Balancing ophtho interviews with intern year interviews

[JRBR]

Do any of you have suggestions on how to balance ophthalmology interviews with intern year interviews? The goal obviously is to get as many ophtho interview as possible, within reason. So with all the ophtho interviews, how are we supposed to attend interviews for transitional year programs?

Let's say I go to 12 ophtho interviews. Taking into account time needed to travel, that could be 20+ days dedicated to ophthalmology interviews. Add in a handful of transitional year interviews, and I essentially miss an entire month of rotation time.

A related question is how the timing works. Do most transitional year programs conduct interviews during November and December? Or do they do them afterwards? Even if I had a full 2 months off to just do interviews, if the transitional year programs do interviews on the same day as ophtho interviews, how do I attend enough to have a good shot at matching?

Thanks for any feedback!

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[JMK2005]

fortunately, the prelim interview is regular match so the interview season runs a little longer and there tends not to be too much conflict.
ophthalmology interviews take priority since worse case scenario you can match at your home institution. unlikely you need to scramble, but if that happens, so be it.

*my information may be dated since its been awhile for me.

 

[McGeorgia]

Once you schedule an ophtho interview, I would contact any associated prelim/TY programs and let them know you will be interviewing there for ophtho and ask if it would be possible to interview with them while you are in town. I did this with several programs and was able to do a quick interview either the day of, before, or after my ophtho interview. If they were unable to accommodate me, I scheduled them for after the ophtho match and canceled them if I was no longer interested. I was able to prevent wasting any extra time traveling to programs that I wouldn't rank highly unless I matched ophtho there. As far as any additional TY/prelim programs that I was really interested in, I tried to schedule them during my time off from rotations.

In response to JMK2005: I agree that the ophtho interviews take priority, but I would make sure you interview for enough prelim positions so that you don't have to scramble. Each year, the number of graduates is increasing, but the residency positions are not keeping pace. I heard this years scramble was very difficult. There were many people that matched advanced positions but were unable to scramble into a prelim spot or got stuck somewhere they did not want to be. I think it is worth the extra effort/cost at this point to avoid that situation later.

 

[HereEyeAm]

Let's say I go to 12 ophtho interviews. Taking into account time needed to travel, that could be 20+ days dedicated to ophthalmology interviews. Add in a handful of transitional year interviews, and I essentially miss an entire month of rotation time.

I'm doing a research elective in November, which allows for enough flexibility to interview. I'm taking December entirely off. I think most schools allow for time off to interview, so you shouldn't have to miss too much rotation time.