Official MCW Class of 2009 Thread

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20 interview offers and 2 rejections later I'm done accepting. Who wants to live in stupid ol' Maine anyway?
 
6 interviews, 1 default (sub-I), 8 rejections, 1 waitlist, LOTS programs that haven't rejected me, but have sent out interviews

I really need more interviews. =( Maybe 68 programs wasn't enough.

Congrats on so few rejections, Splat
 
Ashers said:
6 interviews, 1 default (sub-I), 8 rejections, 1 waitlist, LOTS programs that haven't rejected me, but have sent out interviews

I really need more interviews. =( Maybe 68 programs wasn't enough.

Congrats on so few rejections, Splat
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Thanks!

time to start sending emails out, maybe.
 
Ashers said:
How was the last place? Did you like it enough to stay for dinner?
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nope. visiting my grandma instead. Much better use of time.

It was in fact a really nice program, but I didn't get a warm vibe from it. The hospital is a bit ostentatious. Who needs an indoor floating garden full of fake plants? Plus one of the interviewers seemed annoyed I asked about how trauma cases are structured in terms of who does what. I got the impression it isn't as well-organized as at Froedtert. Minimal flight experience as well.
 
Agent Splat said:
nope. visiting my grandma instead. Much better use of time.

It was in fact a really nice program, but I didn't get a warm vibe from it. The hospital is a bit ostentatious. Who needs an indoor floating garden full of fake plants? Plus one of the interviewers seemed annoyed I asked about how trauma cases are structured in terms of who does what. I got the impression it isn't as well-organized as at Froedtert. Minimal flight experience as well.
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Visiting grandmas typically are a better use of time. Unless it's my grandma, and then she's just crazy, senile and manipulative -- bad combo, and I'd have to drive to Central Illinois. I don't have the patience to put up with her and my way into Alzheimers and CHF step-grandpa without my mom around.
 
Agent Splat said:
Plus one of the interviewers seemed annoyed I asked about how trauma cases are structured in terms of who does what. I got the impression it isn't as well-organized as at Froedtert.
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like trauma surgery taking all patients with multi-system injuries? and an ortho trauma service?
 
TheProwler said:
like trauma surgery taking all patients with multi-system injuries? and an ortho trauma service?
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more from the standpoint of how the patients are initially managed. at Froedtert there's that nice system in place that establishes who does what and how those roles are filled to make sure both EM and surgery residents get adequate exposure to all roles. At some places it's a crapshoot and "whoever gets there first" does "whatever." This would especially be a problem at newer programs where the surgery residents are used to doing everything then new EM residents suddenly require exposure to managing trauma in the ED as well. The only thing I've seen so far on my interviews that is pretty uniform is that "EM resident manages airway." No kidding.
 
Agent Splat said:
more from the standpoint of how the patients are initially managed. at Froedtert there's that nice system in place that establishes who does what and how those roles are filled to make sure both EM and surgery residents get adequate exposure to all roles. At some places it's a crapshoot and "whoever gets there first" does "whatever." This would especially be a problem at newer programs where the surgery residents are used to doing everything then new EM residents suddenly require exposure to managing trauma in the ED as well. The only thing I've seen so far on my interviews that is pretty uniform is that "EM resident manages airway." No kidding.
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Well, seems reasonable, seeing that SEMA just sent out an email for teaching intubation.

How many systems do you want to be in charge of? Control freak. 😉

Froedtert does have many good qualities for many of its programs, but there are some things that drive me totally nuts.
 
Ashers said:
Well, seems reasonable, seeing that SEMA just sent out an email for teaching intubation.

How many systems do you want to be in charge of? Control freak. 😉

Froedtert does have many good qualities for many of its programs, but there are some things that drive me totally nuts.
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at bumfluck nowhere hospital in northern canada i would be required to take charge of all of them, therefore I demand control now! :meanie:
 
Ashers said:
Visiting grandmas typically are a better use of time. Unless it's my grandma, and then she's just crazy, senile and manipulative -- bad combo, and I'd have to drive to Central Illinois. I don't have the patience to put up with her and my way into Alzheimers and CHF step-grandpa without my mom around.
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hmm...we could be cousins. Does your grandma think mexicans are trying to steal her goats?
 
For any of you who know Drs. Kutty and Ratkalkar over at St. Joe's, any hints for my TY interview with them? (I'm looking at you, yeasterbunny.) I have mine on Tuesday.
 
