The new interview dates spreadsheet is posted on the SNS website to help with interview season planning.

http://www.societyns.org/Medical%20Stude...cants.html

It's about the time of year for the requisite flurry of threads asking for application chances.  Thought I would clear something up.

I have no idea how anyone answers this question.

As junior faculty, I have been involved in resident selection for 2 different institutions.  Both could not be more different.

At one, each faculty and chief resident reading applications graded applicants on Transcript, Recommendations, Research, and Extracurriculars (read: were you an athlete, ex-military, or Rhodes Scholar?  extra points) on a 1-4 scale.  There was a Step 1 cutoff, so it didn't really matter what your Step scores were after you made the cut.  The top X in terms of total scores were selected for interviews, with a few exceptions made by the PD in response to phone calls or other intangibles.  Recommendations received the most weight and broke the most ties.  Most of us literally skimmed the personal statement looking for personality disorders or inability to write in English.  I don't think I ever looked at a Dean's Letter except to read the comments from attendings on Surgery rotations.  In looking at the transcripts, those with all honors stood out, those with majority honors were middle of the pack, and those with few honors were on the lower end.  Failing surgery was a red flag.  Not honoring a NSGY Sub-I was a minor red flag.  Failing a NSGY Sub-I was an automatic no.

At the other institution, transcripts were pored over.  Failing anatomy meant your app was tossed.  We looked at the distribution of grades for each rotation to put applicants in context.  You can damn well bet the applicant with Step 1 of 260 was considered higher than the one with a 250.  CVs were used to look for "interesting people" and we really did read into that one summer you spent building houses in Uganda.  Recommendations mattered, but also WHO wrote them mattered - if it wasn't a personal friend of a faculty reviewer, it didn't really contribute much to your application.  I always thought it was unfairly biased toward applicants from more "prestigious" backgrounds, but hey, what do I know.  That program was certainly not all superstar residents.

The point is, stop wasting your time trying to read the mind of the application readers.  And stop wasting even more time posting on here to get the input of other MS4s and PGY1s who have no clue what they're talking about.  The only thing we all tend to agree on are the superstars and the red flags - everyone in between is subject to the individual institution's review process, and the vast majority of applicants are in this bucket.  Your best bet is to do your research, find programs that fit what you want, and apply as widely as you can given your personal/financial situation.

We have had great residents come from everywhere, and shitty residents from the Harvards and UCSFs of the world.  Any faculty member will tell you the same thing.  Be realistic, but don't sell yourself short.

M4 interested in open vascular (like everyone else, lol). What residencies should top my application list if this is my goal?

Chief here, starting my interview process for a job.  Recently went to a place where they claimed nearly all the spine cases were double scrubbed with a neurosurgeon and ortho spine surgeon working in tandem.  They called it a perfect collaboration because "the ortho docs will bring you more patients than you could ever see". Each doc basically works with a single ortho surgeon for all their spine cases, and they refer patients back and forth.  They all came from good training programs so I assume they could do this stuff themselves if they wanted, but doesn't seem like they do.

Sounded very fishy to me, just an easy way to double bill.  Is this commonplace in PP?  If so...how the hell has nobody caught on?

Any reviews of Sub-I here? I have it coming up.

Do you have higher chance of getting into a neurosurgical residency if you graduated from the medical school affiliated with the residency? For example, if I graduated from Stanford/Hopkins Medical School and wanted to match into Stanford/Hopkins Neurosurgery, how much of an advantage would I have over an applicant from another medical school?

what salary should I expect coming out of residency

Every program seems to have different expectations out of student rotators from glorified shadowing to actively updating the list and being involved in decision-making. What are some initiatives that medical students can take in your program or programs you've seen which are impressive and set them apart?

How about at interviews when there is less time to "impress?"

Hello all,

Through my message, i will be asking you if i have a chance to get a PGY-1 Neurosurgery position in the USA.
I am a PGY-1 Neurosurgery resident.
Me and my family are moving to the States soon. I was about to apply for research (paid) position for 2 years in a program there.
I have a good CV with a lot of volunteer work and research experience and waiting the submission of several papers.
I did one year of prelim general surgery in an ACGME-i accredited program in the middle east with 6 months of Neurosurgery rotation that allowed me to take several recommendation letters from different American Board Drs. 
The problem is that i got 207 on my step 1 done in Med 1. It was too early. 
I heard about the possibility of making it pass/fail then.
Can you give me your kind recommendations to know about the possibilty of applying to the NS program after years of research and maybe prelim general surgery?

Thank you

Anyone had any impressive rotators this season? So far we have only had 1 of 8, but  all were good on paper.