How Much Did You Spend

Started by rmcray08
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R

rmcray08

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10+ Year Member
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I find it interesting that there's no published source of data for how much applicants spend in total on applying and interviewing for residency. Obviously this varies tremendously across applicants and across specialities, but I'd love to know the range. I know we don't all keep line-by-line expense logs, but do your best to ballpark. If you're willing to play nice, just use the format here (I'll insert my own numbers):

Interviews: 8
Total Cost: $1,500

I was lucky. Wanted to stay fairly local and had a good number of regional options and friends and family to stay with.
 
Interviews: 10
Total cost: over $6000

Food, lodging, dry cleaning, and travel included. That is what happens when you live in the boonies and your interviews are in random areas of the country.
 
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Interviews: 14
Total cost: ~2600


11 different states, all over the country: 3 flights and >5K miles driving.

ETA: I actually did keep expense logs. Here's how it broke down:
Gas - 626.02
Hotels - 432.62
Flights - 1180
Car rental - 158.21
Food - 56.60
Other (parking, turnpikes, etc.) - 16.27
Interview shirt: 20
Plus probably some incidentals that I missed, so rounded to 2600. Does not include price of thank you notes and stamps...
 
Last edited:
Interviews: 13
Total Cost: ~3000

Flew to five of them, stayed in hotels for 10 of the 13. Would have been more but used frequent flyer miles on some hotels and flights.
 
Interviews: 30 (advanced specialties in ACGME as a DO...a costly proposition in time and money)
Total Cost: ~7,000, application included.
 
Postictal Raiden said:
You attended 30 interviews???

How were you able to take that much time off from rotations?
Click to expand...
Rotations? As a 4th year? During interview season? Why would you do that to yourself?

I took half of November, all of December and half of January off as a 4th year. I was doing a "research elective" in December but it mostly consisted of cleaning up my bench in my PhD lab and writing a paper.
 
gutonc said:
Rotations? As a 4th year? During interview season? Why would you do that to yourself?

I took half of November, all of December and half of January off as a 4th year. I was doing a "research elective" in December but it mostly consisted of cleaning up my bench in my PhD lab and writing a paper.
Click to expand...

Ditto. I didn't have any rotations from Oct15 - Jan1 and then Jan was an easy rotation that I could blow off as needed. I also didn't take anything after April 15. Hooray for 4th year.
 
Postictal Raiden said:
You attended 30 interviews???

How were you able to take that much time off from rotations?
Click to expand...

I did 21 interviews back when I was interviewing for residency. I had December and January off and all but a couple of interviews were in those months. I did decline 4 interviews as they conflicted with other scheduling. I was pretty over the whole process by about #12...
 
gutonc said:
Rotations? As a 4th year? During interview season? Why would you do that to yourself?

I took half of November, all of December and half of January off as a 4th year. I was doing a "research elective" in December but it mostly consisted of cleaning up my bench in my PhD lab and writing a paper.
Click to expand...

....you bothered to write a paper on a research elective as a 4th year?
 
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