Gimlet said:
For any of you who know Drs. Kutty and Ratkalkar over at St. Joe's, any hints for my TY interview with them? (I'm looking at you, yeasterbunny.) I have mine on Tuesday.
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He scared me. I had to do my Jr case presentation to him.


So are applying to all sorts of anesthesia programs? Categorical, advanced, transitional year, are you also applying for with medicine prelim or surgical prelim? That sounds like a lot of money.
 
Gimlet said:
For any of you who know Drs. Kutty and Ratkalkar over at St. Joe's, any hints for my TY interview with them? (I'm looking at you, yeasterbunny.) I have mine on Tuesday.
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ugh, I didn't call right away d/t traveling and figuring out my schedule, so now I'm on a wait list for the Joe's TY interviews.

I had better get into a categorical program I guess because I only have prelim med at Froedtert right now. Got offered prelim med in San Diego today, but not sure that I should even spend the money since I haven't gotten an interview for UCSD's anesthesia program.

I'm thinking maybe I should have applied for more TYs.
 
Gimlet said:
For any of you who know Drs. Kutty and Ratkalkar over at St. Joe's, any hints for my TY interview with them? (I'm looking at you, yeasterbunny.) I have mine on Tuesday.
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You interview with Ratkalkar? I only interviewed with Kutty. Dr. Kutty is scary to present to but not really that bad to just sit down and have an interview with. He is rather formal so you probably don't want to crack any jokes. Dr. Kutty is also the only person in dozens of interviews to call me out on the glaring Pass I got in peds among the HPs and honors. So he looks closely at your CV and if you have anything that will catch his eye, make sure you are ready to talk about it. Otherwise, I can only say try to act normal and don't come across as cocky, you have nothing to prove, it's all in your app. Probably good advice for all your interviews.

Ratkalkar is a really cool guy when you get to know him but will probably be somewhat serious with you as a stranger. He has a better sense of humor though.
 
yeasterbunny said:
You interview with Ratkalkar? I only interviewed with Kutty. Dr. Kutty is scary to present to but not really that bad to just sit down and have an interview with. He is rather formal so you probably don't want to crack any jokes. Dr. Kutty is also the only person in dozens of interviews to call me out on the glaring Pass I got in peds among the HPs and honors. So he looks closely at your CV and if you have anything that will catch his eye, make sure you are ready to talk about it. Otherwise, I can only say try to act normal and don't come across as cocky, you have nothing to prove, it's all in your app. Probably good advice for all your interviews.

Ratkalkar is a really cool guy when you get to know him but will probably be somewhat serious with you as a stranger. He has a better sense of humor though.
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There's a certain taller attending I wish would interview applicants...but not really.
 
One of my interns at St Joes in June did a great impression of Dr. Kutty (aka Special K) that would make Dr. Kandiah (our teaching attening) crack up. He also did a spot on impression of Will Ferrell/Harry Caray. One of the best residents I worked with. He's doing anesthesia at Northwestern now.
 
yeasterbunny said:
You interview with Ratkalkar? I only interviewed with Kutty. Dr. Kutty is scary to present to but not really that bad to just sit down and have an interview with. He is rather formal so you probably don't want to crack any jokes.
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Strongly agree.
 
I love it that I get rejections on Saturday mornings. It's a great thing to see when I check my email after I wake up.

Hopefully next week is better than this week.

These programs that wait until late Nov/early-mid Dec to notify about interviews are annoying me at the moment.
 
Ashers said:
So are applying to all sorts of anesthesia programs? Categorical, advanced, transitional year, are you also applying for with medicine prelim or surgical prelim? That sounds like a lot of money.
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There are only a few programs in the country that are all advanced positions, but I will rank both advanced and categorical positions. I only applied to the three TY/medicine prelim programs in Milwaukee (Joe's, Luke's, MCW), so that really helped keep down costs.

akpete said:
ugh, I didn't call right away d/t traveling and figuring out my schedule, so now I'm on a wait list for the Joe's TY interviews.

I had better get into a categorical program I guess because I only have prelim med at Froedtert right now. Got offered prelim med in San Diego today, but not sure that I should even spend the money since I haven't gotten an interview for UCSD's anesthesia program.

