Should these things matter when assessing programs?

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Residency applicants (past or present), should the following things matter when assessing programs after your interview days?

1) The other applicants themselves on that particular day - are they friendly? are the genuinely nice? are they arrogant or sarcastic? do they name drop? do a lot of them seem "local"? do they care about you? basically, what "type" of people is the program recruiting, and what type of people are drawn to this program?

2) The facilities - are they well-lit? are there windows ANYWHERE? do they look and smell like a dungeon? is it safe to walk around them when leaving? do they feel cramped and crowded? can teams round in the hallways without blocking everyone else? is clinic comfortable or does it look like crap? did the tour guide resident even show us ALL the places we'll be working? - if not, what are they trying to hide?

3) The interview experience with the interviewers - did the interviewer put you in the hotseat? did they ask about you or brag about themselves? what particular things did they nitpick on your application to talk about? did they focus only on school, goals, research, or does it seem like they have hobbies, lives, families, layers, dimension, personality? was the attitude of the interview "we are very lucky to have you here today", or "you are very lucky to be here today"?

Interested to see what you all think of this. Whether for good or for bad, I am finding all 3 of these things (among many others) affect my "feel" of a program, and part of me wonders whether or not they should factor in at all.

 

[gutonc]

Residency applicants (past or present), should the following things matter when assessing programs after your interview days?

1) The other applicants themselves on that particular day - are they friendly? are the genuinely nice? are they arrogant or sarcastic? do they name drop? do a lot of them seem "local"? do they care about you? basically, what "type" of people is the program recruiting, and what type of people are drawn to this program?

2) The facilities - are they well-lit? are there windows ANYWHERE? do they look and smell like a dungeon? is it safe to walk around them when leaving? do they feel cramped and crowded? can teams round in the hallways without blocking everyone else? is clinic comfortable or does it look like crap? did the tour guide resident even show us ALL the places we'll be working? - if not, what are they trying to hide?

3) The interview experience with the interviewers - did the interviewer put you in the hotseat? did they ask about you or brag about themselves? what particular things did they nitpick on your application to talk about? did they focus only on school, goals, research, or does it seem like they have hobbies, lives, families, layers, dimension, personality? was the attitude of the interview "we are very lucky to have you here today", or "you are very lucky to be here today"?

Interested to see what you all think of this. Whether for good or for bad, I am finding all 3 of these things (among many others) affect my "feel" of a program, and part of me wonders whether or not they should factor in at all.

1. I think this is an important issue but not the biggest or most important one. I don't think you should get bogged down in individual personalities, think of them more in the aggregate. "Would I want to go to happy hour with these people?" not "Do I want to be a roommate or partner of one of these people?"

2. Big issue but again, not the biggest. You'll definitely want to be in a comfortable setting. Definitely look around the place when you come and go from the interview. I think that, unless you're going to a really small, single-hospital program, there's no way that you could see everywhere you're going to work in a 30-60 minute tour. If I were to just walk around, by myself, to see all the places I worked (or could have worked) as a resident at our 2 hospital (one campus) program, it would take about 90 minutes. Add 15 people following me around and we're looking at a "3 hour tour." People will obviously show you the nicer parts of the hospital to be sure but they're rarely maliciously hiding things.

3. Far and away the biggest issue IMHO. These are the people who set the tone of the program, will be your teachers and write your evaluations and will be the ones writing your LORs for fellowship apps or your references for jobs. If you don't like them, you won't like the place. Period. Not to say that one person you don't click with should ruin the whole place for you, but if you find yourself not jiving with most of people you meet with, it's probably not the best place for you.

 

[atsai3]

1. I think this is an important issue but not the biggest or most important one. I don't think you should get bogged down in individual personalities, think of them more in the aggregate. "Would I want to go to happy hour with these people?" not "Do I want to be a roommate or partner of one of these people?"

2. Big issue but again, not the biggest. You'll definitely want to be in a comfortable setting. Definitely look around the place when you come and go from the interview. I think that, unless you're going to a really small, single-hospital program, there's no way that you could see everywhere you're going to work in a 30-60 minute tour. If I were to just walk around, by myself, to see all the places I worked (or could have worked) as a resident at our 2 hospital (one campus) program, it would take about 90 minutes. Add 15 people following me around and we're looking at a "3 hour tour." People will obviously show you the nicer parts of the hospital to be sure but they're rarely maliciously hiding things.

3. Far and away the biggest issue IMHO. These are the people who set the tone of the program, will be your teachers and write your evaluations and will be the ones writing your LORs for fellowship apps or your references for jobs. If you don't like them, you won't like the place. Period. Not to say that one person you don't click with should ruin the whole place for you, but if you find yourself not jiving with most of people you meet with, it's probably not the best place for you.

Just a few things to add:

1. It is important for you to get a sense for the kind of resident that the program is interested in recruiting, so that you can see whether or not you would fit in -- whether or not you would like your future classmates -- whether or not there will be the kind of espirit-du-corps that can absorb family emergencies & pregnancies (i.e., covering for one another) -- etc etc. I would guess that this is more important at smaller programs and at programs where the residents are there by choice, and possibly less important at programs where the class is just comprised of residents who ended up at their 3rd or 4th choice. With regards to the latter, I would assume that that program director has less (not zero, just simply less) ability to shape the composition of the training cohort.

