Budgeting for Residency Interviews

[ANCAdoc]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I am a 3rd year trying to get an estimate of how much I should save back for residency interviews later this year. I know this obviously varies alot, but given my sub-par Step 1 (below avg) I am going to apply broadly (most likely into IM).

For those of you on the interview trail or already done, how much can I expect to spend? I can see this getting pretty expensive quickly.

 

[gutonc]

I am a 3rd year trying to get an estimate of how much I should save back for residency interviews later this year. I know this obviously varies alot, but given my sub-par Step 1 (below avg) I am going to apply broadly (most likely into IM).

For those of you on the interview trail or already done, how much can I expect to spend? I can see this getting pretty expensive quickly.

Yes, this varies widely but, assuming you will be interviewing @ 15 or so programs in varying parts of the country, you should budget a minimum $5K or so. OTOH, if you decide to target a particular part of the country (midwest) or northeast for instance), you can save a chunk of change by not having to fly and driving to all your interviews.

I interviewed @ 18 programs 2y ago in the NE, MW and NW. I was able to drive to all the NE interviews (Dartmouth to RWJ geographically) and only paid for 2 hotel nights in 8 interviews (day trips and staying w/ friends). My midwest trips (2 of them) were much more expensive (a week in Chicago, 2 nights in MSP, 2 nights in Madison, 1 in Milwaukee). My NW trip was all family/friends and 1 flight. I spent ~$6K and this included flights for my wife.

You can do it on the cheap if need be (<$1K if you target your current region and stay w/ friends/family/residents or do day trips) but there are also residency/relocation loans available through all the major student loan lenders if you need extra cash.

 

[Doowai]

but given my sub-par Step 1 (below avg) I am going to apply broadly (most likely into IM).

A nice thing about less competitive residencies is they take care of more things. I did all FP and all of them paid for hotel and most paid for dinner the night before and most of them also provided breakfast and lunch. In contrast all the ortho programs I heard of did not pay for hotel and no food.

Some FP residencies pay some money for just interviewing there. Iowa and Wisconsin have state funded passport programs that give you money if you interview at a certain number of programs in those states. Plus two programs I interviewed at paid me actual cash to interview - one paid me $200 flat and the other paid for receipted expenses (about $350).

So applying to less competitive programs meant hotels covered, often 3 meals covered, about $600 in cash, and usually various gift bags of books, coffee mugs and candy bars.

If you were doing ortho you would pay hotel, pay food and certainly not get any checks for showing up.

 

[mlw03]

I am a 3rd year trying to get an estimate of how much I should save back for residency interviews later this year. I know this obviously varies alot, but given my sub-par Step 1 (below avg) I am going to apply broadly (most likely into IM).

For those of you on the interview trail or already done, how much can I expect to spend? I can see this getting pretty expensive quickly.

assume any interview you have to fly to will cost you 400-500 (depending on whether hotel is covered or not). some cities you'll need to rent a car, others have good enough public transit or hotel shuttles. if you need a car, 30 per day is an estimate. geography is the biggest factor in how much you'll ultimately have to spend. also think about new clothes if necessary (you need at least 2 interview outfits, plus winter gear if you're from the south and interviewing in the north like i did). i agree with the 5000 estimate thrown out there for someone in your position, assuming you're not applying mostly to your own geographic region.

 

[Blade28]

I tried to group my interviews together by geographic location - West Coast, East Coast, Midwest, etc. But the airfare, car rentals and hotels will still kill you.

I spent over $8k (had to take out a loan).

 

[ANCAdoc]

I spent over $8k (had to take out a loan).

WOW!!

 

[Blade28]

WOW!!

Lots of apps = lots of interviews, flights, hotels, car rentals, etc. 🙁

 

[mlw03]

I tried to group my interviews together by geographic location - West Coast, East Coast, Midwest, etc. But the airfare, car rentals and hotels will still kill you.

I spent over $8k (had to take out a loan).

this is a good idea, and if you can, do it. but sometimes you can't - i had separate trips for interviews in ohio, michigan, and wisconsin... coming from florida!! you just have to weigh all the costs and decide how to best do your trip. blade is right that hotels, cars, and airfare kill ya - try to take advantage of friends and/or family in each region if possible. saving $100 per night by not staying in a hotel makes a huge difference.

