Bo's Residency Interviews 101

So it has come to my attention that some of you readers out there might not exactly know what is going on with Bo's interviews, and I know some of you are wondering why we aren't already knowing where we are going to go.

Well.

This post hopefully will get things straight, and also I'd like to have it all in the records anyways, that way I can look back on this and be glad it's over and done with.



Interviewing and applying for Residency in the medical field is a lot different than interviewing and applying for jobs elsewhere. How so? Well for starters, most jobs you fill out a resume, maybe a cover letter, put in your references, and than you interview. About a week or so after the interview you usually find out if you were accepted to the position or not. This is not how it works for residency, or at least Bo's. I wish.

With Bo, he's had to fill out a resume of sorts, do a letter/essay, have at least three letters of recommendation, a Dean's letter, and to top that off, he's had to take some super hard tests. With all that paper work in hand, he turns it in to the application people, and they give it to the programs that he's interested in. Then you wait. Some programs make you wait a couple months to get back to you, some a couple of weeks.

After you hear back from the programs interested, you are either assigned an interview date, or you get to schedule it, depends on the program. Bo was fortunate enough to schedule all of his, that way he could lump the ones in the same area around the same time. Make sense? Anyways. Some programs will pay for your hotel. Most don't. None pay for you to travel there and interview. nice. After you interview, you get to go home and not wait for a week or two, like most people, but instead have to wait till March 17th to find out where you are going. That's right, I said FIND OUT. No real picking and choosing.

So here's what happens... you interview at X amount of programs, and then you rank them, number one being your most desired destination, and on down to as many programs as you want to rank. Bo will rank 11, since that's how many interviews he had. After you rank it, you submit it to the match system. THEN the programs you interviewed at rank YOU. They rank all of the people they interviewed the same way you rank them, most wanted at the top, least at the bottom. You have no idea how you are ranked, they have no idea how they are ranked. The match system will then match you up starting with the highest on your list to the highest on their list. Very confusing. So just because you rank some place number one, it doesn't mean you'll actually go there, because that place might not have ranked you all that high. Awesome idea, isn't it? Note the sarcasm.

So people have asked me how Bo's interviews have been going. Well they've been going great. Each program has really done it's job at selling themselves. They do that because they WANT you to rank them high, regardless of what they think of you. The more people that rank them high, the better they look. So it's all really deceiving. You could come out of an interview thinking it was great, but really have no clue.

Luckily Bo is a great guy. :) He's got amazing scores, super awesome grades, and like I said, he's just a great guy. Who couldn't like Bo?? ;) We're hoping that with all his hard work, we should be able to go where we want, but then again, you just never know.

So here are the places Bo has interviewed at, in order of interview dates, NOT in anyway ranked. Temple, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; Columbia, SC; Charlotte, NC; Newark, Delaware; Boston, MA; Springfield MA; Sacramento, CA; Portland OR; Indianapolis, IN; and Cincinnati, Ohio. 11 programs. All across the country.

We like all the programs, and don't think we'll be too disappointed wherever we end up. They are all excellent programs and places. So wish us luck!!! And for the sake of not being embarrassed if we don't go to our top choices, I'm not going to list our rank order. You'll find out on March 17th, along with us, where we are going.