<p>Last interview for 2008, and at interview #6 of 13, very accurately the middle point of my interview trail.</p>
<p>Program F:</p>
<p>This was a program that I didn’t originally intend to apply to at the beginning of this whole process. My new department chair at my school came from a faculty position at this school and was adamant about me applying to this school. And I’m definitely glad he did.</p>
<p>This program was excellent. You can take a lot of the statements I made about program D, and apply them to this program. Lots of didactics, big hospital, lots of pathology. Really in terms of educational programming this residency has everything I’m looking for. I was really, really, really impressed. </p>
<p>The residents were excellent - extremely outgoing, EXCITED about their program. The dinner the night before was at one of the resident’s houses, and the other applicants and I could barely get a word in edgewise. The residents on the interview day were similar. The fact that it’s getting further and further into the interview season, I have no doubt that they could be tiring of selling the program, but it didn’t seem that way…</p>
<p>Despite it’s size, the program does a lot to protect it’s interns and residents. On the general peds floor the average load for a intern is only 6-8 patients. So while there’s a ton of patients, and the hospital is extremely busy, they’re not using the interns merely as slave labor. This leaves time for other educational activities. </p>
<p>Despite all the awesome things about this program, it doesn’t have anything as unique as some of the other programs I’m looking at. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but as I’m going through the issues in my mind, those unique things tend to stand out.</p>
<p>As far as the location, this program is in a big city, and I know there’s going to be plenty to do and stay busy with. That said, it’s not a place that I’m excited about living in. So we’ll see how that plays in to it.</p>
<p>I do really like this program but am somewhat of the opinion that I’m not that competitive for this program. With the other programs, I really feel like if I rank them #1 on my rank-order-list (ROL) that I will have a great chance ending up there. For some reason with this program, I’m less confident. Not really sure why, but that’s the gut feeling I get.</p>
<p>Overall, this is another program that’ll be at the top of my ROL, but we’ll see how it all shakes out.</p>