In the real world, when you graduate from school, you have the freedom to go apply and interview for a job in your field. Now you may or may not get that job, but that's ok because you can just apply for another one if you don't. In the med school world this practice is thrown out the window. Most people are under the assumption that once you graduate med school, you simply apply for a job at a hospital or a practice and POOF! You're a doctor! Well, allow me to elaborate on what med students have to really go through.
After four years of undergraduate education and four years of medical school... you then have to go into residency. You'd think that after eight years of torturous biochemistry, pathophysiology, and gross anatomy, along with two years of clinical learning, that you've earned enough street cred to just go practice medicine. Well, technically as a resident you are a doctor, but I liken it to a "doctor with training wheels". And exactly how long you have to wear those training wheels depends on which specialty you go into. I'm going into Family Medicine, which requires a 3 year residency.
Now applying for residency is the tricky part. There's this big online application program called ERAS (electronic residency application service), and you HAVE to apply to residencies through this and only this (which costs $ of course). So you upload your transcripts and your CV and you write a personal statement about how awesome you are. All of this is compiled into your application. You then pick a list of residency programs to apply to. I applied to 12. Then ERAS sends all your info to these programs, at which point they decide whether they like you enough on paper to invite you for an interview. Please refer to my previous post: Hi, My Name is Maria. I want to be a Resident at your Program! on what that's like!
After interviews are all said and done is where the tricky part comes along. Programs can't just call you and say, "Congratulations! You got the job." Instead, you have to enroll in THE MATCH ("The Match" will remain capitalized from here on because when I say those words, I would like to have that "dun dun dun...." connotation with it. That's how serious it is.). It's another service, which of course costs more money, in which you have to submit a Rank Order List. A Rank Order List (ROL) is a list of the residency programs you'd like to attend in descending order of likeness. At the same time each residency program submits a list of their own, which includes the medical students they've interviewed in the order in which they like them. Then comes match day, which this year is March 16th. Some big magical mystical computer system goes through your ROL and the residency programs lists and matches students up based on how each have ranked each other. So if I'm lucky enough that the number one program on my list, ranked me high enough, then I will likely get matched to that program. If not, then it goes to my number two, then number three. So on and so forth. If for some reason, which there are many, that you do not match with a program then you have to "scramble". To scramble means that you have to call programs that may still have an opening and hope that they like your credentials enough to give you a spot. This is every fourth year medical students worst nightmare.
The morning of THE MATCH you will receive an email or a letter from your school, which states where you have matched. Whether you matched at your number one choice or your number 10 choice, you are contractually obligated to fulfill your residency at that program. So it's really important to only rank programs you know you will be happy at. The residency director usually calls you and congratulates you, and then you can breath a giant sigh of relief knowing that you will have a job after almost a decade of schooling. Most coincidentally, THE MATCH falls right before St. Patty's day this year, which means that my celebration will continue throughout the weekend (or I'll be drowning my sorrows in pints of green beer if the unthinkable happened and I did not match).
When I tried to explain this whole process to my family, they looked at me quite puzzled. "So.... It's like the NFL draft?" they said. Well, kind of... minus the whole giant televised event where someone's up at a podium and goes, "The New England Patriots in the first round of the 2012 draft choose Maria Boylan!" And I walk up and put on a white coat and the residency director shakes my hand and we freeze and pose for a picture. And then I cry like Tom Brady did when he was drafted. Ok, not exactly like that. There's no big event, and you don't get a jersey and a million dollar contract. But I imagine the feeling is just the same. 
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