I'm thinking maybe I should have applied for more TYs.
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The upside is that the MCW Prelim year sounds pretty sweet now. The Q12 call would make the long days seem much less sucky.

yeasterbunny said:
You interview with Ratkalkar? I only interviewed with Kutty. Dr. Kutty is scary to present to but not really that bad to just sit down and have an interview with. He is rather formal so you probably don't want to crack any jokes. Dr. Kutty is also the only person in dozens of interviews to call me out on the glaring Pass I got in peds among the HPs and honors. So he looks closely at your CV and if you have anything that will catch his eye, make sure you are ready to talk about it. Otherwise, I can only say try to act normal and don't come across as cocky, you have nothing to prove, it's all in your app. Probably good advice for all your interviews.

Ratkalkar is a really cool guy when you get to know him but will probably be somewhat serious with you as a stranger. He has a better sense of humor though.
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Thanks for the advice! When I scheduled my interview over the phone, I was told it would just be a ~45 minute interview with Dr. Kutty. The packet they sent me in the mail had Dr. Ratkalkar listed as an interviewer, too, though.
 
Here's a match question that I should probably know the answer to, but haven't taken the time to look up:

If I rank an Advanced program and match into that, but don't match into a preliminary position, do I just go unmatched for the prelim and have to scramble that, or do I go down to my next program in the rank list? i.e., if my rank list looked like this:

1) Program X Advanced
aaaaaTY 1
aaaaaTY 2
aaaaaPrelim 1
2) Program X Categorical

and program X ranked me to match for both their categorical and advanced positions but the TY and prelim programs didn't rank me, would I wind up scrambling for a PGY-1 position, or would I wind up in Program X categorical?
 
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Gimlet said:
Here's a match question that I should probably know the answer to, but haven't taken the time to look up:

If I rank an Advanced program and match into that, but don't match into a preliminary position, do I just go unmatched for the prelim and have to scramble that, or do I go down to my next program in the rank list? i.e., if my rank list looked like this:

1) Program X Advanced
aaaaaTY 1
aaaaaTY 2
aaaaaPrelim 1
2) Program X Categorical

and program X ranked me to match for both their categorical and advanced positions but the TY and prelim programs didn't rank me, would I wind up scrambling for a PGY-1 position, or would I wind up in Program X categorical?
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Not that I paid much attention to that Michigan dude in June -- busy goofing off at the awesome table, but I thought one thing he said was that if you ranked an advanced first and didn't match you wouldn't match into the PGY-1 year, so I thought the plan was to put the PGY-1 first, so you could get that.

Iserson's didn't give much info. Except that Neurology isn't in the NRMP.
 
So I just got the purse that I used for med school interviews out of my closet, and I found a mini-book in the purse-bag. "Gartenzwerge: Spannendes über kleine Männer."

I've got no idea why I've got a mini-book about Garden gnomes in my purse bag, but apparently it's from my friends in Germany. Maybe I should keep it with me for down-time, and in case I get asked "What was the last book you read?"

Also tells you how often I use purses. hehe
 
International Con Man Barack Obama Leaves U.S. With $85 Million In Campaign Fundraising

CHICAGO—In a devastating blow to millions of unsuspecting Americans, newly elected president and international con man Barack Obama fled the country Wednesday with nearly $85 million in campaign funds.

According to FBI investigators, Obama's sudden disappearance was discovered at 6:15 p.m. when the former Illinois senator failed to arrive at a gala event in Lincoln Square, prompting several aides to rush back to his campaign headquarters. At 6:23 p.m., flight logs at O'Hare International Airport confirmed that two passengers, a male carrying two silver briefcases and dressed in a perfectly tailored Brioni tuxedo, and an African-American female wearing a fur coat and speaking in a thick Russian accent, were seen boarding a private plane.



Obama's campaign office, sources said, was completely vacant aside from a discarded Abraham Lincoln portrait, behind which was an emptied safe that his aides claimed never to have seen before.

In addition, three unconscious Secret Service agents were discovered at the scene, along with two lit cigarettes still burning in an ashtray, and Obama's daughters, who authorities now believe were taken from an Alabama foster home six years ago.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/international_con_man_barack_obama
 
TheProwler said:
International Con Man Barack Obama Leaves U.S. With $85 Million In Campaign Fundraising

CHICAGO—In a devastating blow to millions of unsuspecting Americans, newly elected president and international con man Barack Obama fled the country Wednesday with nearly $85 million in campaign funds.

