What kind of fees are there for students? I'm an APA students member if that makes any difference.
its free for student members. minority medical students can apply for scholarships to attend the APA and IPS meetings for free (including hotel/flights etc) and you will receive mentorship from a resident which may or may not be useful.(too late for this year, but maybe time for the IPS meeting in NYC in october? which is a much better meeting anyway)
The APA is not an academic meeting. nothing terribly scientific or scholarly will make an appearance. It is mainly a networking event and there are lots of low brow sessions of every facet of psychiatry. There is supposed to be 13000 people there this year, so its a smaller meeting than usual as it's in Canada, to give you the idea of its scope. All the interest group and subspecialty societies usually meet (for example the black psychiatrists, indian psychiatrists, LGBT psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, critical psychiatrists, community psychiatrists, forensic psychiatrists, child, addictions, etc etc)
PsychSIGN usually organizes medical student sessions which may include program directors giving not very useful talks on applying for residency. they usually try to organize a fair with resident representatives plugging their programs so you could talk to different people about their programs. i am not sure how well attended this is, i certainly will not be there plugging my program as there are better things to do.
please do not bring your CV (if someone asks for it you can email it). please do not have business cards (i actually cringed when med students gave out their business cards to me it's just weird). by all means introduce yourself to people and try and learn all about how diverse this field is and make new connections. dont get all monomaniacal asking about applying for residency as you will just bore people or annoy them.
also be careful what you say! i have had medical students say quite appalling things unthinkingly at these kinds of meetings. this is how you get blacklisted. (I am talking about misogynistic, or racist, homophobic, comments or generally showing a disregard for disadvantaged individuals)
and if you are expecting residents to chat with you at length about applying to psychiatry, be sure to buy them a drink. i will happily buy the students i am mentoring drinks but otherwise i wont be impressed if you corner me and my glass is empty.
