Once you're fortunate enough to enter medical school, hopefully in the school of your choice, pat yourself on the back for the success of all your hard work.  Soon enough you'll realize that you're back in competition again, this time for residency.  Residency is actually the most important part of your medical education.  The majority of your clinical skills & knowledge in your specialty will be acquired during residency.  Medical School, somewhat like college is another 4 years of gaining & cultivating a foundation for your medical knowledge.  Its been said that <5% of the information you learn during medical school will you actually use during your professional career.  Considering you also plow through ~ 5 yrs worth of college material in the first 2 years of medical school alone, exemplifies the amount of knowledge one is expected to obtain during medical school.  This also reiterates the importance of academic excellence (as shown by GPA & MCAT scores) in choosing medical students.

 

The process of applying to residency is actually very similar to applying to medical school, but generally less competitive depending on the field you're aiming for as there are anually ~ 16,000 US medical school graduates and ~ 28,000 residency positions.  These numbers are actually expected to increase as more and more studies are revealing a relative shortage of physicians for the growing population.

 

Here are some of the arguably more well known links and resources that can help you beyond medical school: