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[Focused]

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[Mimish]

Almost all applicants at my institution, save two, went unmatched during 2021 and matched gen surg in 2022. ENT has a reputation of wanting a master's degree, whether before or after you get your MD degree, or an impressive research portfolio. Plastics is similar to ENT. Urology is a bit of a black box. So is vascular.

One thing most surg applicants who match the second time around is that they truly work hard to make their applications stand out. They get one-year course-based master degrees, do research and publish. Or they do one or multiple microprograms, research and publish. Our university doesn't make it possible to take an extra year to do rotations. We are on our own to figure out our No-Match Year.

I do not know, however, how accepting programs are of second-time applicants. I personally wouldn't think it would cause any problems, unless there is a glaring red flag on your application that didn't make you match the first time. It's not your fault, per se, there was someone more competitive than you the first time around. I believe that to most programs you would appear as very committed to the specialty if you were willing to take an extra year to improve your application. But take this with a grain of salt, I am not in surgery.