interview months?

[45408]

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I'm planning on M4 schedule, and I have three vacation months. We're generally quite limited on our ability to take any time off during a rotation to interview, so that's a good chunk of what these months are for. I'd like to take some actual vacation, so I'd like to only use two months for interviewing. Would November/January or November/December be enough to interview for gen surg? Or should I really be available for Nov/Dec/Jan?

 

[SLUser11]

I'm planning on M4 schedule, and I have three vacation months. We're generally quite limited on our ability to take any time off during a rotation to interview, so that's a good chunk of what these months are for. I'd like to take some actual vacation, so I'd like to only use two months for interviewing. Would November/January or November/December be enough to interview for gen surg? Or should I really be available for Nov/Dec/Jan?

That's awesome that you get 3 months of vacation. This would be a good time to do some recreational reading, etc. As for interviews, I think you can have a real vacation and still be available for interviews during all 3 months, unless you're planning on going to Europe for a month.

The problem is that some programs will only have a few dates to choose from, and you need to be flexible, since they have several hundred worthy students interested in interviewing. It's near-impossible to predict when your dream program will be offering interviews....maybe Nov/Dec/Jan, maybe Dec/Jan, maybe Nov/Jan.

 

[Smurfette]

You may want to take one of those months after the match...say May. After the match it gets pretty hard to be motivated to go in for rotations. Take vacation in December and January if you so choose, there aren't a ton of interviews in November (and many surgery interviews are on saturdays, so depending on your rotation you may not need to take time off for them).

 

[surg]

Dec and January are going to be your highest yield. The earliest interviews are usually in mid November, but even those places usually offer at least a few Dec or early January dates. Similarly, there are a few places that interview even out into early Feb, but they will all have at least a few January dates.

 

[45408]

thanks for the info so far!

anyone know about any regional variability? I'm going to try to meet with some surgery faculty at my school, because some of them are very well-informed on this sort of thing as it applies to schools by us. I'm almost certainly going to stay in the Midwest - MN/WI/IL/IN - so if that has any impact, that'd be nice to know.

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

I'm planning on M4 schedule, and I have three vacation months. We're generally quite limited on our ability to take any time off during a rotation to interview, so that's a good chunk of what these months are for. I'd like to take some actual vacation, so I'd like to only use two months for interviewing. Would November/January or November/December be enough to interview for gen surg? Or should I really be available for Nov/Dec/Jan?

I wish I had that flexibility...

I would take Dec/Jan off if I were you.

I'll be taking Jan off, but have been stuck in a pretty stringent rotation in December (only allowed 2-3 days off, but a little more flexible on weekends). Hopefully can make it all work...