How much personal information to share during interview

[chickensoupdr]

For residency and fellowship interviews, how much personal information should be shared?
How should you approach these interviews? As a polite conversation vs persuasive vs formal?
I know there's questions that program are not allowed to ask, but do they expect interviewees to voluntarily provide that information?
Do they care to know about family/significant other/children?

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[PTPoeny]

This is highly variable based on your field and each individual program and your specific situation. I know when I was in residency there was a student my program wanted and they talked another program at the same hospital into interviewing the spouse, so it definitely helped them. There are also still programs/individual interviewers that assume women (mostly, maybe some assume any resident) with children won't work as hard as everyone else and volunteering information will hurt you.

 

[mvenus929]

I mean, you care about your SO/family/children, so at some point, you should be asking questions to get a feel for what the environment is like with or without them. People will pick up on it. Will it make a difference? Maybe. Maybe not. But most of the time, this is with the residents/fellows and not necessarily faculty. Faculty interviews tend to be more formal, but share what you feel comfortable sharing. There's also something to be said about feeling out the culture. For instance, if you identify as LGB, then 'hiding' that information may get you a spot, but do you really want to be at a place that is not openly supportive of you?

But yes, it will depend widely on the field and program--pediatricians and family medicine docs tend to be more person centered than stat-centered, for instance.

 

[Raryn]

You can bring up however much or how little you want. Some programs are clearly family friendly - if all the current house-staff and faculty and discussing their families and how wonderful the location is and how much support they have, bringing up your SO or kid is probably not going to hurt you. If they're a program where the divorce rate is >100% (that is, people often get divorced, remarried, and redivorced during their time there) and think family is the least important thing - it's probably not the best idea to bring up how dedicated you are to your family.

Similarly if you're not in a "traditional" household. If you're gay, you can get a feel for how tolerant the program is - and if the environment appears questionable about it, you *may* not want to bring up your same-sex significant other. Or if you're a single parent, bringing up the kid in a program that talks about how busy they are still probably not the best idea.