Question about matching

[songofdovely]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm currently a first year medical student. Over the past few weeks I have noticed a lot of people getting heavily involved in student government, clubs, and other sorts of leadership opportunities such as being class reps for certain courses. My question is quite simple and is intended for those in upper years of med school or are currently in their residency.

 

How important are positions like these when it comes to matching? I was always under the impression that the bulk of your competitiveness came from your LOR's, publications, and establishing good relationships with people in the field. What exactly is used to determine whether or not you "match"?

 

Thanks,

[Lactic Folly]

Not necessary. Do allow you to demonstrate interest / leadership / make connections, but you can achieve these through other means as well.

[idiopathic]

Don't stress about it. My take is that it's that type A personality + a little mob mentality of everyone getting involved, that makes people even more involved. None if it is 'necessary' by any means, but it's always a good idea at the end of the day to have other things going on for you outside of school, whether that's in the form of these clubs, sports, personal things, etc.

As people likely told you prior to getting into medical school, just do what you love, and what love what you do. I think that holds even more strongly now that there's no "points" attached to you doing specific activities.

Lastly, you'll probably hear this from residents as you meet them through your training, but this is wise advice a resident had told me: To match, you want the people in the program to *want* to work with you for the many years to come. After all, you'll be their colleagues and you guys will have to depend on each other. How you want to do that is up to you.

[songofdovely]

Thanks for the great responses everyone!

 

That's what I figured. I'm pretty heavily involved in a lot of other things and I already have about 3 publications.

 

I just didn't know if I was missing something here since there was such a huge response in my class to take part in all the student government stuff.

 

I don't know exactly what I want to do, but I do want to make sure that I have the option of aiming for one of these specialties if I find out I do fall in love with it later on in my schooling.

 

Thanks again!