Sink or Swim Podcast · Sink or Swim Podcast

Two Applicants, One Match: Kristina and Andrew

·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

Andrew says surgery felt different from emergency medicine because he could 'meaningfully impact' patients for life.

1. Sink or Swim Podcast focuses this episode on couples matching in medicine, using Christina and Andrew's own applications as the frame. 2. Christina is a fourth-year student at Nova Southeastern University's allopathic program going into neurology, and Andrew is a fourth-year there going into general surgery. 3. The episode asks what couples matching looks like when two medical students want to coordinate careers, interviews, geography, and rank lists. 4. Andrew says he was born and raised near Cocoa Beach and the Kennedy Space Center area, went to the University of Florida, and spent a year as an ER scribe before medical school. 5. Christina says she grew up between Miami-Dade and Broward counties, studied neuroscience and premed at NYU, volunteered with the ALS Association, earned a master's degree, and then came to Nova. 6. They met in July 2022 in fundamentals and started officially dating after the first semester. 7. They say medical school with a partner created a built-in study buddy, fewer translation problems after long study days, and more shared understanding of grading and evaluation. 8. They describe pre-clinical Zoom study dates that used 50-minute study blocks and 10-minute talk breaks, followed later by studying in the same room for Step 2. 9. They also mention adopting a cat named Hippa about a year earlier and joking about hearing her in the background or stopping her from eating the Christmas tree. 10. Christina says neurology drew her in because of neurodevelopmental milestones, brain plasticity, neurodevelopment, and the chance to ask patients what they prioritize for quality of life. 11. Andrew says surgery clicked after his rotation, especially after a day in the OR that started at 5 a.m. and ended around 6 or 7 p.m. 12. He compares surgery to a team sport, tying it to soccer, his parents' Mexican restaurant, and years of working out and teamwork. 13. Andrew also says he wants a reputation as 'the nice surgeon' and wants residents and patients to describe him that way. 14. Christina says Nova had no neurology clerkship and no neurology faculty professors, so she ended up being the only student in her class applying neurology. 15. They say couples matching was not really a decision for them because they had already built the relationship alongside medical school and expected to tie their futures together. 16. They explain that ERAS still requires individual applications, but couples matching adds extra fees, extra rank-list costs beyond 20 program codes, and a combined list that can go up to 300 permutations. 17. Andrew says away rotations can influence couples matching, and he notes that doing aways at separate institutions did not hurt their process. 18. Christina says the hardest part was building coordinated application lists with Excel, Residency Explorer, and repeated checks on whether each program made sense for both people. 19. The tone is conversational, reflective, and practical, with back-and-forth explanations rather than a formal interview structure. 20. Listeners who want medical school relationship logistics and match strategy will likely get the most value, while people avoiding residency-process details may skip it.

As heard by us

A practical couples-match conversation with real trainee texture.

Christina and Andrew talk through couples matching from inside the process, starting with how they met in medical school and moving into what interviews felt like and how they are shaping a joint list.

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Why you'd press play

Hear how two fourth-year medical students at Nova Southeastern break down the couples match from their own perspective.

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