Interview Lies

[Spoonman2332]

Happy holidays to all,
I've been meaning to start a thread of basically bullcrap one liners we may all have heard on the interview trail. I'll start with one I heard at a certain hospital in the midwest a couple of weeks ago:
From the program coordinator at the end of the interview day, "You will not come to hospital X unless you rank us number 1. The competition is just too fierce. Have the courage and conviction to rank us number 1."
--Complete crap. I talked to numerous residents that day from intern to PGY-3 and not one of them ranked this place as their number 1. Anyone else with "interesting" comments?

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[tricophyton]

I am probably different than most of you, in that I am only looking at programs in a certain geographic region...... Therefore I applied to several small community based programs. I have heard a few lies. Mostly they are extreme exaggerations. Because I am interested in fellowship, I ask them about what their track records are for getting their residents into places.

One place provided a list of where their residents went in the past 3 years. On that short list, in the past 5 years only 1 person landed cardiology. During my course of the day, I must have heard 3 or 4 different stats on how many people get cardiology. Most people were telling me that at least one person per year got cards. Finally, I spoke to someone who said that they one person who did get cards in the past 5 years had a husband in the admin of the fellowship. Needless to say, I am not going there.

This brings up another point. I feel that at some of the smaller, community based programs which happen to have one or two fellowships, really push too hard in selling their programs by telling you all about their fellowships. At one dinner, I spent all evening talking to the director of cardiology and learning nothing about the 3year categorical IM program itself. Come to find out, the fellowship rarely takes residents from its own IM program. (only the few "outstanding ones".

I wouldn't necessarily consider this a lie, but one program which is definitely way low on most people's list, I felt was "over-glorifying" everything about the program. Everyone I talked to LOVED the program. There was absolutely nothing that could be improved. Everything was so great, but it did not seem sincere to me. This probably is not really a lie, but I hate talking to people on interviews that can't find one thing that can be improved and are just telling you what you want to hear.

Well, I have to run

 

[lurkerboy]

I found this when i interviewed too. Many of the programs I saw bragged about fellowship placement, and it ended up that only a percentage of those applied got fellowships, and in some cases, they were fellowships within the hospital or hospital-network itself.

so, if you want the truth about fellowship placement, ask a senior resident how many wanted a fellowship and how many actually got them!

 

[irlandesa]

One of my favorites by some residents I've met: "I chose this program b/c Program X (usually BIDMC or BU are the programs of choice) is just an uncaring, snobby, overrated factory." I know that in at least some cases, this translates into "this wasn't my first or second or even third choice."

 

[kinetic]

Ouch; you're being pretty harsh. I've seen medical students ask residents that question before and I think it puts residents in an uncomfortable position. I mean, unless you matched at your number 1 place, you look like a loser. What do you want them to say, "uh, well, I put this place down as #5 thinking I would not drop down this far, but apparently the other places didn't want me"?

 

[irlandesa]

Ouch; you're being pretty harsh. I've seen medical students ask residents that question before and I think it puts residents in an uncomfortable position. I mean, unless you matched at your number 1 place, you look like a loser. What do you want them to say, "uh, well, I put this place down as #5 thinking I would not drop down this far, but apparently the other places didn't want me"?

If residents do not want to answer med student questions that can not be found in the brochure, they should NOT attend the functions on interview day and offer to answer our questions. In fact, I will only ask "so, why did you choose this program, or what attracted you to this program?" if residents ask me if I have any questions. And I would never ask anyone about their rank list. I also have to disagree with the issue that anyone who didn't match at their first choice looks like an unhappy loser. I met a resident at UMass who put the program as his #2 (he offered this info) and was still able to say he was happy to have ended up there without unnecessarily bashing other programs. I thought that was really classy and I don't think he was a loser at all! I personally would be really happy to end up at ANY of my top 4 choices so far (and still have a few interviews left) without complaint. My point was just that it is rude, phony, and immature to bash other programs in order to protect your own ego, and does NOT help to attract applicants to your program.