Sunday, May 31, 2015

Scheduling Residency Interviews

Scheduling residency interviews can seem daunting at first, then it gets pretty easy.  However, there are a few things to consider.

Some people prefer to front-load many of their interviews, some space them out.  It all depends on your schedule at school.  Some people will travel from one city to another without returning to their hometown.  Some people will rent a car and go to different interviews in series.

The best thing to do is to factor in travel time so you get to everywhere you need to be on time.  I also recommend spending the $20 or so for flight cancellation insurance because you never know what will happen.  I made the mistake of not doing that and a last-minute crisis occurred in my family.  I had to cancel an interview to be with my family.  Life really is unpredictable.

Some programs use Thalamus (a website service) to schedule residency interviews, others require telephone calls only, others through email.  

If you're going to cancel an interview, it's best to cancel at least 2 weeks in advance.  Programs are really intense about this because they don't want people who are holding on to a ton of interviews cancel with too short a time window for other applicants to get an offer and travel.

If you can, meet with your program director/associate program director or an advisor of some sort to determine how many interviews you need to attend to have a good chance of matching.

I'm really thankful I matched at my first choice for a lot of reasons.  Work hard, have good scores, network well, and you'll greatly improve your chances at the match.  

Cheers

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