Couple's matching with Peds/other field

[siempre595]

Did anyone here do this?
My significant other is thinking he's gonna do ortho as of now. We're both fairly competitve applicants, but not super gunner people or anything like that. Just wondering what your experiences were? If people were receptive to interviewing both of you? How it worked out? We'd like to go somewhere in Cali or generally West Coast....but I know we probably can't be that picky. How many programs to apply to?
Thanks!

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[megsMS]

siempre595,

I hope someone gives you an answer b/c I am in the exact same boat (I want to do peds or med/peds and he wants to do ortho), except I am more of an average student and my husband is a little more competitive. Good luck!!! Hope it goes well for you.

 

[14022]

He definately cannot be that picky, because it is ortho and we all know that song and dance. People at my school going into ortho typically apply to 60-80 programs, maybe less if they are very competitive applicants. Insane if you ask me. If you are couples matching, I am guessing you will have to apply to at least 1 or 2 programs in each major geographical area to which he is applying. Seeing you go to Wash U, you could probably get away with applying to one program in each geographical area to which he is applying.

Keep in mind, some major metropolitan areas are somewhat closeby. For example, you guys could live halfway between LA and San Diego; Chicago and Milwaukee; sacramento/davis and oakland/san fran; toledo and cleveland; cleveland and akron; st louis and columbia; etc. If you live halfway between these places, you each could commute 45min-1 hour each way. Personally, I think it would suck azz, but you can do it for the person you love. Hopefully, your sig other also goes to wash u and will have a great chance of matching somewhere desirable so you dont have to go to a crappy peds program just to be with him. Good luck!

 

[medfred]

Hi,
not the same situation, but I couple matched with my bf last year- peds/general surgery and it turned out very well for both of us (both at LA programs we are very happy with). interviewing together, as we originally planned, did not work out. we both applied to 40-50 places as we had no idea where we would be interviewed. It isn't that expensive considering the cost of not appplying well and in the en it was worth the piece of mind. We both did 16 interviews, about half on the west coast (we are from the east). I don't think I could have done more without absolutely hating it. In the end, we probably interviewed at far too many places, but it was nice to have the security.

I met one girl from Atlanta on the interview trail who was doing something like 22 interviews in peds- her fiance was applying for ortho. 22 is a ridiculous number of interviews for peds, but probably necessary if you want to be safe- she was doing ~4 a week (exhausting!!!)

If you are aiming for CA, LA is a great city peds-wise bec. there are a couple of very strong programs and a bunch of other good ones. The SF area has several around, but not all in SF.

We made sure to remind programs that we were matching together over and over (esp in thank you notes). It may have helped. Sometimes the departments will try to coordinate if they are really interested in an applicant.

Good Luck!