Interview Stats 2011, How many apps? How many invites? etc

That's good to hear, just an inquisitive thought.

I wonder what people deem as an adequate number of interviews. (By no means is the following meant to single out Bone4Brains.) I worked with a resident who limited himself to 10. His reasoning was that if you had to go down that far on your rank list you probably weren't getting in anywhere. At first I thought this was quite the ballsy move and wouldn't have considered it myself, but the more I think about it the more I agree with him. We all look at "charting the outcomes" and see the great correlation with possibility of matching if one has 10+ interviews, but as a friend pointed out, the correlation isn't that the 10+ interviews grant you some greater advantage, but those who are given that many offers are generally good applicants.

I completely agree with that resident's approach... and some would argue that you'd actually be better off just going to ~10 interviews and being able to attend the social etc, rather than packing so many interviews back-to-back that you get tired, fall off your game, can't attend socials, etc.

However, the problem is the way that all of these invites are slowly leaked out over an extended period of time. I mean, as I sit here with my X number of interviews, I have no way to know if it's safe to cancel any of my interviews. Even the ones that I would expect to be near the bottom of my rank list. Am I going to get more interviews? If so, are they going to be offered to me in time to cancel those "less desirable" interviews? Will I even be able to work them into my Dec/Jan clerkship schedule?

One piece of information I would like to see made available is a breakdown of how far down people go on their rank lists. How many people match to numbers 10, 11, 12...?

Again, I've thought about this, myself, and completely agree. I would think that this information could be collected anonymously and published with all of the other extraneous NRMP data.

Now I'm mostly just "thinking outloud" because I'm starting to get a little fed up waiting for my remaining programs(most of which are the ones I'd really love to have a chance at) and need to release some nervous energy. What are your thoughts?

I feel the same way. I've browsed these forums for a while, but never thought that I would be particularly compelled to post... nervous energy definitely getting to me. Although, most of the programs that I'm hoping to hear from are ones that have already sent out offers ... a guy can dream, right? Good luck

Strong work fellas. These topics are much more constructive than ragging on each other about this our that. Cheers to 13 contiguous ranks.....

B4B

Sims, I completely agree with your thoughts in that situation. If you've already gone on 10, but have five more that you're really looking forward to then definitely go to all of those. You can't sell yourself short on your dream spots.

Obviously you'd like to give a program as much notice of a cancellation as you can, but how short of notice is too short? Say you just get an interview for a top choice and would like to cancel a different interview in turn. How short of notice is too short to where you now consider not cancelling the interview just to avoid being considered a jerk? I'm not sure I'm getting my thought across very well. (Of course if they're on the same day you'll cancel no matter what, but say they're a day or two apart so it'd be inconvenient to go to both but you could do it, or you just don't want to have to do both.) I would think a program should always give people the option of coming for a vacated interview spot, even if it's two days away.

Doubledown, I wouldn't consider cancelling just because I think I'll get those better interviews, that's just a little too risky for me. So that brings me back to the above question. When would you be too embarrassed to cancel an interview if you could make both the newer, more desirable interview and the older, less desirable interview?

Yeah but I could have interviewed at 10 places and there are still 5 places left that I'm scheduled to interview at all which are solid and may be the top 5 on my final rank-list. With that said you shouldn't stop at 10 interviews [barring the statistics reasoning] if you think that your other upcoming interviews may be places you would rank high.

Certainly, in that circumstance, I think we'd all go on those other 5 interviews. However, in the ideal situation, you/I would know about those 5 interviews early enough in the process that we could compare those 5 programs with the other 10 prior to attending most/any of our interviews.

Like Jeeper95 essentially stated, those individuals with ~15 interviews are going to have some that they could do without, and would probably happily decline if they knew that there were additional, "more desirable" offers in their future.

However, with the current system, those more competitive applicants are likely to have completed 2 or 3 of those "less desirable" interviews (if not more) before the majority of their interviews start coming in. Think there might be other applicants out there that would kill for those 2 or 3 interviews?

You could argue that such competitive applicants should know ahead of time which programs they should/shouldn't apply to and which interviews they should/shouldn't attend, but I think it's unrealistic to expect even the best applicant to avoid programs/interviews when he/she doesn't know what the future holds... especially in this crazy process.

Sims, I completely agree with your thoughts in that situation. If you've already gone on 10, but have five more that you're really looking forward to then definitely go to all of those. You can't sell yourself short on your dream spots.

Obviously you'd like to give a program as much notice of a cancellation as you can, but how short of notice is too short? Say you just get an interview for a top choice and would like to cancel a different interview in turn. How short of notice is too short to where you now consider not cancelling the interview just to avoid being considered a jerk? I'm not sure I'm getting my thought across very well. (Of course if they're on the same day you'll cancel no matter what, but say they're a day or two apart so it'd be inconvenient to go to both but you could do it, or you just don't want to have to do both.) I would think a program should always give people the option of coming for a vacated interview spot, even if it's two days away.

Doubledown, I wouldn't consider cancelling just because I think I'll get those better interviews, that's just a little too risky for me. So that brings me back to the above question. When would you be too embarrassed to cancel an interview if you could make both the newer, more desirable interview and the older, less desirable interview?

I think a cancelling at least a week beforehand is sufficient. The program wouldn't be too happy with you either way. But let's say you initially schedule with a program on date X, then ask to switch to date Y, AND THEN cancel, then they will probably want to slap you silly.

I would try to make as many interviews as possible, even if I can't attend the social when the interviews are back-to-back.

Doubledown, I wouldn't consider cancelling just because I think I'll get those better interviews, that's just a little too risky for me.

Nor would I, and that's the point I'm trying to make - very few (if any) of us are going to take that leap of faith. So, we're going to keep accepting and attending interviews that, when all is said and done, we may look back and recognize as unnecessary. Which is a shame, because I have friends/acquaintances to whom I would happily "give" some of those interviews, if possible... I'm sure we all feel that way.

So that brings me back to the above question. When would you be too embarrassed to cancel an interview if you could make both the newer, more desirable interview and the older, less desirable interview?

Well, hopefully, we'll all get so many interviews that we'll be able to answer this question, in time. Personally, I'm not going to cancel any interviews unless I have date conflicts (other interviews or school curriculum obligations) or I'm broke!

In terms of being embarassed... I don't think I'll feel "embarassed" about cancelling an interview unless I give less than 2 weeks notice, I have already asked them to move the interview multiple times, or I had extensive contact with the program coordinator.