My residency program just completed its round of interviews for the class beginning in 2011. It was an interesting experience to be viewing the entire process as a bystander already in the training program. There were amazingly talented applicants who appeared to be destined for greatness; there were applicants who appeared fatigued, presumably from the long rounds of interviews that they already had underwent elsewhere. The process reminded me how fortunate I was to be done with residency interviews (But I guess I’ll never be done with interviews).

The selection pool was so rich that I wished we could accept 10 residents for the program. Some applicants had numerous publications. Others had worked on light detecting devices for disabled children. Everyone was gifted in his/her own way. I felt compelled to sell our program to the applicants. I wanted them to rank us high on their list. That said, I can only imagine how difficult it would be to decide how to rank applicants at all. Ultimately, we will only get a handful of newcomers. The rest will end up scattered across the hospitals in the country. I’m eager to await the match results at my program. In a way, I’m nearly as anxious as the applicants. I will be a senior resident the year these people start their residencies. While is would be great to have a highly qualified junior resident, it would be even better to have a highly qualified resident who will be reliable enough to handle the stress and pain of residency.

Best of luck to the ophthalmology residency applicants!

medicine ophthalmology