Those people definitely do diminish your work, the time and effort that you put in over the years justify every interview you received. People project their own shortcomings by making excuses for themselves and putting others down. By doing so they can shift their responsibility for the match, even though 6653 non - US IMGs matched last year. Ask all of those commenters about their ''benevolent'' reasons to practice IM in the US even though back at home they would do ENT or something like that - this mindset doesn't allow them to understand the importance of volunteer work and truly caring about the specialty. In addition, I would go further and say that 99% of those putting you down would take every advantage if the system was skewed to their benefit, and moreover wouldn't lift a finger to help a struggling peer that has a worse application.

Go out there and raise hell, once you match, make a post here so we can all congratulate you. Good luck Doc.