2021-2022 Interviews: virtual or in-person?

[Redpancreas]

I mean, it's in the data...

https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NRMP-2018-Program-Director-Survey-for-WWW.pdf

Away Rotations and Matching in Integrated Plastic Surgery... : Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery

tic surgery program directors and all applicants in the 2015 National Residency Matching Program. Results: Forty-two program directors and 149 applicants (64 percent and 70 percent response rate, respectively) completed the survey. Applicants reported 13.7 weeks spent on plastic surgery...

journals.lww.com

The plastic surgery paper shows some data that indicates the importance of aways. The quoted is good to know:

“Program directors (integrated plastics) ranked a strong away rotation performance as the most important residency selection criterion. Twenty-seven percent of postgraduate year–1 positions were filled by an away rotatorm and an additional 17 percent were filled by a home medical student.”


Look at the NRMP surveys though. For most fields I looked at (IM, Derm, Ortho, ENT, plastics) audition rotations were in the 60-80% percent cited range always lower than board scores and interview day performance. I think these NRMP surveys need to be taken with a grain of salt as percent cited differs from importance IMO.

If you suspect a trend (small surgical fields appreciate the away more) you’ll find it if you look for it as you can see Ortho/Plastics value (60-80%) the away more than IM (50%)

Another example of this is visa status holds a 30% citing for IM...yeah tell that to IMGs...

Overall what I said still holds true which is that I think in real life the away/elective data is more important than these NRMP surveys make it out to be. Perhaps to gauge its relative importance, you can subtract the percent citing for all programs/average (first table) from what your field cites the importance of always as.

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[Redpancreas]

I did 20 interviews...2 were very transparent residents are happy...2 are not...16 are questionable. All 20 said they have collegial culture.

Do you think only 10 would have said they have a collegial culture if you went on in person interviews (or somehow that would have been made more apparent).

 

[MedScat]

Another important thing that I think makes in person interview better...as a vey average applicant, I feel people who are average will get less interview invites since the competitive ones will be like "its zoom, i can do this from my living room, sure I'll accept it." When in the past, spending the money to travel to less desirable programs wasn't worth it for them. This is actually the main thing that scares me about continuing virtual interviews. I guess if I was super competitive with awesome board scores I wouldn't mind virtual interviews so much

 

[frenchyn]

Do you think only 10 would have said they have a collegial culture if you went on in person interviews (or somehow that would have been made more apparent).

They will all say they have collegial culture even in in-person interviews, but you can tell which are lying better than zoom.

 

[Redpancreas]

Another important thing that I think makes in person interview better...as a vey average applicant, I feel people who are average will get less interview invites since the competitive ones will be like "its zoom, i can do this from my living room, sure I'll accept it." When in the past, spending the money to travel to less desirable programs wasn't worth it for them. This is actually the main thing that scares me about continuing virtual interviews. I guess if I was super competitive with awesome board scores I wouldn't mind virtual interviews so much

That’s a fair point. The little guy doesn’t get the interview he/she would fit best at because all the programs are chasing the same “interview hoarders”. This was a point C/O 2021 debated and speculated about at length and reasoned that in response to less interviews, they would fall higher on their match lists which didn’t happen...which meant programs did a pretty good job of expanding interview slots to anticipate the demand of increased candidates due to the zoom format. That’s just my speculation but I suppose that’s a solid concern.

They will all say they have collegial culture even in in-person interviews, but you can tell which are lying better than zoom.

I can see how you can gauge body language (I.e.) see the sweat on people’s faces and bags under eyes better in person than on Zoom. That said, you have very limited information on the program and it’s politics. Every program has their peppy cheerleader the program is happy to throw out there to sing the programs praises.

 

[aldol16]

Look at the NRMP surveys though. For most fields I looked at (IM, Derm, Ortho, ENT, plastics) audition rotations were in the 60-80% percent cited range always lower than board scores and interview day performance. I think these NRMP surveys need to be taken with a grain of salt as percent cited differs from importance IMO.

I'm not looking at the % cited but rather at the mean importance ratings. If you look past the first few pages, you'll see that for each specialty, they have ratings of importance for each factor. "Audition elective/rotation within your department" The actual weight varies across specialties but almost universally in competitive specialties it's one of the more important ones.

 

[Redpancreas]

I mean, it's in the data...

https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NRMP-2018-Program-Director-Survey-for-WWW.pdf

Away Rotations and Matching in Integrated Plastic Surgery... : Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery

tic surgery program directors and all applicants in the 2015 National Residency Matching Program. Results: Forty-two program directors and 149 applicants (64 percent and 70 percent response rate, respectively) completed the survey. Applicants reported 13.7 weeks spent on plastic surgery...

journals.lww.com

Maybe I suck at looking at these graphs. All I see are ENT, Ortho, Plastics, etc. showing audition/aways between 60-80%. I dont see a separate mean importance score for each factor broken down by specialty. Can you point your old man to the page you're seeing this on the NRMP survey (printed page number, note what the PDF thing says).

 

[aldol16]

Maybe I suck at looking at these graphs. All I see are ENT, Ortho, Plastics, etc. showing audition/aways between 60-80%. I dont see a separate mean importance score for each factor broken down by specialty.

... Where you see the percentages... look to the right. Do you see the average importance rating on a scale of 1-5?

 

[Redpancreas]

... Where you see the percentages... look to the right. Do you see the average importance rating on a scale of 1-5?

Wow. I'm dumb. I'm sorry for the confusion.

 

[ohmanwaddup]

so since it is looking like we will be doing another virtual season, what are the tips and tricks for background? I plan on investing in one of this tik tok lights and a good webcam, but should I invest effort into my background being interesting? Moving my desk around, putting a bookshelf with interesting stuff behind me, etc.

 

[SurgDoc95]

Would not be the least bit surprised if the APDS left it up to the individual program. I know my PD is itching to get candidates back in person, but we’re a small program so probably not indicative of the field as a whole

 

[MDMechEngr]

My fellowship is never going back to in person interviews. It is unnecessary. We have already committed to that as a program. N = 1

I think more and more programs will go virtual. I would be nice to have in-person second look however.

 

[Redpancreas]

I think more and more programs will go virtual. I would be nice to have in-person second look however.

Yeah if virtual is where we are going we are disrupting the natural order of things. Travel served as nature’s application cap. I want virtual but we will have to find a way to limit people from literally applying to every program in their specialty. I’m sure there’s a way and below are just ideas off the top of my head. With more thought, there has to be a way to solve this issue.

#1 Possibility: Interview caps. This will make it so more competitive candidates will think twice about interviewing somewhere that may take the spot of a place they want to go to.

#2 Possibility: Rolling interviews. Those who do not have “X” interview invites by such date should be invited to add applications. This would be tougher to monitor and people on the border of the cutoff will get screwed.

 

[Redpancreas]

I think more and more programs will go virtual. I would be nice to have in-person second look however.

That would seem like a good compromise but there will be so many mind games about who attends the second look on both sides. Programs would have to announce ahead of the time their intent to blind themselves to who attended but can they do that and still make the second looks meaningful?