2010-2011 Application season questions

[joejabjab]

*Sorry to start a whole new thread; maybe this one can serve to field all related questions for this application season (fellowship starting 2012)*

More questions for those who might be able to help out:

-On your former cardiology applications under "Misc", did you all list hobbies and interests?
-What kind of hobbies and interests should I list? Should I list sports?
-Did you all list your race and/or ethnicity? Does it matter?

Thanks

Joe

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[EaglesPA]

*Sorry to start a whole new thread; maybe this one can serve to field all related questions for this application season (fellowship starting 2012)*

More questions for those who might be able to help out:

-On your former cardiology applications under "Misc", did you all list hobbies and interests?
-What kind of hobbies and interests should I list? Should I list sports?
-Did you all list your race and/or ethnicity? Does it matter?

Thanks

Joe

Yes, you should list hobbies including sports - those can sometimes be a point of conversation during the interview.
I forgot to list my hobbies before I finalized my applications and the subject came up on a couple of interviews.
Oviously not a make-or-break deal.

 

[whodatMD]

So what can you tell me about the "typical" interview day? What was the day like? What questions did they ask? Was it formal or informal? Any insight would be awesome.

 

[intcards]

Most of the interview days were structured as follows:
7:30am: attend scheduled conference for the day
8:30am: program director addresses the group
9:30am: Interviews/tour
12:00pm: Lunch with current fellows and sometimes the faculty
12-3pm: Remainder of interviews/tour (if you didn't go on the tour in the morning)

The number of interviewes is highly variable but usually averages around 4-5, which last 30minutes-1 hour. They are formal in the sense that you should wear a suit, but they are very collegial. Its just a conversation about you and your career goals.

I think it is important to remember that this is the closer to a job interview than any prior stage of training. So, the most common question, at least for academic programs, is "where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?". They not only want to know want you want to do, but how you plan on getting there. Everything else stems from here. How do plan to make the transition from fellow to junior faculty? Do you plan to stay in academics? If so, are you planning on applying for grants? These last three usually aren't asked directly (although a few asked them to me straight out), but this is what they are getting with the 5-10 plan question, which everyone asks.

They will also usually ask what kind of research you have done and what kind of projects are you are interested in doing in the future. They usually won't really care about the nuances of your prior work (unless they happen to be researching the same topic), but they want to see if you have some sort of research plan, and if your research interests matches that of the institution. This all goes back to the 5-10 year plan question.

Obviously, this will be very different for community programs. For those, I think the most common questions were "tell me about yourself", "why cardiology?", "what are you looking for in a fellowship?", "do you want to move to x location", "why don't you want to stay at your current program" (thats always a tough one). I advertised that I was interested in interventional so I got alot of "what do you see as the future of interventional". Really, nothing unexpected.

 

[intcards]

Some tips:
1. Look-up the research interests of the faculty before your interview and indentify a potential mentor.

2. After you are e-mailed your schedule, ask to meet with that potential mentor if you are not already scheduled to do so. You should also ask to meet with anyone who shares your specific clinical interests. For example, if you want to do interventional, ask to meet with the head of the cath lab. The programs are usually pretty good about setting you up to meet with like-minded faculty, but this isn't always the case. The reason to do this is that you want to get as many people on your side as possible.

3. You should be be prepared to give a sales pitch. "I want to be an academic general cardiologist with a focus on prevention who does outcomes clinical research. I have done research on "x" in the past and I have an idea to study "y". This is ideal because Dr. "z" is already studying "whatever", which is similar to "y" and he would be a great mentor. I am scheduled to meet with Dr. "z" later today to discuss some of my ideas"

4. If you are applying to an academic program, be familiar with what type of funding is available, F grants, K grants, AHA grant, etc and which you would be eligible for. But don't bring it up and less you know exactly what you are talking about.

5. Make sure your sales-pitch makes sense and is conguent with your application. Don't say that you want to do interventional cardiology and you plan to apply for an R01 during your last year of fellowship. That is unrealistic...very few interventionalists have an R01 and they are not available to fellows.

6. Make sure you are friendly with the fellows. EVERYONE is evaluating you during the interview day. I have seen applicants get black-listed because they rubbed some of the fellows the wrong way during lunch.

 

[Dreemer005]

Some tips:
1. Look-up the research interests of the faculty before your interview and indentify a potential mentor.

2. After you are e-mailed your schedule, ask to meet with that potential mentor if you are not already scheduled to do so. You should also ask to meet with anyone who shares your specific clinical interests. For example, if you want to do interventional, ask to meet with the head of the cath lab. The programs are usually pretty good about setting you up to meet with like-minded faculty, but this isn't always the case. The reason to do this is that you want to get as many people on your side as possible.

3. You should be be prepared to give a sales pitch. "I want to be an academic general cardiologist with a focus on prevention who does outcomes clinical research. I have done research on "x" in the past and I have an idea to study "y". This is ideal because Dr. "z" is already studying "whatever", which is similar to "y" and he would be a great mentor. I am scheduled to meet with Dr. "z" later today to discuss some of my ideas"

4. If you are applying to an academic program, be familiar with what type of funding is available, F grants, K grants, AHA grant, etc and which you would be eligible for. But don't bring it up and less you know exactly what you are talking about.

5. Make sure your sales-pitch makes sense and is conguent with your application. Don't say that you want to do interventional cardiology and you plan to apply for an R01 during your last year of fellowship. That is unrealistic...very few interventionalists have an R01 and they are not available to fellows.

6. Make sure you are friendly with the fellows. EVERYONE is evaluating you during the interview day. I have seen applicants get black-listed because they rubbed some of the fellows the wrong way during lunch.

Those are all great comments and points. Just to expand on #3, in addition to identifying a mentor with similar ideas, you should also be ready to say what you would bring that can build upon that mentor's work. I remember when I was applying, at a certain program when I mentioned a faculty member I wanted to work with b/c I did similar work, the program director appeared annoyed and said: "That is Dr. Z's work, we don't need a technician for Dr. Z. We need someone to bring new leadership and direction to our institution. What would be different about your focus?"

 

[ProgCoordinator]

Some tips:


2. ...ask to meet with that potential mentor if you are not already scheduled to do so. You should also ask to meet with anyone who shares your specific clinical interests. For example, if you want to do interventional, ask to meet with the head of the cath lab. The programs are usually pretty good about setting you up to meet with like-minded faculty, but this isn't always the case. The reason to do this is that you want to get as many people on your side as possible.

I suggest that you make any such requests as far in advance as possible. For one, doing so will increase your chance of getting the meeting(s). Secondly, attempting to accommodate such requests on the interview day is a nightmare and makes a candidate appear to be shortsighted and ill prepared if they'd already been sent a list of interviewers ahead of time.

 

[whodatMD]

In regards to the interview, what exactly are they looking for in their candidates... anything specific? And what makes a good interviewer vs a bad one? Any thoughts?