Scheduling ophtho + trans/prelim interviews?

[lizzylu]

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Hi all,

Thought I'd throw this one out there to see what people have done in the past, or advice that was given.

For previous applicants: How did you schedule your ophtho interviews and the transitional/prelim interviews? Did you try and work a few trans in during the craziness of nov/dec? Or did you wait until ophtho interviews were all over and had the trans/prelim interviews more in jan?

Just trying to plan some sort of schedule with these PGY1 programs. Making this 'other' interview schedule is giving me a headache. 😳

Any advice would be great!!
Thanks

 

[Krony]

I was actually able to squeeze quite a few of them in during ophtho interview season -which can be convenient particularly if they happen to be in a similar geographic region. Also keep in mind that it may be worthwhile to ask a transitional/prelim program if they are planning to interview you after you've secured the ophtho interview. More than once I called a prelim program and said something like: "I just found out that I have been offered an ophthalmology interview at X institution on X date." Since I'll be in your city around that time, I was curious if there is any possibility your program was considering interiviewing me -and if so if you have any availability around that time. Sometimes if they're flexibile they'll do things like interview you on a day when only other categoricals are interviewing, or in one instance the program director just met with me for about an hour after my ophtho interview at the end of the day even though it wasn't an official interview day. If you're polite about it and not pushy if it doesn't work out, I don't think there's much harm in at least asking the question. Maybe even it could be interpreted as showing interest in their program?

What was sometimes trickier was when I'd get the prelim interview invite before hearing from the ophtho program. In those instances I'd try to schedule the prelim date late (i.e. january) which enabled me to cancel the prelim interview after getting rejected from the corresponding ophtho program.

Good luck!