Interview experience

Will those of you that have interviewed somewhere fill us in on the program and your experience? I don't start until this weekend, but I will fill you in on IU when I am done.

Mayo Clinic:
Interview benign, nice facilities, dumpy little town, cold as heck.

Albert Einstein (Bronx): "blue collar program," work hard, play hard mentality; heavy on trauma; light on research; know how to spell and what the derivation of "orthopaedics" is.

Ohio State: well-rounded program; new chair- nice guy- cares about residents; even as first year Friday morning is protected time where you go to ortho conferences (even if you are on gen surg, vascular, etc!) -- Friday afternoon is OFF usually! Sweet. 3 five year spots; 1 six year. Have one moral dilemma / patient encounter type experience ready to rattle off.

UConn: excellent training; excellent education. Also well-rounded. Faculty almost all fellowship-trained. Excellent commraderie (OK... my spelling sucks) among residents and faculty. Chair is Browner - trauma guy - very approachable. Residents get good fellowships. Most go into private practice. Interview benign.

Campbell Clinic: Great bunch of guys, friendly attendings, you'll see when you get there. I will say they work their @#$%& off. I'd practice my knot tying and arthroscopy skills since one attending runs you through a few timed physical challenges as they say on Double Dare. Anyway, he says it is more for his curiosity and not incorporated into whom gets accepted. The remainder was 12 other interviews of 15-20 minutes, one on one, with the remainder of the educational staff. Alot of interviews but seems a bit more fair then my other experience.

UConn: a one day only experience. Half day touring facilities and area and half day of intercviews. 45 minutes with an attending and senior resident, then two 20 minute interviews with other attendings of which was luck of the draw. Then they met at the end of the day and made their rank list immediately.

So far NO funny business. Basically want to get to know you and if you'll fit into their program for 5 years. Have got a few strength/weakness, tough/best times in life, and hammered about couples matching and why this area if you're not from. All things one would expect.

What type of couples match "hammering" did you encounter? (and where?) h well:

I've been asked how we were planning on making our rank lists, if we planned on leaving it so she would scramble into an area I got into, what she was going into, basically if she was competitive or not, if she had interviewed already at in my area or had an interview scheduled, and basically how serious we are i.e. "are you going to marry her." I didn't have a problem answering any of these questions because I felt like the answer could only help my cause and it is my situation but would have wet myself if I had to say she was going into derm, rads-onc, etc.