Without travel, the cost of residency interviews will plummet

In-person residency interviews are unlikely to take place for applicants seeking residency positions as part of the 2021 cycle. Although the change is imperative, prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, there are some student concerns about the reality that all interviews will be virtual.

Kareem Abdelfattah, MD, is director of the General Surgery Program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern), which has been conducting residency practice interviews since 2017.

“It’s just different when they haven’t been able to visit campus and look their future colleagues in the eye,” Dr. Abdelfattah said during a recent AMA Innovations in Medical Education webinar. “The time spent walking trainees through these decisions has increased quite a bit for our program, and medical schools will need to consider how they advise students how to rank programs based on the limited information they have.”

The lack of in-person interviews presents at least one advantage: saving travel costs for a residency interview. The new FREIDA™ Residency Calculator is a member-exclusive tool that helps medical students plan residency application and interview costs in advance. It may also account for the change in interview costs during the unique application cycle in 2021.

The cost of applying to residency programs and interviewing has been a burden for many students over the years.

According to data collected by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) from the 2019 Core Residency Matching, graduates of MD-granting medical schools located in the United States (“US adults”) who were matched attended on average 13 personal interviews. The number among graduates of osteopathic and foreign medical schools was slightly lower at nine.

The FREIDA calculator shows that the amount spent on the application process without interviews for the average applicant is about $800 under the following assumptions:

• Application to 39 programs — 2019 average for US medical school graduates, according to NRMP.
• Applying to one specialty that occurs most often.
• USMLE transcript priced at $80.
• Match registration fee—priced at $85.
• Conducts all interviews virtually.

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If that candidate then factors in an in-person interview with a flight, two days of rental car expenses, and a night in a hotel, that figure jumps to more than $1,500 for the entire process.

Travel costs for this one interview totaled $750, meaning that if a candidate traveled with the above criteria to 13 individual interviews—students tend to save where they can, so this is unlikely—he or she would spend close to $10,000 dollars for transportation and accommodation.

The average number of applications and interviews is increasing. For example, between 2010 and 2019, the average number of applications submitted by medical students seeking admission to obstetrics and gynecology programs more than doubled, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

It’s a trend that may not produce the desired results, according to Dr. John Andrews, AMA vice president of GME innovation.

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“In the current environment of increasing application numbers, this increases the burden on applicants without a corresponding increase in match rates,” said Dr. Andrews, who leads the AMA’s Reimagining Residency initiative.

“The AMA is concerned about the growing number of applications and the educational impact of not having enough time in school to complete a large number of interviews. We are working to support innovation that will reduce this pressure.”

In addition to the calculator tool, FREIDA™, the AMA’s comprehensive residency and fellowship database, includes more than 12,000 residency programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and has a new look and feel that offers a streamlined user experience. experience. The AMA has also prepared a selection of resources to assist residents, medical students, and faculty during the COVID-19 pandemic to help manage changing schedules, cancellations and adjustments to tests, rotations, and other events during this time .