What happens when you do everything “right” in medical school and still don’t match into residency?

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, sits down with Dr. Sijia Zhang, a PGY-2 psychiatry resident at UCSF, to talk about one of the most painful and stigmatized experiences in medical training: going unmatched.

Sijia entered the Match with strong clinical grades, extensive research experience, and reassurance from advisors that the question was not whether she would match, but where. Then Match Week arrived, and she received the email telling her she had not matched into any position.

She shares what happened next, from the shame and shock of Match Day to navigating SOAP, institutional pressure to secure any available residency position, and the mentor who gave her a completely different piece of advice: if she had been selective about college and medical school, why should she suddenly stop being selective about residency?

Instead, Sijia took additional time, rebuilt her application around psychiatry, pursued research and away rotations, found mentors who believed in her, and gradually rebuilt the confidence she thought she had lost forever. She ultimately matched into psychiatry at UCSF.

Frances Mei also shares her own experience of not matching and SOAPing into ENT, and together they discuss failure, shame, mentorship, the hidden curriculum of medicine, and why a professional setback does not necessarily mean what we immediately assume it means about us.

In this episode:

• What it feels like to go unmatched in residency

• Why strong medical students still sometimes do not match

• The emotional aftermath of Match Day

• How SOAP works and why medical schools may encourage it

• Deciding not to SOAP into a program just to move forward

• Rebuilding a residency application after going unmatched

• Changing specialties from dermatology to psychiatry

• The importance of mentors after professional failure

• How to increase your “surface area for luck”

• Being highly productive while privately struggling

• Why failure can fundamentally change your relationship with risk

• Rebuilding confidence after rejection

• Matching at UCSF after an unsuccessful first cycle

• Sijia’s future in women’s mental health and consultation-liaison psychiatry

A conversation for anyone who has ever received an email, score, rejection, or result that made them wonder whether the future they imagined for themselves had disappeared.

It hadn’t.

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Sijia Zhang, MD

Connect with Sijia: @sijialater

Presented by: The Hippocratic Collective

Follow Frances Mei on Instagram & Tiktok @francesmeimd

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