According to FBI investigators, Obama's sudden disappearance was discovered at 6:15 p.m. when the former Illinois senator failed to arrive at a gala event in Lincoln Square, prompting several aides to rush back to his campaign headquarters. At 6:23 p.m., flight logs at O'Hare International Airport confirmed that two passengers, a male carrying two silver briefcases and dressed in a perfectly tailored Brioni tuxedo, and an African-American female wearing a fur coat and speaking in a thick Russian accent, were seen boarding a private plane.



Obama's campaign office, sources said, was completely vacant aside from a discarded Abraham Lincoln portrait, behind which was an emptied safe that his aides claimed never to have seen before.

In addition, three unconscious Secret Service agents were discovered at the scene, along with two lit cigarettes still burning in an ashtray, and Obama's daughters, who authorities now believe were taken from an Alabama foster home six years ago.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/international_con_man_barack_obama
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that sonds just like an episode of south park! except there is no diamond
 
what is the difference between a Transitional year and a preliminary year?
 
indo said:
what is the difference between a Transitional year and a preliminary year?
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Prelim year: Typically entails being treated even worse than your typical categorical intern because the program knows that they don't have to deal with you beyond one year in their program. Expect to have the worst call schedule of your cohort and don't make any plans for the holidays.

Transitional year: 4th year redux. Heaven on earth, my friend.
 
Ashers said:
Not that I paid much attention to that Michigan dude in June -- busy goofing off at the awesome table, but I thought one thing he said was that if you ranked an advanced first and didn't match you wouldn't match into the PGY-1 year, so I thought the plan was to put the PGY-1 first, so you could get that.

Iserson's didn't give much info. Except that Neurology isn't in the NRMP.
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Alright, I answered my own question:

NRMP.org said:
If the applicant is matched to an advanced program, the algorithm will seek to match the applicant to a preliminary position from the supplemental rank order list that is linked to that advanced program. If the algorithm is unable to match the applicant to a first-year program, the match to the advanced program still holds, and the applicant will have to seek a PGY-1 position after the Match.
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That sucks. If I don't wind up in Milwaukee for all four years, I think I would like to try to match an advanced anesthesiology position and stay in Milwaukee for internship. I don't like the idea of potentially having to scramble for PGY-1 positions, though. I have no idea how competitive I'll be for the three programs in Milwaukee, competing with all of the derm and rads applicants for those spots. I hope it won't be detrimental for me to have my medicine sub-I in March, after the programs have made their rank lists.
 
I found this on the SDNnernets.
For example:

Rank 1-

Top Choice University Prelim - Top Choice University Gas
Joe Blow Community Prelim - Top Choice University Gas
Middle O' Nowhere Med Prelim - Top Choice University Gas
Cush University Transitional - Top Choice University Gas

Rank 2-

St. Elsewhere Prelim - St. Elsewhere Gas
Suck U. Dry Prelim Surg - St. Elsewhere Gas
Lousy Community Med Prelim - St. Elsewhere Gas
West Egypt Transitional - St. Elsewhere Gas

I can kinda see what is going on now. Seems like an overly convoluted system.
-----------------------------------------------------

Did anyone try to do an away rotation at OHSU? I'm looking at their website and it seems their rotations don't match up with ours. As far as I know that means the application program will reject by default. Am I reading this wrong?
 
indo said:
Did anyone try to do an away rotation at OHSU? I'm looking at their website and it seems their rotations don't match up with ours. As far as I know that means the application program will reject by default. Am I reading this wrong?
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I tried to do it, but since their schedule was funky it didn't work. If you have vacation near one of the months it could potentially work, or do 2 away electives there, so you get 2 months there and in their strange 4 week system.

UCI's 4 week blocks were closer to ours at the beginning of the year, and I did my first away as a 4 week block at home then there, so both worked, and I ended up with a week off in between UCI and starting my rotation here. OHSU was just too off for me to manage (and my brother told me I'd have to pay rent). I know one of my friends did an away there in the summer of 2006, so maybe next year the schedule will be better, but this year they didn't list their schedule until way late.
 
How do you guys choose a specialty? I'm sad because i like so much. I want to be a general surgern, anesethesiologist, and pathologist all together.
 
badasshairday said:
How do you guys choose a specialty? I'm sad because i like so much. I want to be a general surgern, anesethesiologist, and pathologist all together.
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Statistically the pathologist thing should go away by the end of this year when you can't take the class anymore. Your third year rotations should help you work out at least what aspects of medicine you like and don't like. Don't expect to really know for sure for awhile yet.

