> I felt the exact same way.. I'll probably be ranking Kessler #4 or #5. I hated my interview with delisa- I too thought it was a bit pretentious. Not once did he look at me and just asked my questions about numbers, ppl from my school applying, where I was a pplying, where in the interview trail was I, etc. It just didn't leave me with a good feeling. I am still interviewing but in the end Ithink I will be going with my gut feelings- not sure whether thats right or wrong.
I'm at Kessler, so I am biased, but I think that your interview with Delisa does not reflect the atmosphere of the program.
For what it's worth, when I interviewed with Kessler as a medical student, I too left the interview with a dim view of the program- I thought it felt overly professional. But when I was working on my rank list, I decided to rank each program on different criteria (e.g., quality of didactics, livability of the area, salary, strength of the different clinical sites, etc). And Kessler was consistently very high on every list, so I decided to go back for a second look.
I am so glad I did. While the interview day can be very formal (more so than other programs), that does NOT reflect the quality of our life here. I am very happy that I ended up ranking Kessler #1 and coming here.
A few important points-
1. You have very little day to day interaction with Delisa. he mostly does administrative work. The key person is Susan Garstang, the program director. She is one of the most accessible people I have ever met- I email her several times every week.
Even more importantly, she has a unique position as program director. To my knowledge, she is the only program director in the country who receives half of her salary just to be program director, which means that she isn't doing her PD job in her free time on top of her full time clinical and research duties. This is a huge deal, because whenever a conflict of some sort arises, she can address it immediately.
2. The residents are very happy here. My class is extraordinarilly tight with each other, and hang out all the time, vacation together, etc. I think it would be hard to match the level of camraderie.
As examples of things we do together- vacations to the wine country and ski areas together, a fundraiser for Children's disabilities in California, racing together in local triathlons and marathons, regular poker games, a regular study group to prepare for the SAEs and boards, work on research projects together, room together at the conferences (and it's awesome going to conferences together), hang out in the city together, trying out different resteraunts, etc.
3. The quality of training is terrific. We are not unique in this aspect, but the faculty here is excellent and very accessible. The author's of both main textbooks (Braddom and Delisa) are affiliated with our program, and Braddom in particular is very accessible (e.g., he gave me copies of his latest novel for my vacation, and we've been corresponding about it). Many of our faculty- Kirschblum, Gans, Bach, Stitik, Malanga, Mulford, etc. are "go to" people whenever a chapter has to be written about something. The Wedneday lectures are excellent, we have many, many lecturers from across the country come to speak to us regularly (e.g,, Jay Smith, Heidi Prather, Larry Chou, etc), we run what many consider the premier review course in the country.
I almost made the mistake of down-ranking Kessler when I was a medical student because of what I perceived to be a stuffy interview. I am glad I gave Kessler a second chance- I am sure would have been fine elsewhere, but I don't have any regrets about my experiences here.