 

[Blade28]

Agreed that when possible, stay with friends/family. Stay at cheap hotels otherwise. Try to fly the same airline and stay at the same chain to earn frequent flyer miles. Take advantage of the programs' free lunches, dinners, etc. Use miles that you might have saved up from before for free flights. And take public transport in cities where driving is both expensive and dangerous (e.g. Boston!).

 

[gng930]

I'm definitely in the minority, but I was able to go to 21 interviews and spend a shade over $2K. I applied predominantly to the East Coast (where I was rotating) and West Coast (where I'm from). Since the New Year though, I've been rotating in California. Basically, I just scheduled all my East Coast interviews before the New Year and the West Coast interviews after. Only had to fly out 1.5 times for an interviews. That 0.5 is from 2 interviews I did ini Kentucky while flying back to NY from CA after spending Thanksgiving in CA.

For the most part it's all about where you are applying compared to where you currently are (or will be).

But just keep in mind that even one interview can set you back a few hundred. Even an interview that was a 2-hour flight away (Sacramento --> Phoenix) ended up setting me back close to $400.

As you can see, if someone were to go on 20+ interviews, it's entirely feasible to run up an $8000 bill.

 

[yaah]

Unfortunately, you won't know if some things will apply to you until later - like whether you will be able to "batch" your interviews. I lived in MA and interviewed at I think 11-12 programs mostly in the midwest and northeast. I only had to take two round trip flights. I flew once to Detroit and drove around from there to Iowa, Chicago, and back and visited four programs within about a two week period (stayed with family for a few days along the way though). The other round trip flight was to Utah for a two day, one program visit. The remaining interviews I drove to and batched - one night in a hotel per interview. It worked out fine, but it might not be an option depending on what options programs give you.

I can't even remember how much I spent total. Figure about $800 for the two flights, $1000 total for hotels (many were paid for), couple hundred for gas and food (this was in 2003 so gas was cheaper).

 

[drtx]

Contact your local financial aid office and just take out the loan...At least interest rates dropped recently...

 

[Hard24Get]

Yes, make sure you have at least 5K pocketed just in case. I spent way less than that because:

- I used kayak.com to look for flights, hotels (searches every airline and broker website, very powerful) and grouped my interviews
- amtrak was surprisingly cheap if purchased early (ie, PHL->boston $68)
- I stayed in hostels when I could (nice ones!)
- I took public transportation at all but 2 interviews, including to/from the airport (no $40 taxi ride)

 

[mlw03]

i think there's a service called "yapta" that will notify you if a flight you've already bought a ticket for drops in price, and then i also think you can get the difference somehow. i didn't use this service, but recently someone told me about it so i thought i'd at least throw it out there.

 

[Sweet Tea]

I took out a $5K loan. I did 13 interviews and flew to most of them, but I was lucky and managed to group most of them and thus kept my flight expenses to a minimum. I spent less than $5K on the interviews, but I took a week-long trip to London over New Year's and used a chunk of my loan money for that. So worth it. 👍

 

[XoQo]

another site i've come to love while arranging travel plans for interviews this year is www.farecast.com

it's kinda like the other flight aggregators (orbitz, hotwire) with the exception that it also includes a heck of a lot of historical pricing information and gives you an estimate of whether the price will change between today and say, the next few days. Managed to save a few hundred bucks "timing" the market.

also helpful in that if you tell it to limit flights to say those that arrive no later than 4pm on a given day it only shows you itineraries that meet that criteria (for some stupid reason, maybe issues on my part, some of the other sites would still show me flights outside of my time preferences)


...


budget as much as you are comfortable devoting to interviews. People in my class picked a wide range of numbers (one guy earmarked 10k in loans for it, saved the cash over like 3 years). Start saving NOW. Interviews are a stressful time, and sometimes having more cash around than you really need can decrease the stress when making last minute travel plans.

A few places gave me interviews with about 1.5 weeks notice back in December when they had cancellations. One place was definitely a surprise (didn't expect to get an interview from there, hell i was honored they even spoke to me lol) and i leaped at the opportunity to go. Having the cash saved up really helped because i was able to book tickets/hotel with the shorter notice and less stress had I not had a bit of an emergency fund saved up.

My advice would be to keep money stashed away for maybe 2 "surprise" interviews. Enough for plane tickets, hotel, miscellaneous. Hotel and misc you can kinda control costs for but keep 300-400 on hand for last minute plane tickets because last minute can mean either very cheap or very expensive tickets depending on city. And definitely look into Amtrak as others have mentioned.