Interview scheduling

[capeman]

Do people schedule their vacation time to coincide with interviews or do you take time out of your rotations to go interview? Any advice would be much appreciated.

All the best

Capeman

[CollesFx]

Why take your vacation time if you're going to be working hard interviewing anyway? Many schools offer a "anatomy" course or some humanities course that you can take during your interview time and still get credit so you can take vacation when you relax a bit.... :pimp:

[BigPiece]

Sounds pretty lush to me but we have to take our month of "vacation" to interview. I would schedule some sort of radiholiday / psychation type of elective for the other month of interviews (December or January depending which one is not off) so you can get away from it for interviews when they come up. I did manage to fit a research elective in here with an orthopod who I believe will be understanding. To my understaning most interviews will be a weekend ordeal with at least one evening get to know you festivity. Can I get some confirmation or are there weekday interviews also?

[Bone_Jock]

I interviewed at 12 places. The following had weekend interviews:

cwru, cincinnati, mayo, kentucky, loyola, msu-kalamazoo, howard, mco, henry ford

The following had weekday interviews:

harvard, ccf, and indiana (indy also had weekends available-i think)

So yea, most place interview on the weekend.

[BigPiece]

Thanks Bone_Jock. Correct me if I'm wrong but you're at cwru? I'm trying to narrow down the midwest programs and am wondering your take on the Michigan programs and others you went to and how $ cwru is. I figure I am going to blow this MED-X loan up in interviewing so would like to not apply to every program as is so tempting.

[bonedoc]

well i can only post on the program in kalamazoo, since it is the only MI program I interviewed at (and i matched there/here). As bone jock will tell you it is a nice program with lots of perks/benefits (home call all 4 years of ortho, free food, free loops, etc) and we operate a TON and early. I am on my first month of ortho now (since aug 1, and i have already done probaly close to 25 or 30 cases, with about half of them letting me do a significant portion or all of the case (depending on the attending of course). Generally they take pretty good care of us and everyone is happy, especially after they go to conferences and talk to people at other programs. We get good fellowships too, one of last years chiefs is doing spine at Case Western and my current chief is going to carolinas medical center for his trauma fellowship. So far i am very pleased with this program. Every place has downsides, and i would say that ours might be that we dont focus on research very much at all (which i personally view as a GOOD thing, since i hate that crap) and we may be short on the diadactic lectures, but that is being addressed. Good luck choosing where to apply

[rakmala]

This advice has been nearly universal:

Schedule a laid back rotation for December, and take January off as vacation.