Finally got to spend 2 days (well, a day and half) with son before he left for Calif for his first Away rotation. He’s exhausted. I get to see him again in Nov for a family wedding. Yay!
His residency apps are in, and interview requests are starting to roll in.
Any advice on how to manage them? He’s been accepting and choosing dates, but at some point, I imagine he’s going to be faced with requests that only include dates that are already scheduled for elsewhere. At that point, do you drop the “lesser desired” or do you hang onto the ones that may be your “safeties”? Is it ok to respond with, "I’m going to be in your area on X/XX, so is it possible to be interviewed at that time?
@mom2collegekids A parent of someone who applied for orthopaedics last year complained that many of the programs in that area deliberately have dates that compete with each other while having a single interview date for all candidates. So the standard practice for his kid was to accept the date as it came in, and then decide later which one to drop and cancel out of. He lost 4 or 5 interviews out of 15-20 because of this issue. They also invited people in the ratio of 1:30 or 1:40.
This may be totally different for the area your son is interviewing in.
I suspected that specialties in the same area might do that to figure out who really wanted them.
this is going to get really crazy, I suspect. I just hope that a favored request doesn’t compete with a family wedding that we’ve been long-planning to attend.
My son isn’t orthopedics, but it is a competitive residency.
In regards to those ratios…do you mean that they invite 30-40 in hopes that one will accept the interview invite? Or what?
I hadn’t checked this thread in a while. But to answer your questions,
SIL works on another continent. (Over 10,000 miles from where D1 currently lives. Literally on the other side of the earth.)
D1 will finish her residency here in the US and then sit for national specialty boards. Once she is specialty boarded in the US, she will move to her husband’s country. Since she will have her US specialty certification she can apply for medical license under the specialist entry pathway–which is a shorter and less complicated process than if she tries to simply move there and start her specialty training there. (Because residency there works significantly differently than here in the US and lasts several years longer.) She will do a 1-2 year specialty fellowship to acquaint herself with best practices in her field there, then take her national licensing exams (the equivalent of the USMLEs) and specialty boards there.
The process of transferring one’s medical credentials from one country to another is incredibly complicated and always requires some degree of re-training. It’s not something I would recommend that anyone do if they can possibly avoid it.
Many programs will have waitlists for interview dates. If your son can’t find a date that will work for him, he can ask to be placed on the waitlist should anyone cancel an interview or if the program decides to add additional interview dates. Both of which do happen.
The usual advice is to accept offers as they come then drop less desirable programs that conflict with more desirable ones. He should only keep those program he’s most interested in and would most like to attend. (Go big or go home.) He’ll have a better feel for whether or not he should hang onto “safeties” in a few weeks once IIs at most programs have been tendered. (D1 felt comfortable with cancelling interviews at a couple of “safety” programs that invited her early because she was getting plenty of interest from more competitive programs.)
Also IIs come out in 2 or 3 “waves” (or at least they do in D1’s specialty).
@mom2collegekids The ratio is for the number of residencies available to number of interviewees invited. They are calling a lot of people for interview for each position. The total applicant numbers are usually at a much higher proportion.
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Consider SWA as they have no change fee
Be prepared to respond IMMEDIATELY, some places will invite more people than there are spots, first response, first served. Meaning check your phone email often
Figure out your likely timing and schedule lightweight rotations or even off rotation months for that
Don’t be afraid to wear something other than just a black suit
Feel comfortable Facebook checking to see if anyone can let you couch surf.
The interview season, depending on the number of applications and interviews and the fly versus drive situation can mean $5,000-$10,000 in costs, so take a free place to stay when you can.
^^ thank you! Son will be in Calif for the next 2 months, so hoping that he’ll get some interviews there. He’ll need to do some couch-surfing. He’s pretty much set for southern Calif for couches…northern Calif is a problem.
I was thrilled to help DD in one way, after each interview day, she would call me whilst traveling. I made all sorts of stream of consciousness notes as well as asking her to slot each new place into an overall ranking.
She used those notes when she did her final rank list. Everything was such a blur, the notes I had taken had lots of little stories to help her remember each program.
The place she ranked #1, she said that day she could stop the rest of the interviews, this was her place.
Curious…Are residency interviews all day long like med school interviews? Trying to figure out logistics of getting to from, flights, and interviews that are two days in a row.
There were casual dinners with residents the night before interview day, sometimes the evening after interview day. Program will let you know in advance. I don’t remember them being mandatory but if you look at NRMP factors of what’s important to PDs when they make their rank lists, fit with current residents is very important. I remember at one interview one evening, S had interview next AM first thing with PD and she had at her fingertips a written report from the residents who had met S the night before. So in scheduling, consider whether to allow time to attend
Interview days tended to start around 8-9 AM and ended 3-4 PM. Although programs usually provided names of hotels with preferred rates, I was willing to pay more to put S in closest hotel to interview site as I didn’t want him misjudging how long it would take him to get to location and being late.
^^I agree–though not mandatory, the pre-interview dinners with residents are important. Not only is it a chance to ask questions about the program informally from the people already working there, it’s also chance to get to know your future co-residents and size them to see if it’s a group you feel comfortable with. (And of course, they current residents are doing the same of the applicant since the residents will be working far more closely with the new residents than the attendings will.)
I know at our home state program, the current residents can recommend or blackball an applicant. Their opinions are taken very seriously. Blackballed applicants get dropped from the PD’s list and recommended applicants move up higher on the PD’s ranking.
Anecdotally, the only pre-inteview dinner D1 missed (because she was trying to do back-to-back interviews on 2 consecutive days at programs on opposite sides of the country and ended up stuck in O’Hare due to bad weather until 1am) was a program D1 ranked very high but one that didn’t rank her back.
This is good info. Thanks. I can see that son is going to have to cancel (or if possible reschedule) some interviews to accommodate these dinners because he has too many that are back to back. So far, he has 29 interviews scheduled and a few of them are back to back and not in the same area of the country.
Why is he doing so many interviews? IIR, most people do about 10, if they are well matched, numbers wise, for their selected field. Couples matches and reaches might do 20.
His residency requires a prelim/transition year, so about 12 of them are prelim/transition year interviews.
Now he has 32 interviews. That said, you’re right, he will likely have to cull some of them.
I think it’s harder for those wanting residencies that require that prelim/transition year.
Oh, and a couple of the residencies that are interviewing him for both prelim/transition and residency will not interview on the same day or consecutive days. No, he has to come back a week or so later!
Frustrating to make two trips, DD actually found herself having to fly to and from her own school’s interview as it was between interviews in other states!
I went to 20+ interviews as well last year thanks to prelim/TY. At least my specialty interviews in Dec/Jan, so I knocked out my prelims/TYs before going to my specialty interviews
