Gathering Intel

I spent the better part of the day gathering intel on 15 of the 49 programs. I got some good info, some of it from inside sources. I have been going through and checking the accreditation status of the programs as well, and I found one that is on probation. It has also become painfully clear that a good number of the fellowships will be moonshots for me, looking at where the current residents graduated medschool, did general surgery etc. Its a good thing that there are 49 places to train!

It will be some time before they even start offering interviews, but if I get some interviews from those moonshot programs I will have to be sure to go to just a few of them. I only have so much money to spend on the interview process, and if I interview at 15 places and they are all moonshots I probably won't match. The other thing is that there are only 13 weekends between the time CAS is sending out the apps to match day, so I will definitely have to be very judicious with where I take interviews. Goal #1 = match. Goal #2 = Match. Goal #3 = MATCH! After that comes getting into an excellent program.

The other thing I have thought about is starting a forum for plastics fellowship applicants. It would be nice to have a board where we could talk about the plastics programs etc. Plastics2002 does this but for people doing combined/integrated programs. Unfortunately I don't have any clue how to do that. Maybe someone will accidentally come across this blog and volunteer. I'll cross my fingers.