Fellowship match stories

[Finding Equanimity]

I'm totally consumed with fellowship match, which is coming up on May 16 for us. Anyone want to share their fellowship match story or any advice while we're on the interview trail? DH is interviewing for vascular surgery.

[diggitydot]

Our experience is probably pretty atypical. Dude's fellowship is at the same location as his residency. He didn't interview anywhere else and they just took him to lunch one day for his "interview" and then told him it would most likely be his. Also, the guys who run the fellowship wrote two of his LORs. Apparently, to themselves. Yeah, it's weird. It's also where DH has been offered a faculty position, so it's all sorts of atypical.

[SuzySunshine]

DH's wasn't a match, sorry! Good luck!

[oceanchild]

Our fellowship match was the last day of November (for fellowship starting this July). DH only applied to his home program. We were not entirely confident he would get a spot, but he did. (If he hadn't, he would have applied more broadly next year.) The way they did it was kind of screwy and he ended up getting a spot outside the match, but it is nonetheless a spot. I'm thrilled we're staying here for three more years.

I assume this is for a 2013 spot? How many places did he apply to?

[MarissaNicole]

Good luck! Are you planning Im moving or are there programs in your current locale?

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

[Bittersweet]

Oh gosh, I'm not going to be much help either. DH suicide matched at his home program. Stressful but not nearly as difficult as arranging multiple interviews and ranking. Best of luck!!

[ides]

Ours was more traditional. Dh applied to a hand surgery fellowship. We applied to a lot of programs. I can't remember how many now, but pretty much all of them. He went on about 8 interviews & ranked all of them. He had one of his letter writers call his top two programs. On match day we stalked the computer and refreshed the page a million times. We read the result together & were thrilled to get his #2! We had a year before moving so it gave us lots of time to plan & let it sink in.

Good luck!!

[Pollyanna]

Our experience is probably pretty atypical. Dude's fellowship is at the same location as his residency. He didn't interview anywhere else and they just took him to lunch one day for his "interview" and then told him it would most likely be his. Also, the guys who run the fellowship wrote two of his LORs. Apparently, to themselves. Yeah, it's weird. It's also where DH has been offered a faculty position, so it's all sorts of atypical.

This was us too. They only interviewed Dh that year.

Good luck everyone!!

[houseelf]

We had a more traditional match. I'll try to be positive here because I bled all over this board during that time frame, but honestly the fellowship interview season and match were the single lowest point of our marriage. During the first (med school) match DH got his second choice, which was nowhere near my first choice. Hell I had never even been to the place. This location was ranked No. 2 because No. 1 was an absolute "shoe in" and I didn't feel the need to argue over something that might be a moot point. Needless to say that this previous experience coupled with a brutal residency left me lukewarm about shelling out $10,000 to fly all over the country using time and money he didn't have in order to complete two more years of surgical training. It is worth mentioning that the match placement for his subspecialty is between 35-60% depending on the year so all of this incredible stress and resource drain could have been for nothing. (Whoops, this post is negative despite my best intentions! Sorry) Anyway, we argued fast and furious over that damn rank list. He ranked all 23 programs. His subspecialty is so competitive that we were engaged in UN negotiations even over spots 17 and beyond because we were a family of four and I didn't know how we could self-finance a cross country move to a new city while he worked all the time. (Honestly, the Columbia people tried to tell him how family friendly NYC was!) From a professional view point, he liked Boston Children's and Cinci Children's. I was cool with Cinci because we could afford to live there as a family and it was an hour from our hometown. I knew we would go into big time debt moving to Boston and have to potentially navigate an expensive private school process. Anyway, Cinci was his No. 1 and he got it so it was a happy ending. I have to admit that he got it because he ranked at the more prestigious No. 2 general surgery program rather than the good but less prestigious shoe in No. 1 program.

So, I googled which surgical subspecialty has a May 16 match and came up with Vascular and Plastics. I'm assuming plastics because I've heard of some vascular programs do the more informal phone/meet and greet match thing, but honestly I don't know the truth of the matter. I hear plastics is similarly brutal. I wish you every luck. If you want milk and cookies, the surgeon's lounge isn't the place to hang out.

DH

[GrayMatterWife]

DH was going to go into pediatric NSG (a one-year fellowship), which you do if you want to practice any kind of pediatric NSG, including functional/epilepsy. My DH had debated between doing adult functional/epilepsy and pediatric functional/epilepsy for months. And finally he'd decided. And, best of all, one of the world's premier pediatric NSG fellowship was at the same institution where he'd done residency! It was going to be GREAT!

Then we went to New Orleans for the Congress of NSG meetings for that year. In October. DH had won some award or something and gave a presentation. These functional guys from Emory heard him and asked him to drinks. He came back to the hotel room and told me that our dinner was getting delayed for an hour or so, so that he could talk to these guys over drinks, super-quick.

Four hours later (I'd given up on dinner and was watching crappy cable TV), he came back to the room and announced that he'd finally met NSG "just like him" (nerdy???) and that he was going to do a fellowship in adult functional NSG at Emory--several states away.

It turned out to be a really choice for DH. He didn't interview anywhere else (kind of risky! The fellowship was competitive...what was he thinking?) and he loved the fellowship and the people.

There are days, though, as I sit here in STL with three kids and a full-time job and no husband...I wish I had insisted that we just go on our dinner date!!

[Finding Equanimity]

Thanks for the stories ladies! I love hearing them- GrayMatter that is quite a story! It's nice to hear I'm not the only one who suffered through this. houseelf- Dh is interviewing for vascular. At first he applied to something like 24 programs, which I thought was reasonable. Then the attendings at his residency told him it wasn't enough and we applied for about 20 more. That was the start of our downfall. He has gotten something like 17 interviews, which I know sounds like a stupid thing to complain about, but I'm the one who manages our finances (oh heck, I manage everything in our house!) so I know there is no. way. we can afford 17 interviews. He's simultaneously thrilled that he has a chance at matching, but also worried that if he declines the less prestigious ones, we'll lower our chances of matching.

ides- I think knowing where we're going a year in advance will be wonderful, but also tough because I work and I have to be secretive about the fact that I'm leaving in a year. I don't particularly love my job, so motivation will plummet if we're moving far away!

Marissa- there are programs near us but he hasn't been thrilled with them so he is probably going to rank them low. He has loved stuff all over the place, like Chicago and Miami.

[Chrisada]

I have a friend whose husband matched in vascular last year. He interviewed at a ton of places. They didn't care where they went, as long as he matched. They are moving with four young kids from MI to Texas this summer.

[Finding Equanimity]

Hi again ladies. I have a question for you. My husband had a great interview the other day at a place he'd LOVE to match with. It's in a location far from us, but that night, after returning home, DH checked his email and the chairman had written him an email. The email says they enjoyed meeting him and hoped he'd rank their program high. It sounds encouraging, and we've never gotten an email from the chairman after an interview, but we don't know how serious they are. It seems personalized to DH, but at the same time, this program might just be extra courteous and follow up with all of its applicants.

DH responded immediately, saying how much he loved the program and saying he would rank it very high. It's his #1. Still, I don't know what to think of the chairman's email. I definitely don't want to get my hopes up. What do you think-- is it normal to get an email like this? Should we not get too giddy about this? We were very burned in match for residency, so I just am very skeptical about everything.

[corn poffi]

I wouldn't believe anything they say. That way, at least you won't be disappointed!

[oceanchild]

Yeah, I say: "Enh." It's nice that they sent a letter. If you like them best, rank them first. And then try your very best not to get your hopes up (I suck at that).