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due to various reasons i am kinda late - scheduled for Step 1 this june the 7th - but want to extend it a bit to feel safer. I plan Step 2 in Mid Sept. and then CS in Nov - dec. I wanna know what are the risks here - i am a novice with this and want to know if Pre-match is completely scrapped or is still done? Will I be terribly late for 2005 mactch?
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please tell me ASAP if I am late
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duckie
no. if you pass all exams, you will be in time for the 2005.
Again, please read my posts titled "for the 2005 match" in the beginning of april on this forum.
Prematch isnt a different pathway, its all through ERAS.
just that you may be offered a prematch on interview day.....
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Thanks for the reply - I was wondering that if prematches were to officially scrapped in 2004 - why is the concept still around ....
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duckie
i dont believe its official, and i dont think its the most ethical of things.
in some institutions they are doing it openly, and offering pre matches openly still, in others they secretly ask a candidate if they want to go for a prematch at the end of the interview.
I was offered pre matches too, but I never took any up. I dont like the idea.....and i dont support it.
I feel that one gets the wrong impression about the number of seats available for the match- i mean if a program has 11 seats, and 6 people have already pre matched, you have no way of knowing....and your chances of matching there are slimmer (if you are not one of those candidates offered a pre match). I even went to the extent of asking a couple of Program Directors how many seats they were going to give up in the pre match--- a couple of PDs went pale! One said " i am not gonna offer you one- i said " i dont want one".....and others offered me pre match without me asking or even referring to the topic.
One Pro Director told me why he fills half his seats every year with a pre match  (by the way , only FMGs are offered prematched- US grads are not. Its not allowed for them..... and they are pretty bitter about it if they have to compete with FMGs)---- he said that he has mostly FMGs , and with their visa processing, SSN processing etc, all these things- its nearly inevitable that they join late, and he needds at least half the team there on time ready to work at the beginning of the session.....
He's not wrong either, but i just chose to take my chances with the match.....
an American grad told me that if anyone talked about a prematch to a candidate, they could be liable to some sort of punishment by the NRMP. I was surprised, cos i heard nearly all FMGs talking about it freely, and as i said, i had open discussions with certain PDs on the topic.
