Fellowship application timeline

This is regarding my fellowship application for Pediatric intensive care application. This is based on my personal journey. I had a LOT of help during the same and I am ever thankful for my mentors, seniors and colleagues for guiding me through the way.

First off, once you have decided you want to pursue a fellowship I would start working on building contacts in the field. I spoke to my seniors and mentor and asked what I could do to make myself more marketable.

Couple of things that I did/things that were recommended

• Away electives- If your program lets you do so. Generally, helps in building rapport with attendings at other programs and thereby your network.
• Research in the field of your interest/application
• Presentations: Try presenting at a National conference if possible in your 2^nd /3^rd year of residency prior to applying for a fellowship if possible.
• Work on your personal statement during your down-time in 2^nd year. Since this is generally the bane of existence for most residents

For Pediatric fellowship the time line is a bit as follows

Somewhere in the middle to end of June	Apply for a token to create an ERAS account
End of June to 2nd week of July	- Work on the ERAS application. - Get LOR’s (take into consideration that your attendings are busy and have a life of their own! They will take at least 2-3 weeks to write you a STRONG LOR. Do consider that it takes 5 business days to upload the same to ERAS. The Program Director LOR has to be one of the 3-4LOR’s that you send to programs) P.S.- You should be dropping hints to them in the end of May that you are expecting them to write LOR’s for you in case I missed mentioning that.
2nd week of July	You can technically apply if your application is ready to the programs. P.S- The programs CANNOT see your application yet
July 15th	Moment of truth. This is when the real application begins, and programs call for interviews
July 15th till the mid November	Interviews take place here. So, a lot of post call travelling and leave requests and what not. Finances/travelling tips for fellowship interview in another post that you can find here
Mid October to end of November	Work on your ROL. Trust me a month seems like a LONG time
End of November to Mid December	The MAGICAL match process takes place in NRMP. Start praying for good news.
Mid December	Cheers! You have matched at your desired program!  If not take part in SOAP (post-match scramble in residency)

Please note: NRMP token opens somewhere in between. I do not remember the exact date unfortunately.

Tips on looking up programs

•  Talk to seniors, attendings on the places you are applying to PRIOR to applying.
• Visa is another criterion that some of us used prior to applying. Unless you do not have such restrictions
• FRIEDA is a good place to read on programs as well
• Lastly email the coordinator for places that you have no information on. They will generally get back to you within 2-3 days.

 Hopefully this helps all individuals who will be applying the following year for fellowship! Best of luck and fingers crossed

Building a HISTORY in the States

These tips and tricks are entirely based on the advice of a VERY wise senior. When you first come to the States for residency, you will need a couple of things to setup.

SIM CARD
Firstly a mobile number. Given that a good number of residents come from outside the States, having a network which gives you free calling to your home country is a BONUS. That's where UltraMobile comes into place. I know in my previous post I said H2O is good, but trust me when I say that UltraMobile is the real deal. For 30$ per month, you get unlimited calls to India with 1GB of 4G data, which is PRETTY IMPRESSIVE! It also has an option of getting nano sim, so in case you decide to upgrade your phone, which many of you will do, it has got your back covered! :) You can get the initial sim on Ebay for 10 bucks which gives you the first month for FREE!
It is totally up to you on how risky you want to be. If you want to buy it directly from UltraMobile, here is your link

BANK ACCOUNT
Next is for earning cash back when you open a bank account. Generally find the bank which your institute has a tie up with. Go to their site and check for any promos that they are running. They might have an offer that should you open an account with their bank you will get a bonus of $ XYZ for signing up!!! which is PRETTY AWESOME!
P.S.- I used Keybank and got 1/3 of a $1000 :P

CREDIT CARD
The last trick that again, my senior taught me, was regarding getting a credit card. Most of the USA banks DO NOT give you a credit card UNLESS you have a credit history. However, Discover does give you one with no credit history with a credit line of $1500 which is PRETTY COOL! So in case you are still hunting around for a credit card do head out to Discover and check it out. You can shoot me an email @ neilnf@gmail.com if you want a referral, following which you and I get a referral bonus for $50 each.

That's it, folks!

UPDATE: Just FYI for the bank you need a direct deposit to get the bonus. For both SSN is needed. For the credit card you need address proof as well.


If you do have any other tricks, please do let me know. After all we are here to help each other! :)

Few sites that I felt were useful for the USMLE

This is most likely going to be among my last few posts regarding the Match process.

Do go through the following sites as they are useful in varied ways. Not only in interview tips but also in general :)

An amazing blog by Kaplan. Gives you good insight into many things :)
http://www.residencysecrets.com/

http://www.imgresidencytips.com/index.php - Has almost everything from the beginning to the end.

http://rookiedoctor.com/ - Written by a guy who has gone through the process and gives advice where deemed necessary

This is the closest to the best thing with which you can prepared for the residency interview questions :)
http://exams.emedicinelive.net/index.php/usmle/2/52-residency-interviews--real-interview-questions-with-answers
http://exams.emedicinelive.net/index.php

This is for the Tell Me about Yourself question for which most of us panic
http://career-advice.monster.com/job-interview/interview-questions/intreview-tell-me-about-yourself/article.aspx
http://www.theladders.com/career-advice/how-to-answer-tell-me-about-yourself-interview-question
http://www.theladders.com/career-advice/10-good-ways-to-tell-me-about-yourself

The following blogs are written by guys  like me
Dr Benji Ho (a Caribbean grad) -  http://www.caribbeanmedstudent.com/
Dr Jagjit - https://iamjagjit.wordpress.com/
Dr Karthik - https://helpingmedicalhands.wordpress.com/


On another note if you want to try your clinical solving you can try the following app Daily Clinical Case rounds

Hoping they help you guys in your journey. I'll keep updating it as and when I come across anything interesting :)

Best of luck!