The best medicine is (primary) prevention.

This applies to physical and mental health, as well as financial fitness.

Audition rotations are expensive.

  • Do them close to home and get your recommendation letters there. A separate post will help you decide whether it is worth the money and effort to do far away rotations. Depending on your ambitions and specialty of choice, you may or may not need to dish out the 2-4k for a 2-4 week rotation.

 

Use credit cards to your advantage.

  • Just google “open credit card get free flight.” There are many online guides on how to maximize rewards from using credit cards. Some of my friends manage to get more than half of their interview flights free and save thousands of dollars in travel expenses.

 

Simple steps to smart credit use for interviews:

  1. Open multiple credit cards with rewards in airline miles several months before interview season. Open them all within 3 months so that the hard inquires associated with credit card applications will affect your credit score least.
  2. Start using the credit cards for daily expenses to meet the initial requirement (if there’s one) for getting free airline mileage. 
  3. Each dollar charged on the credit card translates into either number of miles or points to purchase plane tickets free.
  4. Usually there is an opening bonus. For example, the first $500 spent with first 90 days gets you the biggest bang of the buck in terms of mileage earned per dollar spent.
  5. When interview season hits, purchase flights using the miles or points you have accumulated. Meanwhile, rack up more rewards when you purchase flights or charge travel expenses onto the credit card.
  6. After interviews, call to opt out on the airline rewards feature of theses credit cards. This way, you can keep the points you’ve accumulated thus far without paying annual fee associated with the feature.

 

Never hurts to ask. Find free lodging.

  • Stay with a friend, relative, or alumni of your school while on interviews for free. Some programs even have residents or attendings who would open up their homes to accommodate applicants during interviews (though this certainly isn’t the norm.) Check out airbnb or priceline for cheaper lodging. Group your interviews by regions to minimize travel costs and time.

 

 Apply widely but interview wisely. 

  • Don’t go overboard with interviews. Just because you receive 40 invitations, does not mean that you should go on even half of them. Chat with your mentors and predecessors who matched into your specialty to decide the number of interviews you need to ensure a match (as you know, it is never 100% certainty.) Since majority of applicants match at a program within their top 3 choices, it is unlikely that you need 20 interviews to ensure a match. Quality over quantity. Don’t interview with the program in a city where your family and you will be miserable for any reason– weather, safety, culture, pollution, job opportunity for your spouse, or schools for your kids. Apply widely to ensure getting plenty of interview invitations to choose from. Don’t go on an interview that costs hundreds of dollars knowing it will be at the bottom of your list.
Tips for a 4th year med student: Interviews