FEATURE
didn’t have a pantsuit on. I also worried about that, “Am I dressed
properly? Do we all have to wear pants? Did I miss the pants memo?”
My dream for future medical students is for casual interviews where
they can wear jeans. But, seeing as this is medical school, I’m sure
some applicants would still wear suits to a casual interview because
they will think it’s a trick.
Residency programs host a dinner and/or a cocktail hour with the
resident physicians (and sometimes attending physicians) the night
before the actual interview. I found these to be another potential
source of extra anxiety. At one of the cocktail hours I attended, out
of five female applicants I was the only one drinking an alcoholic
beverage. I thought, “Are these applicants judging me? Was I not
supposed to get this? It’s kind of weird to drink with an attending
doctor that I just met…oh well.”
At this point, after reading my flight of ideas about interview
season and the Match, you must think I have a negative view of the
whole process. However, meeting fellow applicants and seeing new
cities definitely outweighed the negatives of the interview trail! I
hope that each of my classmates and fellow Radiation Oncology
applicants receive the outcomes that they hope for (in their enve-
lopes). It’s been a long, crazy journey, but I think I would do it again!
Editor’s Note: After completing this article, Bailey matched to one of her
top choices, the University of Cincinnati Hospital. Congratulations to
her and her family. We wish her all the best as she pursues her career!
In addition to that fiasco, I also missed my interview in Boston
because of the bombogenesis storm of 2018. For those of you who
weren’t watching the Weather Channel during the first week on
January, a bombogenesis is a cyclone with hurricane-force winds
that rapidly intensifies over time. The massive storm led to a speak-
erphone interview with an entire radiation oncology department
and multiple phone calls to my airline and hotel trying to get my
much-needed money back.
Bailey Nelson is a recently matched PGY1 for the University of Cincin-
nati Hospital.
Speaking of money, the interview trail costs fourth-year medical
students thousands of dollars. On top of the residency application
fee and away rotations, paying for gas, rental cars, flights, food and
hotel rooms will quickly deplete any loan money or savings. Some
programs in certain specialties will pay for applicants’ travel fees
and hotel costs. I wasn’t so lucky.
Another sneaky cost is interview clothing. I had two inter-
view outfits (blazers included). And as medical students tend to
overanalyze situations, I often hoped at each interview that fellow
applicants who I’d met at previous interviews hadn’t noticed that I
was repeating outfits. One of my outfits was a dress with a blazer. I
was one of the only female applicants at each of my interviews that
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