A small program, three residents, in a cold and dusty depression era capital of a great state. I liked the medical center, despite its old and decrepit appearance. I felt that my fellow applicants were some of the less qualified during my interview season, however I don't know how much I can trust that kind of an assessment. This was the first interview I had in NY and found that NY students circulated through the state and preferred to stay there.
*the good:
- the residents appear very invested in the program, most of them from NY state. they were very polite and seemed really happy. there was one guy from England who was a particular charm.
- Their program director Dr. Schultze is really pleasant. He interviewed with Dr. Meyer (sp?), an ASOPRS trained/host faculty for their fellowship, and both were a lot of fun to chat with.
- Their chair, Dr. Simon, is a very invested person and was very pleasant.
- The city is old and "upstate" as they say, but I really liked it. The state put a lot of money into it during the depression and it kind of rings of the era.
- It seems like a nice place to have a family
- the VA is old, but I expect that from most schools. I actually kind of liked the appeal of having a sturdy, stone-made building. the new VAs aren't as nice
*the bad:
- the coordinator misdirected me in the interview process (their Lion's building holds the interviews and has several stories, predisposing to confusion and communication errors), telling me to go back to the conference room when I was really supposed to move to the next interview on another floor, and I received the blame for this by the faculty waiting for me. I don't care about the fumble necessarily, however the response by faculty was informative. I felt that I had every reason to want to be on time (I flew to the school from the other side of the country for god's sake), that I had demonstrated as much with my presence and pleasant demeanor in responding to their obvious anger. Still they did not give me the benefit of the doubt and acted as though I had made some grave error when in fact I was only a couple minutes late with plenty of time remaining to answer questions and conduct an interview. Yea maybe it wasn't the smoothest experience, however we're adults and we can get beyond non optimal experiences. Why they couldn't simply over-look their obvious misstep is confusing to me to this day.
- the dept. chair looked really tired and over-worked or something. he and his co-interviewer didn't know my app and were kind of fumbling with it during my introduction. maybe a small thing but I think it kind of shows
- the residents' interview seemed like a checkbox, less important to their selection process.
- they invite you to a dinner afterwards, it's hard to say no to it; I felt like I knew what I needed to know after the interviews. anything in addition seemed excessive.
