Organization or lack thereof

Disclaimer: If you happen to be reading this AND you're a med school at which I've interviewed (and you may or may not even know who you are), I love you, I loved your interview day, this is all hypothetical, please admit me.  And stop reading.  Now.  I'm serious.  You should already have closed this window.  Unless you're not a medical school, and then you may continue to read, but I make no guarantees that you won't have regretted wasting your time later.

The scariest thing to me about the interview process isn't so much the interviews themselves, as the way in which the interview day is scheduled.  Or for that matter, the way it isn't scheduled.  So far, every school that I've visited has done a good job of keeping the interviewees occupied, without making us feel overwhelmed.  I'm beginning to get the sense, though, that some schools do not place as great a priority on that.  But I may just have a personal bias.

Here's the way that I would think all schools would run their interview days, if at all possible:

First, while I understand why they start the interview day at 8am (okay, so I don't actually, but if I had to guess it would be to see how we handle ourselves at times of day when classes normally occur), I'd love to start an hour later.

Second, interviews should happen at the same time, and in the same place.  I understand that physicians and med school students are busy.  However, I've also experienced interview days where everyone was in the same place for all of their interviews.  The interviewers set aside their entire day just to take care of interviews!  I'm a fan.

Third... okay, there isn't really a third.  Those first two take care of all of my big interview issues.  Actually, forget about the first one, and focus on the second.  And maybe add to that how nice it would be if schools provided coffee and granola bars or something similar in the morning for breakfast.  I know, I know, it would cost them so much extra to do that, and they should just be spending that money on our education instead, but whatever.  I like coffee.  If that means they have to give me a plain manila envelope instead of a fancy school-decorated one, I think they should go for it.  And maybe pre-printed name tags.  They should feel free to use "Hello my name is..." labels, too.  I just wouldn't count on my being able to remember how to spell my own name, let alone write it, when I'm sitting there trying to remember how to speak English.

That's all for today.  No, wait.  Okay, yes.  I just had a brilliant thought that hopefully I can write about later.  It involves airlines (Alex, remember, write about airlines).

I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there...
Primary applications: 16
Instant rejections: 1
Secondary applications: 15
Post-secondary rejections (i.e. without an interview) to date: 2
Interview invitations to date: 5
Interviews completed to date: 3
Post-interview rejections to date: 0
Acceptances to date: 0