<p>Norcalguy: My son has the opposite issue. He’s got December and January off, but he’s having to sign up for interviews in October and November. This shouldn’t be that complicated! Good luck.</p>
<p>Any tips on how to avoid this timing issue? Or is it “un-plannable” or inevitable?</p>
<p>Better research. Obviously, if I had seen that list before planning my schedule, I would’ve scheduled Dec and January off. The point being, different specialties interview at different dates. Some interview earlier than others.</p>
<p>Yes, knowing the right time to schedule is important. I’m surprised NCG didn’t get better guidance from his advisors/Dean’s Office…</p>
<p>As mentioned before, specialty matters. My peds residency program just sent out interview invites last week and will interview 4 days a week from the first week of November to the first week of February, holidays excluded. Dean’s letters might make a difference in the final rank list, but we’ll interview a number of people without the letter. For us though, a good dinner with the residents and good interview will matter more than what the dean’s letter says.</p>
<p>Even with advice about what months to take off, you’re still going to feel a little caged when it comes to scheduling interviews. The information from my school was clear that December was the best month to take off for interviews for internal medicine, but it still feels like there aren’t enough days when you take travel from one location to another into account. You start thinking things like, “is it possible to get from X to Y in three hours? How about if I speed?”</p>
<p>S got another invitation yesterday. One of the top 10 on his list.</p>
<p>He’s still waiting on two LORs; has already received letters from Dept chair and head of general surgery program. Hoping the other two don’t wait too much longer or plan to submit with Dean’s letter. With those two and Dean’s letter his file is complete.</p>
<p>No interview invites this week but my transcript got uploaded today and I managed to move my ICU rotation to April, freeing up January for interviews. So, it felt like a productive day. Hopefully, I can get some rads interviews in the upcoming weeks.</p>
<p>you said if you saw the list sooner, you could have planned better. where does one find the lists for diff specialties?</p>
<p>That list came from the Aunt Minnie forums, which is a forum for radiology residents and hopefuls. (and for those of you who don’t know, an “aunt minnie” is an image where the diagnosis is so obvious and classic that you’d be embarrassed to miss it). I’m sure other specialties have their own forums and such.</p>
<p>I’m sure the interview dates are going to vary from year to year. The main value of the list is to gauge roughly when invites are being sent out. For radiology, for example, you can see that fewer than 5% of the programs sent out invites before October, maybe another 35% or so sent out invites in October, and the remaining 50-60% sent out invites in November. This is not the same for every specialty as most other specialities interview earlier than this.</p>
<p>Well it seems uploading my transcript did the trick. 2 radiology interviews in 2 days since my transcript was uploaded. Right now, I have 5 interviews crammed into the first 3 weeks of November. For those of you who have gone on a lot of interviews, any tricks to saving $$$ (outside of trying to group interviews together)?</p>
<p>Congrats on the interviews !</p>
<p>Always ask if the program or university has a deal with local hotels. I’ve found that some programs don’t always offer up this information. </p>
<p>Clustering, especially if within driving range is always helpful. Rental cars are cheaper than flights. </p>
<p>I’ve found the best rates off of Kayak, but I do like the fare predictors that Bing has if you have options to choose interview dates. Google just recently offered up their airfare finder, but I had bought most of my tickets before I had a chance to play around with it. </p>
<p>Cabs are expensive, but sometimes the only option. If you can connect with other applicants for trips at least back to the airport, that may save you anywhere from $25-50 bucks a trip. </p>
<p>Suits do not need to be dry cleaned every trip, unless they’re stained. It’s bad for the suit and bad on your bank account.</p>
<p>Take your suit to either a dry cleaner or the store from which you bought it and have them professionally press it between wearings rather than frequently dry cleaning. You should only dry clean it when its dirty or as BRM mentioned, stained.</p>
<p>Never dry clean the pants or jacket alone, ALWAYS together because over time its color will change slightly and you’ll have a mismatched suit.</p>
<p>A couple more invites.</p>
<p>Right now, I’ve scheduled 6 interviews for the first 3 weeks of November and interviews are starting to spill into December. </p>
<p>It’s definitely rough to see the differences in interview schedules between various specialties. Some of my classmates applying to less competitive specialties have 13 interviews already (despite applying to just 15-20 programs). Meanwhile, radiology applicants are applying to 40+ programs and are grateful for each and every interview that comes their way. It could be worse though. Dermatology programs don’t send out interviews invites until mid-late November.</p>
<p>S got 3 more invitations since Friday. There’s kind of an interesting pattern developing. Many of the invitations are coming from residency programs with big time trauma centers known for their frenetic pace. I guess they are placing some value on his Parkland experience and figure if he can survive/come out of that with honors he can handle their experience. </p>
<p>He has a number of programs that don’t send invitations until after Nov 7-10. They want time to process and review the Dean’s letter. This should (crossing fingers and toes) be a boost for him. Right now of the 10 he has received, 5 are from his top 15. Not comfortable commenting on others right now since I have no idea who reads this. But suffice it to say, he chose his list very carefully and had a great plan IMO. All are places he would be very happy to be associated with.</p>
<p>It’s going to be interesting to see how the rest of this unfolds.</p>
<p>My son has received about a dozen interview invitations. He has turned down about 3 from places he wasn’t terribly interested in. He is very concerned with location of his program program. He wants one particular city most of all. I’m sure he’ll ultimately rank decent programs in that city over more prestigious programs elsewhere. He unfortunately hasn’t received invitations from his top choices, which are the best programs in his city of choice. Other than that he’s done extremely well.</p>
<p>Just finished up my last interview. Managed to go from coast to coast in the last 5 days. Definitely exhausted. </p>
<p>One tip, which I kind of just fell into this second time around, is to schedule the interviews for places you are most excited for towards the end of the interview season if possible. You’re going to be tired at the end of the process no matter what, and by the 3rd or 4th interview, it becomes kind of old hat. But I definitely was fresher and more into my later interviews because they were programs I really wanted to see. There are people who will tell you that you run the risk of sending the wrong the message, that you might be considered to be less interested, but I think your enthusiasm towards the end of the interview season (when everyone else is tired) will be refreshing and noticeable.</p>
<p>For me, now comes the hard part…actually putting together a rank list. November 30th can’t get here soon enough…</p>
<p>Congrats and Good luck on the interviews to you and yours, folks. Thanks for continuing to post as the rest of us glean some good points from your posts.</p>
<p>For those interested in what it takes to match different residencies: <a href=“http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>I do appreciate the transparency with the data. There are loads and loads of data out there about the match process.</p>
<p>For diagnostic radiology, it looks like the average person who successfully matched had 13 contiguous ranks. I think 13 or so ranks (ie 13 interviews) is a virtual guarantee to match (~98% chance of matching according to the chart). </p>
<p>So far, 8 radiology interviews and 5 prelim/TY interviews. Hoping for ~15 radiology interviews ultimately.</p>