I understand the need for interview to gain information that can't be obtained from application. However, I think it is important to keep in mind that this is a very short and very stressful encounter for many students. People don't always behave in their usual way in the interview.
One of the exact reasons why the interview is key. I have seen interviewees who have absolutely rocked their paperwork. They look like they literally could give Einstein a run for his money. I've seen that same kid admitted to the program, trained like everyone else, and repetitively flounder with the practicality of it. You want to talk about stress? Try knowing that on your first night of call as an ENT resident, you are now THE airway expert for your hospital(s) being covered. This same Einstein who so very impressed me with his ability to recall every nuance of Cummings allowed a man to have hypoxic brain injury because he couldn't work through an algorithm on a patient whose trach became dislodged in the ICU. As an R4 he froze (again--this wasn't his first time), and the R2 had to push him out of the way and intubate because he was so focused on inserting the trach and kept getting a false passage. In an unstressed situation, he could name 150 ways to get an airway on this same patient, but under stress he hurt someone.
You may think that an extreme example, but it's not, this was repetitive and became a pattern in a significant number of the "elite paperwork" residents who didn't interview as well.
I understand that argument re well rounded personality but on some level it reminds me of the "who would you rather have beer with" argument when it comes to political elections. We don't elect presidents to have beer with and we should select residents for their potential to contribute to the specialty. Past performance is the best predictor of future performance and a few minutes of face to face contact should not invalidate lifetime of hard work.
Geez, no one's invalidating anyone's work. But I can tell you it has become easier over the years of interviewing to know who you're going to work well with and who you won't, who will be fun to work with and who won't, and who can handle themselves and who can't. I've been wrong in interviews before and have been surprised in both directions, but less so now than when I was first out.
"Past performance" academically (especially when comparing the candidate with a Step I of 245 vs the one with a 230) has about zero relevance to working a 16 hour free flap while simultaneously managing questions from the jr residents about patients on the floor while handling the stress of your sick child at home with your wife who's frustrated your not home for dinner again.
Also, I spent years in medical training on 3 continents and frankly could never understand the rationale for giving preference to people with athletic or some other unrelated achievement when it comes to academic admissions in US.
Are you kidding? How about because the guy with great numbers might only have great numbers and nothing else because he didn't have the skill set to do anything else.
I guarantee you after doing interviews for the last 10 years that the person with some nonacademic, but nevertheless impressive, achievement is far more interesting to talk to than the person without.
I played division I golf in college and had the opportunity to play against Mickelson when I was a freshman and Tiger when I was a senior. I found it weird at the time I was interviewing that this was the only thing 50%+ of my interviewers wanted to talk about. At all. Most who were into hearing about it didn't ask a single thing about my scores or research or grades on rotations. They asked me to tell stories about golf, about what I thought about my school's chairman, about performance-enhancing drugs in college, etc.
I know why now. And until you're there interviewing, you may not ever understand it.
