This post was submitted to our team from a current MS-4 and MatchPal mentee. The contents of this post were unaltered from the original submission other than for grammar and formatting.
I’m still processing it, honestly — so bear with me.
I matched into anesthesia as a DO student — and as a first-generation physician — at a school where the moment you say “Anesthesia” in an advising appointment, the energy in the room shifts. Suddenly everyone is very interested in talking about backup plans.
For context: I’m from an East Coast DO school. I scored 550–600 on Level 2, 240–250 on Step 2, honored three clerkships, and completed three away rotations.
I want to write this out because the post I needed doesn’t exist. Maybe this becomes that for someone else.
My in-house advisor is not a bad person.
I want to be clear about that.
But every conversation we had about anesthesia essentially went nowhere — not because she didn’t care, but because she genuinely didn’t have the information. Her advice was some variation of “Make sure your Step scores are solid” and “Try to get an away rotation,” which like, okay, sure — but I needed someone to tell me how. The actual mechanics of it.
Our career advising office had one person. One. For a class of 200+ students, across all specialties. She was doing her best and still couldn’t give me anything specific to DO applicants going into competitive fields. I left every meeting feeling more lost than when I walked in.
I spent months just spinning — reading Reddit threads, cold-emailing attendings (most of whom never responded), trying to reverse-engineer what a strong application even looked like with basically no frame of reference.
An upperclassman and current PGY-1 from my school told me she had worked with an anesthesia mentor at MatchPal during her application cycle.
I was skeptical — and, honestly, a little embarrassed. Shouldn’t I be able to figure this out myself? But I was running out of time and running out of ideas, so I reached out toward the end of MS3 based on her recommendation.
Here’s what the process from the end of MS3 to Match Day looked like:
Personal Statement
Working on the personal statement was humbling. I had a rough draft I was honestly kind of proud of, and the feedback was essentially: “This is technically fine — and it sounds like thirty other personal statements.”
We went back and forth on that document significantly, which pushed me to dig into things I’d been glossing over. What came out the other side actually sounded like me. That matters more than I realized going in. The statement we submitted was substantially different from my first draft — and it came up in nearly every single interview.
VSLO
My understanding of away rotations was completely off. I didn’t understand how they factor into how programs think about you, or how to sequence them in a way that made sense for my specific situation. Having someone explain the logic clearly saved me from some genuinely bad decisions I was about to make.
Unfortunately, I had already applied by the time I received that guidance, and I wish I could have done some things differently — but it worked out in the end.
ERAS
I thought I could handle ERAS alone, and mostly I could — but there’s a real difference between filling everything out correctly and having your application read cohesively across all the pieces. We caught a few things that were technically fine but were inadvertently undermining each other in ways I never would have noticed on my own.
Also — especially for fields like anesthesia and the surgical subspecialties that MS3 students rarely get significant exposure to how to perform on away rotations and communicate with program directors and faculty was something I had no preparation for. This is a massive gap that medical school simply doesn’t cover, and I’m deeply grateful I had it addressed before my first away. That includes things like:
- How and when to ask for letters of recommendation
- Setting up meetings with program directors and attendings
- How to interact with residents and express interest in a program authentically
- What clinical material you need to know so you don’t look unprepared when you inevitably get pimped
Interview Preparation
Interview prep is probably what I’m most grateful for. The mock interview feedback was uncomfortable — because it was accurate. Apparently I have a habit of over-explaining when I’m nervous, going longer than necessary, and not weaving in the “why me” throughout my answers. I would have walked into real interviews doing exactly that and never understood why it wasn’t landing.
By the time actual interview season came, I felt like I had already done this before. Most of my interviews went very smoothly.
I want to make it clear:
Advising didn’t get me interviews.
My application did.
It’s not magic, and it does not replace the hard work you need to do on your end, especially to match into competitive specialties.
What it did do was stop me from leaving interviews and faculty impressions on the table through fixable mistakes I would have never seen myself.
People either give outside advising too much credit or not enough. The reality is that it’s extremely valuable to have someone who knows what they’re looking at tell you what’s wrong before programs see it — and to fill you in on the small things that, taken together, add up to significant lifts in your confidence and how well you navigate the overall process.
If You’re a DO Going into Something Competitive:
If your school isn’t giving you real, specific guidance — that is not a you problem. The gap is real. I’ve talked to enough people now to know it isn’t just my school.
Figure out where your actual support structure is coming from before you need it — not after you’re already behind. Whether that’s a formal advising service through MatchPal or sustained, high-quality mentorship from residents and attendings in your desired specialty (if you have that available), it makes everything about this often murky process clearer and easier to navigate with confidence.
To any MS3 reading this: start early, equip yourself with knowledge, be relentless despite adversity, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Those four things will carry you further than almost anything else.
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This story was shared by a MatchPal student who matched into anesthesiology as a DO applicant.
Names and identifying details have been kept private at the author’s request.
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