@Creekland he is going to interview at 20 programs? I’m going to stick my neck out here. Even with less required travel and the like…that’s a lot. You need to check the data for how many rankings are typically needed for students to match in your sons specialty field. Doing an over abundance of interviews does take slots away from other applicants @WayOutWestMom can confirm this.
My kid received over 30 IIs. She accepted about 20 at some point, but only interviewed at 14. She initially accepted some but when programs higher on her interest list came through, she cancelled some earlier ones. She applied to 80. She never intended to interview or rank more than 14. Really 12 would have been fine for her specialty.
She was also courteous in that she either declined or cancelled in very sufficient time for programs to fill her interview spot.
@thumper1 No, he is not interviewing at 20. Some of his “not so high” choices didn’t even offer an interview so it worked out fine on both ends there. He is interviewing at all he considers contenders though - all except the one or two he hasn’t been invited to (yet).
His actual interview number is going to be very similar to what your daughter did.
People do accept interviews initially but do cancel them once they figure out their chances at places they interviewed and liked and start narrowing down their list.
It’s been so quiet here. I hope things are going well for folks. My guy has had 5 interviews so far and can’t decide his own ranking between his Top 3 - this is before some other very promising ones are coming up. Did other people have such a tough time deciding?
Got a laugh out of one thing though. He told us interviewers are asking him, “What can we do to get you to come to our program?” (I assume and he knows they likely say that to everyone.) H told him to respond with, “Buying a boat for my dad could be helpful!”
It’s fun getting a chuckle in.
Ironic to have heard the latest admission scandal for undergrad the morning after!
Do y’all start looking for places to live after Match Day or do you scan top choices areas once rankings have been submitted ahead of time to be better prepared?
I should add that he’s enjoying interviewing med school applicants. It’s nice for him being on the “other” end of this all! The time from high school graduation to now seemed like it would be so long - yet here we are at the end of the 9 years, soon headed to residency - somewhere. Time flies.
Both Ds (and their med school friends) have always said that top and the bottom of the list are easy to rank. It’s the ones in the middle that are hard.
It’s waste of time to start looking before Match because you really don’t know whether you’ll match to your #1 or your #7. Also since residents won’t be moving in until mid-late June a lot of units that are listed as available in February or March will be off the market by May/June when it’s time to sign a lease.
I’ve heard from a couple of people in high COL areas who said they actually had specific places lined up and jumped on them right after learning match results. That’s been sitting in the back of my mind - prompting wanting thoughts from more people. Some places have to take reservations 2-3 months out. They could be the non-typical folks though. It’s not something I’m used to at all.
It probably depends on where matched. S’s target area was San Diego which is a high COL area but is also home to several large universities. There are very large numbers of students moving in/moving out in May, June throughout the area. After matching he had no problem contacting various rentals in April, flew out in May to look at several places, signed a lease starting mid June. Of course the flight out/back and rental deposit were fronted by bank of mom and dad. LOL
@creekland - you are doing all the research so he should be asking for a condo for you in their town so you can be involved.
In New York, it is best to accept university housing since everything else is usually quite expensive. You should start probably looking around in February/March timeframe when your list is finalized for ranking. We owned our D’s apartment and several of her classmates pinged her the same day when they figured out she was leaving. We rented it to one of her med school classmates (it isn’t cheap but she matched into same school with her boyfriend).
D has listed ranking before she even interviewed because she requested interview dates in the order she was going to rank them (November for highest, December for middle and January for last) but she finished all in December since she cancelled several schools from the interview list. She reranked them in January after finishing interviews. Only a couple slipped in ranking but her preliminary ranking and final were almost same.
@texaspg My research involves my telling him I’ll ask the group of all knowing parents who have BTDT on the college board and get back to him.
Can’t complain. It’s worked so far with questions we’ve had.
NYC isn’t a contender since he didn’t apply to any residencies there, but some other cities are.
I’m wondering if Covid has made it easier to rent places. Not related to med school, but my youngest and his wife had to scramble for a decent place outside of DC near her job pre-Covid, but afterward when their lease was up and they had moved here to work from home during Covid their complex was giving them all sorts of offers to stay - multiple options. Apparently a lot of people have moved out.
