A few resources have emerged to facilitate planning ahead for scheduling interviews. I thought I would put them all here in one place:

1) The official anticipated schedule from the society of neurological surgeous website, in excel format:

http://www.societyns.org/match_information.html

2) An updated google calendar format, courtesy of D. muscipula:

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=4lk4273pq8ba7fjg276mdrqa8c@group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe/London

3) An google docs spreadsheet that I developed and which some of my colleagues and I have found helpful:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pgl6As_BzEv-jAI8X6zfCaQ

Regarding this latter document, you can download the worksheet to excel, delete or hide programs you didn’t apply to, and highlight or color-code dates right on the page to develop your tentative schedule. The nice thing about this format is that you have all the info in front of you on one page as you make changes, allowing you to identify and avoid conflicts immediately, and consider alternative dates for any program, all without extra clicks. Having a tentative schedule worked out even before you get invitations can facilitate a speedy response when you hear from programs, knowing that your pre-chosen date will minimize conflicts and avoid unnecessary transcontinental flights. Moreover, your ability to respond quickly will ensure you get the date you want to make your schedule work.

Hopefully these documents can make life easier! Good luck to all!

PS: Utah and Minnesota in my google-docs spreadsheet are “unofficial estimates,” per program coordinators. Please let me know if there are any mistakes or needed updates. All the usual disclaimer stuff…

Nice! Thanks for compiling…

Also, when planning your pre-game, be aware of the programs which offer dinner the evening prior to the official interview day. The original SNS excel file is completely arbitrary when it comes to notating this. Some programs included the dinner in the dates and some didn’t. Some of these dinners are “required” and some are “optional.” Some programs don’t mention the dinner, but are actually offering one. In other words, some of the supposedly 1-day interviews may actually be 2-day interviews… thus potentially messing with your master plans.

For instance, U Chicago lists three single-day interview dates. However, in the offer letter it states: “The night before the scheduled interview date is a meet and greet with the residents and faculty and dinner with the residents. This is a required dinner as it is a part of the interview process.” There was no real way to know about it before being offered an interview, although I suppose if I were more paranoid I could have queried the program coordinator. There are a couple other programs like this I know of so far (Brown and Peoria, however, they do not explicitly state attendance at the dinner is required).

So, I guess all the more reason to build in a 1-2 day buffer before each interview…

9/29: Previously omitted dates added to Penn and Barrow on spreadsheet. Thanks to bigaxon for pointing these out.

Several senior society members have picked up on all the great work regarding interview tools and such and wanted to start a discussion on what other things you guys might find useful in this arena?

For instance, we could give the programs access to D muscipula’s google calendar and they can add dinner and interview dates themselves.

what else?

The senior society definitely took the lead this year (I think this was the first time) by putting the excel sheet online with the interview dates - a future google calendar that was continually edited would only strengthen that bold move. 

This is not necessarily a interview tool, but merely a suggestion for the interview process.  Many programs have been working to coordinate regional type interviews.  For example, the Texas programs seem to have tried to work together and seem very well organized.  I think California has been successful in working on this, too.  Imagine if states that have many programs would follow suit so that the future applicants could really have an easier schedule.  For example, one idea would be to secure a 10day block for interviews for the opposite coasts, then try to arrange for schools in the South to fall in between the blocks.  I’m sure this is no easy task, but the senior society is poised to be able to tackle a large scale overhaul.  Look what they’ve done already with staking their claim for the PGY-1’s.

Great! Probably the most useful information for initial scheduling would be interview start/end times, so one may know if it is realistic to get from one interview to another in the available time. Any dinners (either before or after) and their status (required, optional), including approximate times would definitely be a huge help.

Most other information (dress code for dinners, exact location for interview, housing options, etc) can be determined later.

Other factors I have heard some people consider when trying to decide whether or not to apply to a program and/or attend an interview include the number of positions available for this particular year (usually stated on FRIEDA, unless changing or an alternating system), and the approximate number of applicants the program is planning to interview.

Two additional suggestions:
1) No interviews before Nov 1 (makes it easier on people who are still on subI’s then).
2) The whole point of moving to ERAS/regular match was to lengthen the interview season so that we do not have 8 programs interviewing on the same day. Apparently, the interview season length has not changed and there are still 8+ interviews on the same day, and 2+ on almost every interview date. The interview season is supposed to go until March. The fact that programs and applicants will not be seen by each other d/t something as banal as scheduling conflict is detrimental to both programs and applicants and decreases the quality of matches for both. I would like to see the senior society work with programs to try and increase the length of interview season and decrease the amount of overlap between programs.

N3UR05UR930N - 31 July 2009 10:35 AM

Two additional suggestions:
1) No interviews before Nov 1 (makes it easier on people who are still on subI’s then).
2) The whole point of moving to ERAS/regular match was to lengthen the interview season so that we do not have 8 programs interviewing on the same day. Apparently, the interview season length has not changed and there are still 8+ interviews on the same day, and 2+ on almost every interview date. The interview season is supposed to go until March. The fact that programs and applicants will not be seen by each other d/t something as banal as scheduling conflict is detrimental to both programs and applicants and decreases the quality of matches for both. I would like to see the senior society work with programs to try and increase the length of interview season and decrease the amount of overlap between programs.

Your suggestions are falling on deaf ears if you are posting them here.  Most of the users of uncleharvey are medical students and residents.  Also, the interview season is not supposed to go into March.  Rank lists are due in February and the Match Day is in March.  The change they made this year to make the earliest interview in October is an improvement from last year where the earliest interviews were in September.  Another thing to keep in mind is that about 1/3 of programs have not released their interview dates (and additional dates are sometimes created during the interview season).  There will always be conflicts with multiple interviews falling on the same day.  It is unavoidable and a big reason you will have to cancel interviews.

True. My mistake. Rank lists are due Feb 24.