Avoid Delays in Responding to Interview Invites

Recently someone I know got a late interview invite (January is almost the end of the residency interview season) and he responded the next day - and guess what, he got a reply that the interview slot was already taken ! And sadly - that's not the first time I have heard this happening.

It's no secret that many residency programs send out more invites than they can accommodate and this becomes especially true for interview invites that come late in the season, when interview slots open up as a result of cancellations from candidate who secure prematches or simply do not show up. Emails are sent out to the next wait-listed batch of screened applications the moment a slot opens, and then its pretty much a early-bird-get-lucky thingie.

I was surprised when a program coordinator at a University program told us candidates that their program always sent out 10% more invites than they had slots for, since they always expected cancellations.


So, the moral is:

1. To respond to interview invites right away.
2. Keep checking on messages from program as often as you can - a smart way would be to have up email alerts setup to be transmitted to your cell phone. For example, for gmail users - you could create create a keyword filter which automatically identifies any incoming emails from MyERAS and then forwards that to an email-to-sms account depending on your cell phone service, like this picture shows below:




Hmmm...reminds me how flights do the same - overbook to have some leeway for cancellations than have an unfilled flight.


Also Read:

- Interview Invites : You got spam !