MYTHBUSTERS: RESIDENCY INTERVIEWS

MYTH: Interviewing for medical school, you have to sell yourself to them.  Interviewing for residency programs, they're selling themselves to you.

Generally, the big picture is fairly accurate. There are a LOT more candidates for med school than residency, and the further up the ladder, the stronger the application's correlation with good performance and success. Imagine looking at MCAT scores, college grades, and extracurriculars to decide if someone will be a good doctor one day.  "Lab assistant" could mean anything from washing pyrex beakers (me) or being first author on a publication (not me). Residency applications, on the other hand, are a slightly better representation of one's ability, focusing on medical board scores, clinical rotation grades and recommendation letters from other physicians. 

First, you have to understand the idea of cutoffs....

This is where I got burned. Most schools use filters to sort through the thousands of applications they receive. Step 1 is the classic cutoff; many programs will set a minimum of 200, but competitive programs are rumored to set minimums as high as 230 or 240. I can personally vouch for the fact that other factors can help get you through the screen. The problem is that many programs don’t have the means to review each application filtered out. 

The GOOD news is that once you've gotten past this stage (and gotten the interview invitation), you can be fairly confident that the program would probably take you. The final determination is less about the "cutoff" criteria and more about the ambiguous stuff, like how you did at your interview, and how many doctors picked up the phone for you. 

That being said, rest assured. Residency interviews are infinitely better than med school interviews. I heard it time and time again, but couldn’t wrap my mind around that concept- that programs were trying to impress me. 

The number of interviews you decide to go on will depend on several factors: the strength of your
application, the competitiveness of the program, and the competitiveness of the specialty. The AMA publishes MATCH statistics broken down by specialty, which can help you decide how many interviews to do (for example, in specialty X, there’s a 70% match rate for those who go to 10 interviews, but a 95% match rate for those who go to 12 interviews). For less competitive specialties (family, internal, etc) , you may only need to interview at 7 or 8, but I’ve heard of applicants for more competitive specialties going to up to 40 interviews!

A brief overview of the process (varies between specialties): 

• Dinner with residents the night before: hey, free food! And either you have fun, or you don’t. If you don’t, then less stress during the real interview- you don’t really want to go there anyway! 
• Interview day: this usually includes going with the residents to a conference or two, possibly rounding with teams, presentations by the school to show how awesome they are, tours of the hospital and facilities, 2-4 interviews, and of course, lots of food! The interviews are honestly extremely laid back. In fact, I definitely did less than 50% of the talking. Some even talked about how great I’d fit in in the program, rendering me speechless but flattered. 

I’d definitely recommend taking notes immediately after (or even during) the interview- there are several good forms online specifically for this use. You won’t remember as much as you think after 8 or 10 interviews!

Choosing a program:

Don’t sweat bullets about this until you’ve started interviewing. Lots of factors have to be taken into account when selecting- location, quality of academics, opportunities for jobs or fellowships, etc. But, as you’ll hear a thousand times, it has to feel right. If you don’t like the residents, if you couldn’t live in subzero temps, if you don’t feel tingly and see fireworks, it probably isn’t “the one.” That’s a bridge to cross later.