Interview season is winding down. Now that you’ve been out there, what did you think of the interviews? Most programs put a lot of effort into the interviews. Sometimes they hit the mark, sometimes they fall short. Here are the categories open for nominations:

Biggest surprise: the program that had it all together and beat all your expectations

Biggest disappointment: great reputation, but it turned out to be undeserved

Best food: they pulled out all the stops to show you a good time, and it showed

Worst food: it can be a fancy restaurant or take-out, but the food sucked

Hottest program coordinator

Best organized: comfortable schedule, low pressure, fun to be there

Worst organized: Who’s in charge of this place, anyway?

Best interview: after 20 minutes, you felt like you had a chance to shine

Worst interview: you just couldn’t get out of that room fast enough

Biggest surprise: got some chocolates and nuts from iowa, otherwise upenn

Biggest disappointment: meeting the other 26 applicants my day at duke

Best food: Utah, absolute feast

Worst food: microwave meatballs at northwestern, no question

Hottest program coordinator:  --

Best organized:  ohsu/mgh

Worst organized: michigan

Best interview: mayo

Worst interview: quiz on endovascular strategies for refractory av fistula- ohsu

Anonymous User - 10 December 2007 05:17 PM

Worst food: microwave meatballs at northwestern, no question

Worst interview: quiz on endovascular strategies for refractory av fistula- ohsu

Hilarious.

Biggest surprise: Rochester

Biggest disappointment: by far Dartmouth, very disorganized, at least during the interview day.

Best food: Utah

Worst food: Peoria, country club - nice place, but horrible dinner.

Hottest program coordinator: Dartmouth - Melissa Robb

Best organized: Madison

Worst organized: Syracuse

Best interview: Syracuse

Worst interview: Lexington

what are residents doing with applicants after the scheduled interviews and/or dinners these days?  i used to take the guys/gals out afterwards, but not so much anymore.  are programs still doing this?  my impression is that it seems less than in previous years.

then again, i’m also way out of the loop.

There were only a few programs where we went out either the night before or the night after the interviews-maryland comes to mind.  There were also a few where it was planned but most applicants left after their interviews.

We took whoever wanted to go for drinks after each of our night before dinners.

I would still like to hear about the “Best and Worst” that people encountered....

Which program did the interview season right, and why?

Which program did not, and why?

You will probably have more responses after the match.

Best time to post right now. Rank lists are in, you can post anonymously, and nobody’s opinions are yet colored by being pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised in the match.

one more day before the rank lists are in.

Anonymous User - 14 January 2008 06:14 AM

one more day before the rank lists are in.

You didn’t hear? They changed the due date to last Friday. 

Dr. Hfuhruhurr - 14 January 2008 10:35 AM

Anonymous User - 14 January 2008 06:14 AM

one more day before the rank lists are in.

You didn’t hear? They changed the due date to last Friday. 

Hilarious.

Ok, I’ll pitch in - hopefully more people will get encouraged and do the same.  It would be very interesting to see what other people think.

Biggest surprise: Rochester
Biggest disappointment: Temple
Best food/"social" aspect: Tie between G.W. and Dartmouth on food, although Rochester really wins on “overall attempts to show us a good time.”
Worst food/"social" aspect: tie between Albany and Maryland
Best organized: Colorado
Worst organized: Baylor
Best interview: Dartmouth
Worst interview: Temple

[quote author="Anonymous User” date="1200423654"
Biggest disappointment: Temple
Worst interview: Temple

Will you please elaborate?

Kenny - it seems to be about 50/50 these days, going out after the dinner.  Buffalo did a great job of it this year.  Sometimes applicants are reluctant to stay out too late the night before an interview day; nobody wants to deny the residents a chance to make the most of their night off, nor do we feel uninterested in hanging out with them...but we’ve already got big bags under our eyes from jet-lag and a long (important) day coming up in the morning.  The Buffalo residents picked a bar that was literally walking-distance to the applicant hotel, so all the applicants could come along for a drink knowing that they could scoot back to bed at whatever time they felt comfortable.  The end result was that pretty much everybody came out, felt relaxed, and of course once we were out there people stayed quite a while and really got to know each other.  Well done, I thought.

And to the last poster - Obviously every applicant will have their own impression of each program.  Temple was really in a rough neighborhood and has a lot of knife-and-gun-club going on with its patient population.  Though some interviewers there were really wonderful, several of them were exceptionally antagonistic, to a degree that really stood out when compared to other programs and left a sour impression.  Finally, requiring your interviewees to fill out a form that includes several personal questions is off-putting.  While the residents are a top-shelf bunch of folks and a lot of fun to be with, and the chairman seems an asset to the program, overall it was hard to want to join them.