2. I personally don't think facilities are that important. Most locked psychiatry wards simply don't look as nice as the interior of a Long Island private community hospital, so you just kind of have to get accustomed to facilities that don't look as nice. If you've seen one VA, then (with the exception of the Palo Alto VA) you've pretty much seen them all. Many community mental health clinics are pretty dilapidated, but they are filled with dedicated faculty with hearts of gold. And so on and so forth.

I do, however, think that one really nice perk that distinguishes some programs from others is whether or not the residents have their own offices (mainly PGY3's and PGY4's, although some programs may give PGY2's their own offices). Not only is it nice to not have to bump elbows with another resident when you are trying to schedule patients, but it is also nice to have a place where you can write notes, catch a breather while on call, etc.

3. I don't think this is very important, but this probably varies by program. There is a limited amount of quality control that a program director can exert over interviewers. They are largely volunteer faculty and volunteer residents, and the program director sometimes just has to take what she can get. So I don't know that it is all that likely that they will be representative of your future supervisors should you match at that program -- and I don't know whether your assessment of their ability to be in your corner (eg., when it comes to evaluations, fellowship LOR's, etc) will be all that accurate since you will only have an hour's worth of data. You're probably better off just asking the residents.

The other things you grouped into category #3 are a heterogeneous bunch of concerns. For example, whether or not the interviewer adopts a stance of "we are lucky to have you here today" really just depends on the strength of your application. If you have a dull application then it is kind of unfair to expect an interviewer to be all that excited about interviewing you. In such a scenario maybe it is appropriate for the interviewer to have the stance "you are lucky to be here today".

-AT.

 

[mcl]

Just a reminder on your first point: Programs don't know the personality of the people they invite before the interview. Everyone looked good on paper (good grades, solid scores, excellent letters). Please don't down-rate a good program because of personality issues with another applicant. If someone is name dropping or sarcastic or arrogant, chances are the program won't like them much either.

Possibly a better field of reference would be the applicants you meet along the interview trail who are from the program where you interviewed.

 

[smq123]

Residency applicants (past or present), should the following things matter when assessing programs after your interview days?

1) The other applicants themselves on that particular day - are they friendly? are the genuinely nice? are they arrogant or sarcastic? do they name drop? do a lot of them seem "local"? do they care about you? basically, what "type" of people is the program recruiting, and what type of people are drawn to this program?

I don't think that the other applicants should matter as much. It's just like med school - you pick who to interview based on how they look on paper. You can't recruit based on "type" or "personality" (much as we would all like to).

If the fellow interviewees are tools or d-bags, it's likely that their interviewers won't rank them highly.

2) The facilities - are they well-lit? are there windows ANYWHERE? do they look and smell like a dungeon? is it safe to walk around them when leaving? do they feel cramped and crowded? can teams round in the hallways without blocking everyone else? is clinic comfortable or does it look like crap? did the tour guide resident even show us ALL the places we'll be working? - if not, what are they trying to hide?

Meh. I think this is less important. And I don't show the entire place off when we do the tour sometimes, because if the interview group is full of people showing the blank stare, I tend to run out of conversational steam.

3) The interview experience with the interviewers - did the interviewer put you in the hotseat? did they ask about you or brag about themselves? what particular things did they nitpick on your application to talk about? did they focus only on school, goals, research, or does it seem like they have hobbies, lives, families, layers, dimension, personality? was the attitude of the interview "we are very lucky to have you here today", or "you are very lucky to be here today"?

To me, this was very important. They will be your role models; you will decide how you approach patients based on what you observe them do. So, meshing with the faculty is a big thing for me.

 

[notdeadyet]

1) The other applicants themselves on that particular day

So-so. I have noticed that I tend to enjoy the company of folks interviewing at GOOD programs in my specialty more than folks at GREAT programs. I don't read too terribly much into it. At the end of the day, even if you match at a particular program, it won't be with the collection of folks you met on that day.

2) The facilities

I think that this is pretty specialty-dependent. For the most part, the general hospital's look and feel doesn't matter that much. But for surgeons, if all the surgical suites are tiny and residents are cramped in during operations? Not so good. For psychiatrists, if the inpatient environment is unsupervised and unsafe? Not so good. Etc. etc.

Not sure if you count this under facilities, but EMR is a biggie.

3) The interview experience with the interviewers

If 1 interviewer is a bad personality type, I wouldn't think much of it. If you have four interviewers and all are a bad personality type? Run.

Interviews are a two way street: They judge you and you judge them. If a program throws out the most antisocial interviewers just because they have free time, that says something about the program. If they care so little about your experience now, what makes you think they'll care about it after you match?

 

[notdeadyet]

If you've seen one VA, then (with the exception of the Palo Alto VA) you've pretty much seen them all.

Add Albuquerque VA to that list. So old it's a listed building. Beautiful...

 

[alwaysaangel]

Add Albuquerque VA to that list. So old it's a listed building. Beautiful...

And San Francisco VA - apparently its just on the edge of the city overlooking the bay and Golden Gate bridge.