Taking a month off for interviews.

[78222]

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Which month did you take off for interviews (assuming you did)? I can't decide between December and January.

 

[Ashers]

January

I was told that December vacation was "wasted" because of all the holidays. Just make sure that you can get out of your rotation in Dec for interviews.

Another thing is that ortho tends to have most of their interviews in Jan, so that was another consideration for me.

 

[had2piknowEM]

I second January, for the simple fact that most programs only interview the first 2 weeks of December due to the holidays. However, if your applying to a speciality where you only need to interview at 4-6 places, then it's doable.

 

[SoCuteMD]

I took December and did one big loop through all the programs I wanted to interview at (instead of multiple round-trips). Worked out INCREDIBLY well, much cheaper than round trips. A lot of programs I was interested in have very few interview days in january - but I did wind up having 2 programs left over that I've interviewed at this month.

Overall - take a look at the calendar and see how many weeks there are between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year most places interviewed until the 19th, with a few interviewing as late as the 22nd - but because there was a very short interval between Thanksgiving and Christmas it ended up being really tight!

 

[BigRedBeta]

I definitely think that it's at least somewhat specialty driven. I'm going into peds, and a lot of places interview 3 or 4 days a week from November to the end of January...That's a lot easier to schedule than the Ortho programs who have maybe 5 interview days TOTAL out of the entire season.

If you're going into an easy to schedule field (peds or medicine), December might be feasible. Otherwise January is probably a better choice.

Also, always wise to talk to the fourth years at your own school.

 

[mules05]

I took December off. I did 3 interviews in November on another light rotation, squeezed 7 in during my vacation, and did my last two in January. I also highly recommend putting places you're really interested in somewhat early...toward the end I was so sick of interviewing I cancelled my last 3, all of which I probably would have liked had they been earlier. I'm going into gen surg.

 

[Ashers]

I definitely think that it's at least somewhat specialty driven. I'm going into peds, and a lot of places interview 3 or 4 days a week from November to the end of January...That's a lot easier to schedule than the Ortho programs who have maybe 5 interview days TOTAL out of the entire season.

If you're going into an easy to schedule field (peds or medicine), December might be feasible. Otherwise January is probably a better choice.

Also, always wise to talk to the fourth years at your own school.

Five would actually be a lot nicer for scheduling purposes. Most places I went to had between 1 and 3. 😉

 

[caffeine37]

isn't it better to take december off so you can have the holidays off?

 

[Ashers]

isn't it better to take december off so you can have the holidays off?

If you can work your schedule out right, you have a high chance of getting the holidays off. I had an ambulatory month, and we were given 3 days off at Christmas and 12/31 off.

And, for example, my interview schedule was: November -- 1, December -- 4, January -- 8.

 

[BigRedBeta]

isn't it better to take december off so you can have the holidays off?

Depends on your school. At my school, M3/M4's get the same break as the M1's and M2's. Although last year (2007-2008), the M3's and M4's actually got 3 weeks instead of the 2 weeks the M1/M2's got because of the way the calendar fell.