Tips for the residency interview trail

I'm not going to be bashful about this. I'm known to give pretty good advice. Maybe because I'm a slightly anxious person and a perfectionist so I'm always (over)thinking things? (But then again, one could be too anxious and indecisive making him/her a poor go-to person for advice.) I think it's simply because I do my research before and after an event, evaluating whether or not the advice I got was actually helpful and what advice I would give to my future self and to others. Anyway, I've been on the interview trail for 3 weeks now, and I'm almost half way through. I want to share some tips I've thought of along the way:

• Schedule interviews with ample time in between for travel and rest. Back to back interviews (one day after the other) are absolute no-no's in my book. You might think you're a superhero after going through core surgery and core medicine in MS3, but you don't want to risk it for something this important. And if you're thinking, "well I don't really care about one of the interviews," then you why are you going at all?
• Try to minimize travel where you have to drive/be awake. Interview days are exhausting as it is. Try to rest as much as possible in between.
• Put together a simple itinerary before each interview to print out and take with you. This way you have all the information about where and when you need to be somewhere without having to search through your phone in a panic last minute. It also forces you to actually look at this information so you at least have a vague outline somewhere in your head if worse comes to worst.
• Bring important items with you in carry-on luggage including (most importantly) your suit and basic toiletries. Just in case your check-in luggage gets delayed. It's happened, more than you'd think. And it's ruined interviews in ways you wouldn't guess.
• Try on your interview outfit the night before. You never know. You want the morning of your interview day to go as smoothly as possible.
• Prepare and practice! Don't be fooled by the myth that you won't get asked hard questions because the tables are turned now and residency programs are recruiting you, not the other way around. These are still standard interviews! Go over frequently asked questions, and make sure you have answers to them, especially the challenging ones. You don't want to be a deer caught in headlights if they ask you a standard interview question. That would be embarrassing. These are interviews after all. And standard questions are standard. Here are some websites I recommend perusing if you're stuck on where to start or just want more well-grounded information:
• AAMC: Interviewing
• ACP: Preparing for Residency Interviews
• Focus on what makes you stand apart even if that means going pre-med. They've read your application...as well as 100 others. They know your stats, but the interview is really an opportunity for you to "come alive" from your paper app, as one interviewer told me. To stand apart from the crowd, it's not unusual to bring up notable items from your pre-med years, because, let's face it, most of our CV's after starting medical school look very similar. So go over your pre-med CV items, go over the research specifics from back then, or what life lesson you gained from some cool experience, etc. etc. Don't rely on your long-term memory to save you on the spot if you get asked about something from 6 years ago. A lot of information has been stuffed in our brains since then...doesn't hurt to get a refresher.

That's all I have for now! If I think of others in the latter half of my interview trail, I'll be sure to come back and update this. Breathe and good luck!