Neurology Interview Impressions 2018

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Neurosaurus

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Please post your Neurology Residency interview impressions in this thread, in whatever format you would like.
If you want to remain anonymous, you can send your impressions to me and I'll post them anonymously.

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Someone posted this over on reddit yesterday as well.

Edit: was trying to link out to a google doc of interview impressions but I don't have the credentials to do so (long time lurker)
 
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I dug through reddit to find the above mentioned google docs link:

EDIT: NM it won't let me post the link, will try to fix

2nd EDIT: I am linking to the comment with the link. Enjoy! I'm sure it will get more traffic this way than being buried in a bunch of comments.

 
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On behalf of anonymous:

Case Western

This was a "2-day" interview. Info sessions/presentations by faculty 4pm-6pm on the first day, then the pre-interview dinner with residents. Second day was 7:30am to about 3pm if I remember correctly, with interviews in the morning and tours in the afternoon.

Pros: I loved the PD, Dr. Preston (neuromuscular). Super friendly and joke-y and obviously cared a lot about resident wellbeing. He gave a presentation on the first interview day that was an overview of the structure of the program and some background on all the departments. He's very proud of the fact that there is no call whatsoever (just a few night float rotations) and that is huge for me. The program size is quite large, which I see as an advantage because it makes scheduling vacations and electives that much easier. He also talked a little bit about life in Cleveland and quality-of-life stuff, which also really resonated with me. Emphasized things like low cost of living, short commutes, free parking, and most everything being on one campus (notable exception being the VA but there is a shuttle and it isn't far). I felt like he really sees things from the residents' perspective and cares about their happiness. Unfortunately I never got to talk to him 1 on 1, because only half of our applicant group got to interview with him, while the other half interviewed with the chair.
Another pro for me was the city of Cleveland itself. I'd never been before but I really, really liked it. I stayed an extra night to check out the city and there was a Cavs game going on so everyone was out and having fun. Great food and drinks. Amazing cost of living (I'm hoping to buy a house in residency) and super nice people.

Cons: Out of the four faculty members who I interviewed with, one had read my application. ONE. A couple of them were flipping through it for the first time while talking to me in order to try to come up with questions to ask, which was somehow worse than not reading it at all. One of them answered 3 non-urgent text messages during my 20-minute interview with her (I know they weren't urgent because she was telling me what they were about while answering them). One of them flipped through my letters just to see who wrote them and in a snobby tone said "I don't know any of these people" and tossed them back onto his desk. I know it's not personal but I found all of this pretty insulting because I spent a lot of time and money coming to Cleveland to interview, and in exchange they couldn't even be bothered to look at my app. To be clear, I understand that the purpose of an interview is not to re-hash one's application line by line. But it was impossible to get a conversation going when they had absolutely no background info on me and appeared visibly bored.
Another (much more minor) issue was that the pre-interview dinner wasn't super well attended. Given the sheer size of the program, I expected a better turnout. There were tons of residents at morning conference the next day so the program coordinator's excuse of "lots of people are on vacation right now" didn't really hold water. The residents I did meet were extremely nice though, and seemed happy with the program.

Overall: This program has so many great things going for it and I loved the city. I just wish I'd had better interviewers.
 
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