Many people in cities have moved out if they have flexible jobs. Very few people at Columbia University stay out because it is so expensive. Columbia is only accommodating 1000 out of 20,000 students this fall in dorms and from I understand 19,000 are able to afford to stay outside in NY. San Francisco is half empty because most offices have closed and technology people are living all over the country. Houston is one of the few cities lot of people are moving to.
He’s been interviewing a lot. Literally all over the map geographically. A lot of his top choices didn’t come out yet so he feels like he can’t say no to any interviews yet. But he definitely has couple of favorites and couple of definite No’s already. His interviews go all the way through end of January. Curious how it will all turn out. ?. I wouldn’t mind skipping to mid March now. Lol.
Mine did an away rotation so she was pretty comfortable with the COL in where she ended up. She did say the reason she didn’t rank Columbia #1 was because she knew she couldn’t be in NYC for that long, and she’d be miserable. She ended up ranking her top 3 based on quality of life outside of the operating room! She’s so so happy she can look out of the hospital windows and see the the Rockies, and can literally go hiking 15 minutes from her apartment. She will probably buy a house next year. She’s renting an apartment this first year just to figure life out, but since her residency is 7 years, it makes sense to buy. She hopes to be able to rent a room to M4’s doing away rotations like the person who rented to her. It was so nice to have an older resident to bounce ideas off of, and commiserate with, and the older resident had a source of extra income! Very exciting time for all of you!! Can’t wait to see/hear where everyone ends up. I know @thumper1 and a few others mentioned PM small groups, and I just wanted to say it was SOOOO helpful to have other mom’s to feed my neuroses.
D said one of the people in her program bought a house before moving in and took in 2 other roommates. D and another colleague go hang out with her when they have free time despite the 2 roommates to get that home feeling!
@moonpie I definitely think not being able to get a grasp/feel on the area by doing virtual interviews is a big con this year.
When we were getting the last rundown Friday night our guy was telling us so many places had really good programs that it was going to be difficult to choose between them. As with undergrad options where many places offer an excellent education, fit is normally a big decider. This year for the graduating class that’s going to be almost totally missing. There’s only so much one can see in a video or online.
My guy knows he didn’t want NYC due to prior visits - hence not applying there - but what about other cities? What are Cleveland/Boston/SF/Chicago/etc like in areas he’d be in? It’s all guesswork.
It will definitely be interesting to see how he ends up ranking the places he likes. He’s up to 4 that could be #1 with some of his other top contender interviews still coming. The good thing with a multiple place tie for #1 is if he gets #4 (or whatever the bottom top number is at the time) he still ends up a big winner in his mind. The bad thing is if he gets #1/2 and ends up not liking the actual area, he’ll always wonder if his list should have been different.
In the end, he knows he can always actually work elsewhere, but so many we know work close to where they had their residencies.
When our kid was interviewing, and making her lists, we also reached out to friends, relatives and acquaintances to get info about the areas she was considering (one’s we didn’t know about). If you or Creekson have any contacts anyplace, reach out. Folks were very happy to share the pluses and minuses of their cities, rent costs, possible living locations, etc.
And you know…you can always start a thread in the parent cafe seeking information about the places. You know folks will give you lots of info!
When our older kid was moving to a new city for grad school, I reached out online to a group related to his area of study. A. Very nice family gave us tons of information and even checked out some potential rentals before I flew down to sign the lease (the kid was at the Aspen Music Festival). They were fabulous and very helpful in terms Of knowing where students lived. And the probable costs.
Posting here partially to keep the topic updated and partially to share some bad news from my son’s hospital system. One of the soon-to-finish residents there died of a heart attack. He was 33. Things like that send chills to me. One doesn’t expect a 33 year old to have a heart attack. My son tells me the guy was focused on cardiology. I feel for his family.
I can’t share a link because the only one I have is to a Go Fund account and that’s not allowed on here. One can google Dr. Roshan Jha and come up with more. (He’s not the one in India.)
This is terrible. So young! Did he have COVID before? I know there’s a lot of talk about COVID affecting different organs months later. Especially in young patients.
