Settle a Score for me-- Importance of Interview/Personality

[silas2642]

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I just wanted to ask you guys a question so you could settle an argument for me. I was in a debate with a fellow classmate and we were arguing as to the importance of interviews in a specialty as competitive as derm. My argument was that they matter immensely, and that if you don't show a great deal of interest and personality that a program is less likely to rank you as highly.

My classmate's argument was that in derm, it's the number's that matter-- they are looking more at board score's, number of honors, publications and that the interview's are more of a formality.

 

[dermflower]

I agree with you silas! Interviews are very important. By the time you get to the interview stage everyone has great numbers, so the only thing that differentiates people is personality and enthusiasm.

Your friend is right about the initial selection for interviewing - very numbers heavy.

You're right once you get to the interviews stage though. Doubtful that a program would pick an unenthusiastic 270 over a personable 255.

http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp

 

[asmallchild]

I'd agree with you too Silas. I think interviews/personality are that much more important in dermatology because of the small resident classes. You can hide a bad egg in a big medicine program. There are some derm programs out there that take a single resident a year. One bad egg in such a program would be horrific. All that being said, I will agree that you'll need the high boards scores, honors, and publications to get to the interview stage. I think it would also be erroneous to assume that those with the impressive stats are flawed personality-wise.

 

[kralwok]

i dunno... i imagine it is program dependent. there were some programs i interviewed at where there was just no way they could judge me on my personality. i mean, how much can you really learn about a person in 10 minutes? i felt like i was being shuffled around, moving from door to door, smiling, shaking hands, showing enthusiasm, but in the end i'm not sure they could really judge me by the interview or even remembered who i was when it came time to rank me...
i am sure it is very important at some programs, but some programs set themselves up for not being able to get a sense of someone's personality by having such short interviews (unless they decide to rank best smile = #1, best handshake = #2, most exaggerated enthusiasm = #3). it does not take long to get a vague sense of someone, but to really rank on personality should require you to talk to the person for at least 20 minutes!