heaviest month for peds interviews

[DocTex]

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At my school in 4th year we get 8 weeks (each a 4 week block) of vacation and in general most people take 4 weeks between 3rd and 4th year to study and take boards. Then most use the other 4 week block at a time when they are interviewing a lot. This is necessary because my school is picky about missing days of a rotation for interviews. So my question is, for pediatric residency interviews, during which month did y'all have the most interviews? Thanks for the help.

 

[agp4]

Most of mine were in December, with a couple in November and January.

 

[Pedsrocks]

i would take november and december off. most people try to use december, which makes these dates more challenging to get yourself, but by mid-January, many programs were stopping interviews this year so I think november and december would be most useful.

 

[GoSpursGo]

I would say November and December were about equal for me. If you can only do one, just pick one and try to stay on top of replying to invites ASAP; I think those dates are about equally easy/difficult to get.

I also only took one month off during interview season. One strategy that I used was to take an elective with flexible scheduling hours during the other big interview month. For example, in my case I did a Pedi EM elective, and since weekend shifts are essentially the same as any other shift I just put my "days off" in the middle of the week and used them for interviews. That wound up working out very well for me.

Beyond that, while it's the job of the administration to take a "hard line" and say you can only miss X days during a rotation, the truth of the matter is that most of my friends who wound up being forced to take rotations that should theoretically be "inflexible" found a way to work it out with their team. The residents, for the most part, remember what it was like to go through the application season a couple of years ago, and as long as my friends worked hard while they were there and made a good-faith effort to schedule their interviews for the time they had off, if something unavoidable came up the team would generally find a way to make it work.

 

[SB100]

If your school schedule works this way, see if you can take off the block between Thanksgiving and winter break. That way you get 6 weeks off, 4 of which you can use for interviews (when a lot of programs schedule them).

 

[justdoit31]

I did most in November, had 1-2 in December but most places stop interviews by Dec 20th and don't resume until after Jan 4th or so... I also had 3 in January but all but one of them I could have scheduled in November if I had wanted to.

Does your school also allow days off during rotations? We had 2 days per 2 weeks to use for interviews (4 in a month)... that helped as some more competitive places only have a few options and spots fill up fast.

 

[Slade]

I did most in November, had 1-2 in December but most places stop interviews by Dec 20th and don't resume until after Jan 4th or so... I also had 3 in January but all but one of them I could have scheduled in November if I had wanted to.

Does your school also allow days off during rotations? We had 2 days per 2 weeks to use for interviews (4 in a month)... that helped as some more competitive places only have a few options and spots fill up fast.

Same with my Jan interviews. I could have scheduled them all in November. However, if I had to choose between November and December, they were both heavy for me.

 

[Jessipeds]

I had them fairly evenly split between November and January, with a few in December. Many programs take a break for Christmas and New Year's weeks so December tends to be on the lighter side. But you can schedule them how you like, its really up to you.