Thursday, September 3, 2009

First Interview Invitation!

I could hardly believe it when my phone started buzzing and ringing today. I looked to Drew's email and it said that he had an email from ERAS. My hands were shaking as I went to check the email and try to reply and accept the invitation!
Although we were hoping for an interview from this program (because Drew is doing a sub-I there next month) we were not expecting an invitation already. I replied to the program coordinator and asked if it would be possible to interview during his sub-Internship - and if not his first choice would be to interview in November. I got a prompt response letting me know that he could interview in October while he was there. Although Drew has housing while he is there they still offered to book him a hotel - this program is one of the few that actually arranges and pays for your hotel accommodations!
I should also explain that I have Drew's school email forwarded to my phone so that I can respond to any interview invitations. This is because with his sub-Is this month and next month he will most likely be in surgery when the invitations come in via email. Some programs send out (for example) 15 invites when they really only have 10 time slots. This means that only the first ten to respond will actually get the interview.
Luckily neurosurgery is one of the more organized programs and 95% of the programs have actually posted their interview dates (this is not the case with all specialties). With this information I used Google Calendar to enter all of the potential interview dates... then we will use the calendar to try and schedule the interviews as they come in. Right now many of the interviews conflict with each other but I imagine things will manage to work out as we would be lucky to be invited to half the programs we applied to; therefore I imagine by process of elimination it will be pretty easy to schedule interviews.
I hope this is just the first of many more interview invitations... but we'll just have to wait and see!

5 comments:

Jessica @ Wanting Adventure said...

Wow, what a wife you are! That's so great that you can schedule his interviews, and hopefully get him the placement he wants!

Mrs. D said...

Congrats on the first interview! So exciting!

Man, I remember how frustrating it was to schedule all the interviews. As you mentioned, you want to set a date right away so you get an open slot... but it's inevitable that some interview in the future will conflict. My husband had to cancel at least one interview because he got an interview (from a program higher up on his list) for the same slot at a later date. Sounds like you are really organized though! Good luck - and congrats again!

AmberW said...

I just stumbled upon your blog and I am LOVING it!
I am dating an MS4 (he really has a name but I sure have been referring to him as that quite a bit these days!) and I feel VERY alone in the process.

We are currently in a VERY long distant relationship, I am able to stay very busy because I have three kiddos from a previous relationship but it is still a difficult process. Also, to add to the fun - I am in CAnada and he is in the US haha...

Anyway - I am SO happy to have finally found a circle of people who actually GET IT. My friends here don't have a clue. They think that eventually we will live some kind of glam life, and that I just need to suck this part of it up. It is easier said than done that's for sure!!

Back to your post though - VERY EXCITING on the first interview. I am very stressed about S and his applications because he is a PROCRASTINATOR... I am very far away and I have no clue what he has or hasn't done. Can't wait to hear how things go for you two :)

Mrs. C. said...

YAY! that's great. My fiance' got two interviews this week and I know that we were really esctatic about it. I didn't realize that they hand them out so quickly. He's still waiting for 2 of his letters of rec. to be posted and a few grades, and they still want him to interview, so we're pretty happy. Now we have to get our guys prepped for the interviews. I'm gonna have to google that soon. Do you have any info. on what kinds of things they ask in the interviews?

MW said...

I'm totally green with envy right now! Ortho is almost as competitive as NSG, yet only 3 of our 53 programs have interview dates posted, and I've been told not to expect anything until late October/November...

haha, but you know I'm happy for you guys! :) That's awesome he'll be able to get one interview out of the way in October.