interview questions

[gilbertfletcher]

i know some are at an interview today...made me think back to my interviews last year and some of the whack questions i was asked...

so post 'em here... I'll start

-Was asked to interpret an MRI at two places...nothing hard...metastatic lesion and the other was a gliosite balloon in some doods head...
-I was asked why i didn't have a phd
-Did you do any rotations with anyone i know?

otherwise, the questions were pretty straightforward. they were definitely more intense than any of the prelim interviews i went to. in general, i'd say the interviews with the physicists and radiobiologists were the most boring.

good luck everyone!

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[stephew]

i remember my meeting with radbio and physics were a little baffling as I really didnt know what their importantance was or what they did, or what the heck they expected of me. Nowadays I absolutely want to speak with these folks. But I agree that for the resident applicant, it can seem like an odd way to spend an hour.

 

[radonc]

i got asked the standard questions but here are some of the better, more interesting and quirky ones:

1. asked to interpret a brain mri, asked what gad was and the difference between t1 and t2 weight images

2. asked who would i like to have dinner with living or dead (said hugh hefner!) and why

3. my top 5 dvd's in my collection (one of my hobbies)

4. asked about my tricked out car (again, a hobby -- by a fellow car junky)

5. asked some spacial relation questions by a physicist

6. asked to evaluate some of the other people in the interview

a lot of people in the field are pretty straight but some of the young radonc attendings are pretty cool and easy to get along with.

 

[radonc]

oh i forgot one

there was a group picture of radonc people at harvard in the 80's and i was asked to pick out my advisor/mentor out of the group of 50 or so people.

 

[stephew]

got asked the standard questions but here are some of the better, more interesting and quirky ones:

1. asked to interpret a brain mri, asked what gad was and the difference between t1 and t2 weight images

5. asked some spacial relation questions by a physicist


6. asked to evaluate some of the other people in the interview

there was a group picture of radonc people at harvard in the 80's and i was asked to pick out my advisor/mentor out of the group of 50 or so people.



the first two are unfair for the student. The last one is either to see how gracious you are or totally inappropriate. The last is easy: pick out the handomsest or prettiest one.

 

[radonc]

yeah i know. i figured the one about evaluating other people was to see 1. how eloquent i was, 2. what my 'true' personality was, and 3. how i reacted to a wierd/hard question.

 

[scaredapplicant]

i was pimped at one particular interview. as i walked into the interviewer's office... even before i could sit down, he asked if you have stage 2b prostate cancer with a PSA of 40 and a gleason grade of 8 what is the most definitive treatment as of 2003?

 

[stephew]

even though its competitive, remember to take inot account how you are treated at an interview come decision time. It may tell you alot about what your next 4 years will be like.

BTW if you really wanted to be cute you could have asked "old staging or new" (but I wouldnt recommend it).

 

[scaredapplicant]

this particular place was one of the biggest brachytherapy centers in the country .. but the city was a total dump. every interviewer except the residency director (who has stepped down as residency director this year) was a bit of an --- (why should we want you ... type attitude)... needless, to say i ranked it last and matched much higher on my list.


Moderator's note: edited for language as represented by dashes.

 

[cancer_doc]

Originally posted by scaredapplicant
i was pimped at one particular interview. as i walked into the interviewer's office... even before i could sit down, he asked if you have stage 2b prostate cancer with a PSA of 40 and a gleason grade of 8 what is the most definitive treatment as of 2003?

.....this particular place was one of the biggest brachytherapy centers in the country .. but the city was a total dump. every interviewer except the residency director (who has stepped down as residency director this year) was a bit of an --- (why should we want you ... type attitude)... needless, to say i ranked it last and matched much higher on my list.

Hey Scaredapplicant, I think I know who this guy is. I had a similar scenario with him- Before my butt touched the seat, he asked me for the updated treatment on primary CNS lymphoma. I thought to myself, "what the ----"?!? I also felt that the interview process there was less casual than at most other places, but the impression I got was that they were really serious in finding out who you are and whether you'd fit in their program, rather than them being stuck-up.

BTW: that residency director stepped down because he was promoted to Chief of the whole oncology service of the hospital.

Moderator's note: edited with dashes --- for language. Play nice folks. We're running a family forum here.

 

[Thaiger75]

Those kinds of questions are flat-out ridiculous. If you knew the answers to those, you wouldn't be applying for residency. We're applying to train to learn these answers. I don't know whether it would be a good answer, but I would probably reply that I wasn't sure and that's why I want to train to be a radiation oncologist to learn the answer. But, I agree, that a program who treats you like that is probably not a program I would want to go to. Another wierd and rude experience at a program (and which I hear is commonplace at other programs) is that my whole interview with a faculty member was me following him around while he was in clinic. He didn't ask me any questions except if I had any questions.

 

[scaredapplicant]

ah, good to know. the residency director (the old one ) i must say was extremely nice. i flat out asked him if they wanted someone who was strong in basic science research (because i just was not having been a liberal arts major in college). he went out of his way to tell me that he really liked my app and wanted to know how serious i would be about ranking them # 1 and that he would lobby hard on my behalf i wanted to go there... i just did not see myself getting along too well with some of the other attendings including the program director and decided that this was not the right place for me.

i am not sure who ended up matching there... maybe one of the folks from Ha'vard?

 

[stephew]

for some reason, while medicine in general has a lot of weird personalities, rad onc really takes the cake. I dont know why. the good thing is the younger ones tend more often towards sanity. But not exclusively. There are some real characters out there; if you have a choice, excercise it.
right now its tough. but a strong PD as a ally will make your life infinitely better.

 

[scaredapplicant]

very true.

the thing is... until about 5 years ago rad onc was one of the least competitive fields out there. so the people who got into rad onc in the 70s, 80s and even early 90s were either FMGs or the nerds/oddballs from american medical schools who generally lacked any "people-sense"... the younger faculty members who have graduated from residencies within the last few years are a whole different breed... i definitely lucked out... the program i am going to has an awesome residency director... my audition month there was really fun... this guy is like being at a dennis miller live taping... he is genuinely funny, brilliant and easy going..

 

[stephew]

actually it really turned around in the early mid 1990's. No real known reason why though I have my theories about folks growing up with technology. Anyway its not the FMGs nerds or oddballs i have the issue with. Its the malignant jerks, who aren't really any of the above.

 

[Joe N]

Here are a couple of gems:

1) What is a photon?
2) Why does a prism produce a rainbow?

and this one was actually fun to think about, although I got it wrong.

3) There are 3 cups and there is a ball under one. After you choose a cup, I will remove one of the other 2 (the removed one does not have the ball under it), leaving 2 cups. The question is, do you have a better chance of finding the ball by staying with the cup you chose or by guessing that it is the other one?

Joe

 

[stephew]

classic q: i have a quiz book that has this; the answer is that your odds of guessing are improved; proof later.
steph

 

[cancer_doc]

don't scroll down unless you know the answer....


























1:3 vs 1:2 (is that right?)

 

[Joe N]

Yes, that's basically right. It's actually 1/2 vs 2/3. The interviewer told me that there is a mathmatical proof of a couple hundred pages to back it up.... I just took him for his word.

 

[stephew]

yeah that's right (or thereabouts). In a book entitled something like "the puzzles of Sherherazade, they have this with a conceptual proof. Neat.

FYI that comment about ranking you and where you'd rank them: TOTALLY inappropriate and fyi its those guys you should not trust as far as you can throw them.