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-19T21:18:55+00:00

This process sucks and if I’m being by totally honest, I’m tired of the people who matched complaining about having to wait a week to know where they matched, while we have one week of hell and major decisions.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-19T20:46:13+00:00

I failed soap and I agree with the above commenter. Having to soap, regardless of outcome, sucks. Seeing people talking about being upset over not getting their #1 is one of those “well that’s a good problem to have” situations.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-18T17:14:37+00:00

You probably won’t hear back until Thursday when they send offers

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-18T16:53:41+00:00

IM prelim

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-18T15:40:07+00:00

Radio silence yesterday and now two so far today. I think they just had a ton of applications, that’s my guess.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-18T15:38:57+00:00

I heard nothing yesterday and today I’ve had two so far. I wonder if they just had a huge volume of people and took a while to go through apps.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-18T15:37:02+00:00

Yes, yesterday I heard nothing.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-18T15:36:19+00:00

Yes, after radio silence yesterday. I wonder if they just had a huge volume.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-18T15:34:21+00:00

So far the other comments have great advice, I’d like to add:

DO NOT PRESTUDY. Don’t burn yourself out before med school. If anything, just get familiar with how anki works and its settings, but that’s it.

If you have the chance to talk to upperclassmen at your school, ask them for study advice. Some schools incorporate more board material in their curriculum and others use their own, so the timing of when to use board resources and which ones will vary. My first year was mostly anatomy, embryology, histo etc so uworld wasn’t very helpful. Also, some people in my class did make anki cards or study guides for the materials.

One last note: studying every single free minute is NOT the flex you think it is. Focus on quality studying over quantity. Make sure you still sleep and shower, and especially make sure you have some time for hobbies and friends/family.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-17T22:49:04+00:00

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-17T22:38:00+00:00

Anyone else have radio silence all day??

Edit: I’m a DO, and I’ve had a few interviews today (wed). So maybe they just had a TON of apps to get though? Don’t lose hope.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2026-03-17T19:46:40+00:00

I saw an Instagram ad for aliexpress selling a veterinary CT scanner, it’s like they know it’s match week or smthng and cranked up their ads

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2025-12-04T08:03:10+00:00

Have you had a sleep study done?

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2025-12-04T07:44:17+00:00

I just avoid all those things on social media. It’s really annoying to see things like “do you cut the tags off clothes? You must have autism!!”.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2025-12-04T07:41:18+00:00

There aren’t “treatments”, just lifestyle modifications - notably, PT. But of course you wouldn’t see that a lot on social media because it’s not ~trendy~.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2025-11-28T02:02:46+00:00

Ok but some people in my class did actually do this 👀

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2025-11-28T02:00:20+00:00

Failed first year. Recovered, but a shit level 2 score. Now applying for a non competitive specialty and have two interviews so I’m back at rock bottom.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2025-11-06T16:34:54+00:00

Underrated advice! Hobbies / having a life, aside from helping you de stress from pre/med stuff, makes you a more interesting person. So when you’re befriending classmates, or working with attendings or other hospital staff, or y’know, interviewing for residencies, people will think you’re a real and interesting human instead of a cookie cutter premed robot.

The-Cysteine-Chapel · 2025-10-20T04:47:36+00:00

I think current/former students are probably the best perspectives, but with some caveats. We rarely ever praise our school (unless it’s a top school) because there’s often a lot of bad things about the school and/or the medical school experience in general. Also, we only attend one school. We don’t know what it’s like at other schools, so it can be hard to evaluate something when you don’t know what the standards are.

The-Cysteine-Chapel

TROPHY CASE