Interview expenses

[SoonerTexan]

What did you do for residency interviewing expenses?If I'm reading correctly, interviewing costs don't count as educational expenses so most have to do private loans because additional financial aid is not offered. Is this right?

[diggitydot]

It's been a while, but that sounds about right.

DH did all of his interviews while he was on away rotations, anyway. It ended up costing us just a couple of car rentals because he was already within driving distance. He ended up canceling all interviews at locations that didn't at least foot the bill for a hotel, too.

[GreyhoundsRUs]

DH's parents loaned us the money. Because DH was going into something competitive, they didn't want lack of interviews to be the reason for him not matching. He had a great Step 1 score, and great clinical evals/tests, but his MS1/2 grades were just ok. We applied and accepted interviews at an obscene number of places (~60/20).

DH drove about half the time. Places he could drive to sometimes ended up being a flight because of how they connected with other interviews or time constraints. I don't know if any of his interviews paid for the hotel - eta - just asked - 1 maybe In his experience (limited to his specialty), the more competitive the place/desirable the location, the less "incentive" they offered.

[corn poffi]

R drove everywhere. He had managed to be on rads during interview season, and it was the easiest, most flexible rotation ever, so he could take lots of time off. It helped that he really wanted to stay in the Midwest, so everything was within driving distance. He also stayed with friends at more than half of the interviews. Overall, I think he spent less than $1,000. He ended up canceling the only interview he would have had to fly for because it was at the end of interview season and he was sick of interviewing. It was also in a city where I had no interest in living, so I didn't object. It was a really great program though, and we occasionally wonder what might have been....

[corn poffi]

Oh, and to add on to what GRU said, none of the programs paid for anything. I think that's the norm in the moderately- to super-competitive specialties.

[Pollyanna]

Holy moly, I had no idea that some programs paid for anything, lol! Dh funded interviews via our emergency fund, aka: VISA . He only traveled for three interviews so it wasn't too costly. Omg, I cannot believe you guys are thinking about interviews already, yay!!!!

[niener]

We hadn't been taking out the max amount of federal loans so we just maxed it out 4th year and that covered it. That, and my two jobs . If it weren't for that we probably would have gone the private loan route. We also got a Southwest credit card at the start of 3rd year I think (all but one city he flew into was a SW city) and that got us 2 or 3 free flights which we used for interviews close to Christmas when flights would have been outrageously expensive. I honestly don't know how much he spent on interviews and I don't want to know, especially considering we ended up a 3 hour drive from home, LOL.

ETA: Only one program we interviewed at paid for hotel and it was a tiny program in podunkville. Competitive specialties normally don't pay for anything except the pre-interview dinner.

[diggitydot]

It always amazes me how differently each specialty treats its peeps. FM is decidedly NOT a competitive specialty, but the residency programs that were competitive to get into typically did a lot of wooing. They almost all paid for hotels, some sent gift baskets, I even had one use other spouses to call and try to recruit ME.

[GreyhoundsRUs]

It always amazes me how differently each specialty treats its peeps. FM is decidedly NOT a competitive specialty, but the residency programs that were competitive to get into typically did a lot of wooing. They almost all paid for hotels, some sent gift baskets, I even had one use other spouses to call and try to recruit ME.

Wow! I'm hoping that is what "the job" interviewing process will be like. DH was lucky to walk away with a paper name tag, folder, and pen from each place

[SoonerTexan]

I'm bracing myself. I think we should be okay with what is typically offered financial aid wise because we have only ever taken enough for tuition and that left about $20k unclaimed. Wishing I had taken more last year to be on the safe side this year. I'd prefer not to go the private loan or credit card route if we can, but I think it is going to be rads, so it will be competitive and he has to look at prelim years. Yay?

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

Uro does nothing for their interviewees in terms of expenses. DH always stayed with friends - the upside of him matching a year later than most of his classmates was that he could say with them for interviews. He drove when he could and we got him cheap flights whenever possible. It was pricey but I was working so we figured it out. Your DH can stay with any of us! Also, he applied to a lot of places (35) but when he got interviews at his top choices based on location, he cancelled all the Cali ones for example. We saved a lot by him not interviewing out at the 6 CA places because it became clear we'd have enough places to rank in the South which is where I wanted to go.

We always researched the car situation at every location. We then made sure he was staying (either at a hotel or with friends) very close to the interview location so he could walk and then catch a ride to the dinner. He almost never rented a car which a) saved money though he did have to take cabs sometimes but b) meant he could make closer flights because he didn't have to return a car.

He also used alternative airports. Like when he interviewed in TX, he flew out of Love Field because it was way cheaper. In terms of flights, we tried to use AirTran/SW/Jetblue because those flights aren't more pricey as segments - DH had to fly from interview to interview a lot and the legacy airlines penalize you for not doing roundtrips.

[scrub-jay]

Most of the anesthesiology program interviews have paid for hotel, which is nice. However, I don't want to talk about cost of this season right now because I track the cc and it's giving me twitches.

[diggitydot]

During recruiting season we received:

- gourmet gift baskets
- coffee mugs
- travel mugs
- jackets/shirts/sweatshirts
- brass business card holders
- really nice reusable bags
- reusable insulated lunch bags
- key chains
- nice leather pad folios (large)
- small leather notebook holders w/pens

That doesn't include all the note pads, pens, pencils, flashlights, nail clippers, and other small/stupid crap. Some programs went all out. It totally surprised me.

[Chrisada]

We took out loans through DH's med. school. It was several thousand dollars. We pay back $100 a month I think.

[moonlight]

Do we currently have a rad spouse here? I wonder how much he'll be offered in hotels etc? I would say about half of the programs DH interviewed at gave a free hotel stay, all gave some sort of gift bag, and one place just gave him a check for $35. Odd, but we did cash it. lol!

FWIW One of the three fellowship programs paid for hotel stay.

ETA Oh yeah, DUH Bokelley!! She'll have some good input on this one!