an academic medicine weblog
Alright Andrew, you win. As an MD/PhD student residency interviews tend to take a unique twist as there is the very obvious 4-6 year old elephant in the room, which clearly differentiates us from other candidates who went straight through medical school. Below are some questions/issues that came up during my residency interviews and those of [...]
It’s amazing how there are such dramatic differences in the mindset/attitude/tone of clinical departments from one medical center. You can walk into one department and find generally welcoming, laid back faculty (as laid back as possible in academia, I guess) and then into another department and find generally tense, sardonic faculty. I’m so used to [...]
So my favorite knock against me by a residency interviewer so far was within the last 1.5 weeks when I gave a response to an interviewer’s question to which the interviewer responded in a derisive tone, “Didn’t I read that on a fortune cookie? Well, your answer was much cheesier than the fortune cookie.” The best [...]
Just when I thought I had made it home safe, I go and get stranded in Las Vegas. I flew from Seattle today to Las Vegas where it was surprisingly snowing. I got on board my connecting flight home, taxied out to the runway only to get called back to the gate because of the [...]
It is with some exhausted relief that my west coast swing and road trip for residency interviews has ended. It was a week of meeting new people as well as adventure, excitement and at times terror. I interviewed at three great residency programs–each a little different in pros and cons from the others. I experienced [...]
What a crazy day. I got an early start from Santa Nella, CA and made my way north making good time. Beautiful country–not the typical California I had seen. Orchards and farms. Lots of grazing cows. Happy cows come from California, I heard. It was mostly overcast all day and started to rain about an [...]
So I made it to sunny San Diego today for another residency interview. Granted the travails of flying are worth it for San Diego, I still hate flying. Especially now that what little courtesy the airlines used to offer is non-existent. I flew with Delta today and (1) the plane for my first flight was switched [...]
So I just had another residency interview yesterday. Not too bad, mostly conversational in nature. Unfortunately, there were many interviews packed into a relatively short period of time so the scheduling made for short exchanges. One interviewer asked me, “what are three things that you are proud of?” I never know quite how to answer that question. Note [...]
