Invites for our residency invitations begin coming out a day or two after our CaRMS applications are submitted. Some programs that don’t fill up regularly in the first iteration will send invites before even going over the apps. These are lovely to receive - to know that you will indeed get at least one or two interviews!
Then you wait for the programs you actually want to go to.
These are scary days. One program in particular was a bit evil to me. They sent out invites to one half of the alphabet before the second. Five days before. I thought for sure that despite all my efforts to learn as much as I could about Family Medicine and all the time I’d spent on research and picking electives, not to mention the application preparations, were all in vain. People who were, in my awful opinion, less worthy than I was for an interview. I was terrified to think that those people were getting interviews and I wasn’t. Did my references fail me? Was I an undesirable candidate after all?
Interview invites came in over a month or two. Some of the people in my class didn’t get invites until the week before the CaRMS interview period had begun. That’s scary.
Once the invites are in, you need to decide how to schedule them all efficiently. You can literally be flying from Halifax to Vancouver to Montreal to Calgary. Expensive, especially if you have more than one specialty you are applying to. Some of the people I know have close to twenty interviews. Trying to coordinate all these interviews in all these cities can be confusing and really make you wish you’d paid more attention in computational mathematics.
There are emails and phone calls to make to program secretaries as you beg them to fit you into another day to maximize the number of interviews you can get to. Online purchases of flights, train tickets, bus tickets, reservations of hotel rooms and B&Bs. Deciding whether or not to room with classmates - in the program or not? Will they stress you out or make you feel more confident? How much money will you save really?
Our credit cards all had an incredibly workout in the weeks leading up to the CaRMS interview period.
I mentioned before that I decided that going across the country was not as important for me as saving the money for a trip in the future. It was a difficult decision but enough people were doing the same thing that I felt convinced that it was going to be safe for me to just apply within Ontario. Especially since that’s where I plan to stay.
But I was lucky enough to get invites to each program I applied to. Not all my classmates were as lucky and needed to do the travelling.
They are becoming very competent travellers. One friend has perfected the art of packing to be able to pack all she needs for a two night stay and an interview into one backpack. Impressive no?
Then you wait for the programs you actually want to go to.
These are scary days. One program in particular was a bit evil to me. They sent out invites to one half of the alphabet before the second. Five days before. I thought for sure that despite all my efforts to learn as much as I could about Family Medicine and all the time I’d spent on research and picking electives, not to mention the application preparations, were all in vain. People who were, in my awful opinion, less worthy than I was for an interview. I was terrified to think that those people were getting interviews and I wasn’t. Did my references fail me? Was I an undesirable candidate after all?
Interview invites came in over a month or two. Some of the people in my class didn’t get invites until the week before the CaRMS interview period had begun. That’s scary.
Once the invites are in, you need to decide how to schedule them all efficiently. You can literally be flying from Halifax to Vancouver to Montreal to Calgary. Expensive, especially if you have more than one specialty you are applying to. Some of the people I know have close to twenty interviews. Trying to coordinate all these interviews in all these cities can be confusing and really make you wish you’d paid more attention in computational mathematics.
There are emails and phone calls to make to program secretaries as you beg them to fit you into another day to maximize the number of interviews you can get to. Online purchases of flights, train tickets, bus tickets, reservations of hotel rooms and B&Bs. Deciding whether or not to room with classmates - in the program or not? Will they stress you out or make you feel more confident? How much money will you save really?
Our credit cards all had an incredibly workout in the weeks leading up to the CaRMS interview period.
I mentioned before that I decided that going across the country was not as important for me as saving the money for a trip in the future. It was a difficult decision but enough people were doing the same thing that I felt convinced that it was going to be safe for me to just apply within Ontario. Especially since that’s where I plan to stay.
But I was lucky enough to get invites to each program I applied to. Not all my classmates were as lucky and needed to do the travelling.
They are becoming very competent travellers. One friend has perfected the art of packing to be able to pack all she needs for a two night stay and an interview into one backpack. Impressive no?
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