More snooping.

I have been doing some more advanced snooping into the various programs. I have been talking to friends who are at the institutions when possible. I have also been trying to figure out who the faculty are at each place, where they came from etc. Another important thing I am trying to figure out is where they get their residents from. If I can figure out those places that historically only take people from their program or from a certain geographic region or from certain schools then I will avoid them if I don't fit the profile. Who wants to spend 3-5 hundred dollars to interview somewhere that has never taken anyone but graduates from their general surgery program? Not only is this about matching, it is about limited time and resources. There are only so many weekends between January (when most programs start offering interviews) and match day. I only have a little bit of money as well, so that complicates things even further. There is much work left to do before I have my chances optimized.