First interview...I think....Maybe...!

I finally finished my applications!!! I submitted the derm ones Saturday night, and the IM/Prelim ones Sunday night, and I already got a response from the Medical College of Georgia (for a prelim spot), that I needed to get all of my forms in ASAP, as I "look like a very strong candidate" and interview spots are filling fast." So I am guessing that means that when they get around to downloading all my documents from the ERAS post office, they'll give me an interview!?!?

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This is so exciting/stressful! You can literally watch on ERAS (the national website through which we apply to residencies) to see which programs have downloaded your documents (letters of recommendation, USMLE scores, etc.), and then you know they have everything they need to decide whether to give you an interview or not! Right now it's mostly just IM/Prelim programs that are downloading info...Out of the 63 derm programs I've applied to, only a couple have started to download things.

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I should explain: derm is a 3-year residency program, that you start after you do either a Preliminary Year in Internal Medicine (aka internship, the first year of residency), or a Transitional Year (which is just like a Prelim year except it isn't strictly dedicated to IM - you'd still do a month of Peds and a month of OB, and this is widely regarded as the easier way to go - less call, less ICU months....). So if you're applying for derm, you apply right now for a Prelim spot for next year, and a derm spot the year after that. And since I'm sort of an iffy derm candidate at best, I'm applying to IM programs (3 years) as a backup. You can also just go to your prelim program if you don't match in derm and hope that a second-year IM spot opens up in the meantime, which is fairly common. So now you all know just about as much as I do about the whole derm match process!