?'s about the interview process for residencies?

I was talking to some friends who are in fourth year of med school and they were talking about interviews.
What is this like? How long does an interview take, a weekend, a day?
How many places do most people interview with?
Any infor or insight is appreciated I'm curious..

[migirl]

Speaking strictly from our own experience... The interview normally only takes one day, some programs have a dinner for the applicants the night before where they can meet the other applicants and the current residents and faculty. Most of the interviews my DH attended had the same format: tour of the hospital, informational session about the program, group interview (sometimes), individual interviews with faculty. My DH interviewed at 20 programs, but I suppose this number can vary depending on the applicant's personal preference (my DH was a bit, uh, paranoid so he wanted to interview at as many places as was practical and that we could afford for him to attend; thankfully he chose not to interview at all sixty programs to which he applied!). That's the other thing, the expenses for the interview travel fall solely on the applicant so it can get to be quite expensive if he has to arrange a lot of flights and hotels. My husband tried to schedule all of his interviews based on geographic location whenever possible (e.g., he did all of his Chicago interviews back-to-back so he only had to make one trip to Chicago) in order to minimize time and expense while traveling.

Yeah the number of interviews you want to have depends on how selective the program is. You can always cancel them if you book too many. My bf did some local ones first as practice (programs he wasn't interested in) and then booked the others by geographic location. It does get tiring, so you don't want to put all the important ones at the end.

I think there was a thread about this some time ago- check the archives.

[Flynn]

I think (not sure the exact numbers) my DH applied to about 20 programs and interviewed at no more than ten. Most took a day with perhaps some drinks/dinner in the evening. Most interviews were only on certain days so he had to choose which ones to cross off based on what days were available.

The more selective the residency...the more programs you apply to. Then you can choose interviews based on your responses.

Then you sit back and wait for match day. Torture.

Thanks, I'll go look in the archives as well...