So how many interviews do you plan to attend...

[maddog75]

So now that some of the top achievers have getting close to 10 invites on the official interview list, how many interviews do you guys plan on going to? I'm thinking (and hoping) somewhere between 10-12. Will be a second wind of invites once declines start coming in? (I haven't heard either way from UW while many have heard one way or another). I noticed that there was a waitlist for interviews at some places. Kind of an interesting concept.

Lets face it with the competitive nature of this fellowship and the number of programs we tend to apply to (>30 programs each) there had to be a number of programs that each of us have no interest in going to unless we had no other option. I'm already aching to cancel one particular interview just due to difficult of getting there (which makes me wonder about how difficult it is to escape too).

Also, how many do you think a typical program is interviewing per spot? I get the impression certain programs like UCSD interview many more people (doubt this board is overrepresented by californians) per spot than others. One program explicitly said that they are interviewing only 25 external candidates of 300 applicants.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[SEC]

Hi Maddog, I am going to try to do 12-15 (10 others besides your home institution and medical school). At this point I have 8 but only 1 or 2 from standout programs and 5 rejections. Given how competitive this is, if I get any big invites hereafter I'm clearly not their first choice and it seems kind of pointless to me to drop the money to go there when they will clearly fill their program before coming down to me on their rank list. So I really think being waitlisted is the same as being rejected. But having said this, I would say half of the big programs (mainly northeast) have not sent out invites or rejections to anybody. Chicago, Michigan, St. Louis, Boston for example.

I think UCSD is a top program in a great location and this board is over-represented by Californians. I would venture half of the invited people are from Cali (I am not). I think all top programs will interview ~10 candidates per spot, with the truly elite doing maybe 5 per spot. Looks like Indiana for example will be doing 30 interviews for maybe 3-4 spots.