Each year, more than 15,000 U.S. medical students—along with more than 18,000 graduates of foreign medical schools and schools of osteopathic medicine—take part in the National Residency Matching Program, vying for a small number of positions in the United States. In this keenly competitive environment, they seek every advantage they can get. Based on more than two decades of experience preparing candidates for residency programs, John Canady has developed a concise practical guide to making one’s way through the maze of residency applications and interviews.
Guiding residency applicants past the pitfalls in all aspects of the process, 101 Tips to Getting the Residency You Want includes sections on tried-and-true methods for senior year planning, the importance of networking, tips for interviewing, practical advice for carefree travel, and guidelines for follow-up to out-of-town rotations and interviews. This guide covers the do’s and don’ts that will maximize each applicant’s chances and exposes the common blunders that can ruin an application in spite of the best grades and test scores.
“Well written, well divided, and at an ideal length, this very affordable, compact guide is ideal. Dr. Canady has put together an accurate summary of helpful tips to focus on, not only during the actual interview season but also while scheduling fourth-year electives.”—Sally Leitch, M.D., University of Minnesota Medical Center
“This book covers the entire process, from deciding on a residency to being more successful in getting the interviews desired, to nuts-and-bolts travel tips. It is written in a pleasant conversational style and will be of use to most students. I would recommend it to my own medical students.”—Martha Matthews, M.D., Division of Plastic Surgery, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Camden
12. Don’t forget legacy private-practice physicians you might know or those who may have been your treating physicians.
In your efforts to get letters of recommendation and phone calls on your behalf, don’t overlook physicians in private practice in the specialty you are seeking. While it is certainly true that academic physicians network with each other and like to produce more of themselves, it is also common for very good residents to go into private practice. This is true even in programs that have national reputations for turning out academic doctors. Recommendations from carefully selected graduates such as these can hold tremendous weight with staff members who still remember them from their training.