You have to consider things like how much patient contact you want, if you enjoy interacting with them and what age you prefer them to be, if you like doing lots of procedures or lots of talking/thinking. Also consider how long term you want patient relationships to be...you like seeing the same people on a regular basis, or do you like having them around just for a little while?

stuff to keep in mind in the coming years.
 
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badasshairday said:
How do you guys choose a specialty? I'm sad because i like so much. I want to be a general surgeon, anesethesiologist, and pathologist all together.
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My top specialty differential as an M1: Ortho>> Cards = Derm=EM >>> Endocrine/Immunology type stuff (possibly rheum) -- I didn't know at the time

It's based on what you like, you can get a feel for it M1/2 year with classes. I had an idea that I wanted to do ortho since before med school based on shadowing my dad and his partners, but I also liked the anatomy. There were other things I wanted to do too, but they got crossed off my list. I thought about cards before med school too, but when we had to do the CER cards section, I learned I really didn't like listening through stethoscopes and attempting to describe murmurs. Most murmurs sound like aortic stenosis to me. Derm disgusted me during path, and it was kinda boring during my elective this year. And EM, just wasn't that excited about it M1 year even after joining SEMA. The last 2 are just based on interests from college.

The only real competition was for anesthesia because I wasn't miserable on that rotation.

M3 year you'll get a chance to do a bunch of stuff, but not nearly everything, if you think there's some random thing you may want to do (like pathology), do an elective in it. I was miserable on all rotations except ortho and anesthesia, and I figured I didn't really want to do anesthesia because even though the pharm was awesome and intubating was fun, my favorite day was when I scrubbed into an ortho case.
 
Ashers said:
And EM, just wasn't that excited about it M1 year even after joining SEMA.
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Are you saying our efforts were ineffective at sparking and maintaining incredible interest in the art and passion of emergency medicine?

Are YOU SAYING that SEMA wasn't the most awesomest organization ever, at LEAST based on the badass sign we had at the organizational fair that I lovingly hand-crafted because of my love in sparking and maintaining incredible interest in the art and passion of emergency medicine?
 
Agent Splat said:
Are you saying our efforts were ineffective at sparking and maintaining incredible interest in the art and passion of emergency medicine?

Are YOU SAYING that SEMA wasn't the most awesomest organization ever, at LEAST based on the badass sign we had at the organizational fair that I lovingly hand-crafted because of my love in sparking and maintaining incredible interest in the art and passion of emergency medicine?
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SEMA was sure better than OSIG in that respect. Especially M2 year... geez, OSIG had a slacker leading it.

Edit: btw... what is your SEMA CoP going into?
 
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Ashers said:
SEMA was sure better than OSIG in that respect. Especially M2 year... geez, OSIG had a slacker leading it.

Edit: btw... what is your SEMA CoP going into?
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Anesthesia. Figures. One of our biggest competitors. At least I stole someone from them in return. But still....to lose my CoP really hurt both professionally and personally. Granted, our gain was an AIG CoP. But IG CoPs aren't worth as much as formal org CoPs.
 
Agent Splat said:
Anesthesia. Figures. One of our biggest competitors. At least I stole someone from them in return. But still....to lose my CoP really hurt both professionally and personally. Granted, our gain was an AIG CoP. But IG CoPs aren't worth as much as formal org CoPs.
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Should have gotten AIG to throw Jose Canseco into the trade.
 
It definitely stung when I learned my co-president had turned coat for EM...my only consolation was to steal Splat's CoP back. I think we got the better end of the deal (well, prettier, at least). 😛


BAHD, if you truly have no clue what you might want to go into, you should definitely do some shadowing in various specialties this year to help you start to sort out what you might be interested in. It only took me one day of shadowing an attending in the ED to realize that EM wasn't for me. Granted, that was probably a bit of a rash decision...I don't recommend basing your career off of a one day experience that likely doesn't reflect the true daily routine of a private-practice physician in that specialty. But shadowing can help you discover which of those things that Splat wrote about above are most important to you.

Another thing to always keep in the back of your mind: I see so many people nixing certain specialties because they look at the residents in that field and don't want to live that life. What a mistake! You have to look at the attendings and, most importantly, the attendings out in private practice to see what it's truly like to be an ortho/psychiatrist/anesthesiologist/what have you.

Your various specialty interest groups should be a great resource for setting up shadowing experiences...I know the AIG has a program in place to get people in contact with attendings that are amenable to shadowing. I would recommend going in for a call shift in anesthesiology for a few hours some night...hopefully you'll get to see some cool trauma stuff come in.
 
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