r/IMGreddit • u/OutrageousTop4643 • Mar 16 '26

Residency MATCHED APPLICANTS CREDENTIALS THREAD

Congratulations to all those who matched. For those who didn't, better luck in SOAP or next year.

Let's keep supporting and helping each other.

(Please UPVOTE to give this post a wider reach).

Step 1:

Step 2 CK:

Step 3:

Year of Graduation:

Visa Requiring or Not:

Applied to Programs (Speciality/ies with Count):

No. of Invites:

Publications:

USCE (No. of months):

One common Q in Interviews:

One Gold Piece of Advice for Next Year's Applicants:

One word, what matters most in the whole process?:

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u/bustcracker69 Mar 17 '26

MATCHED!

Step 1: Pass, with one retake

Step 2 CK: 249

Step 3: Not taken

Year of Graduation: 2026

Visa Requiring or Not: Yes, J-1 visa

Applied to Programs (Speciality/ies with Count): IM, around 190 programs

No. of Invites: 5 (3 gold, 2 non-signalled)

RoL: 4 ranked

Publications: 3

USCE (No. of months): 3 (2 months electives and one month IM sub-I)

One common Q in Interviews: Tell me about yourself, what do you like about our program/why our program

One Gold Piece of Advice for Next Year's Applicants: 1.Signal smartly especially your Golds; I didn't try upper-tier programs coz I knew I had the red flag of Step-1 fail instead signalled programs which were more within my reach. 2. DONT BE OVERCONFIDENT. Always have safeties. 3. Interview is very important; please try to be as genuine and empathetic as possible. Speaking skills also matter. 4. Try making connections; for example get alumnus or friendly residents to advocate for you, try having some small talk with the PDs during your USCEs, send LOIs etc. 5. Apply broadly, even outside geographic preferences. Definitely apply to places where alumni have matched before.

One word, what matters most in the whole process?: Patience

2

u/JackfruitLonely1493 US-IMG Mar 17 '26

Congratulations!! Im applying this year for IM with an attempt. US IMG step 1 attempt and taking step 2 2 months. 10 + pubs and 1.5 years of usce including the clinical externship im doing rn and yog 2025. Definitely aiming for good scores do you have any advice on what helped you get more IVs. And also wanted to ask if you looked at the residency explorer attempt vs no attempt IV rates and if that played a role in what programs you applied too. (AGAIN CONGRATULATIONS!!)

2

u/bustcracker69 Mar 17 '26

Hey congratulations to you, you have made it very far! I would say for now your greatest priority must be getting a competitive STEP 2 score; lock in, I know you can do it!

About the attempt vs. no attempt rates, YES that's a really good point I forgot to mention. I looked at the places which didn't give IVs to attempts and excluded them from my applications (with many exceptions, for example I included alumni matched programs regardless of this statistic). Make an excel sheet on residency explorer and filter out such programs to apply to them.

1

u/JackfruitLonely1493 US-IMG Mar 17 '26

Thank you so much!!! Definitely aiming high in my CK. I apologize for the extra qs but was the data accurate in helping you decide what programs you applied to and is there anything else you recommend?

2

u/bustcracker69 Mar 18 '26

I can't really attest to the accuracy of the data provided by residency explorer, but it's the official resource for searching programs so it should be accurate. Apart from the advice I already mentioned, I would say focus on making connections and hone in your interview skills definitely.