Residency interviews can be a daunting prospect. So, too, can the uncertainty following them.
What should you do after the interview? The answer is going to differ depending on your individual circumstances. Insights from recent residency applicants and faculty members offer some direction on the dos and don’ts of after-interview etiquette. Here are a few key nuggets for residency applicants.
Capture your gut reaction after interviewing
Immediately following your interview, you should take a few minutes to capture your initial reaction.
“Interviews, after some time, do tend to blend together a little bit, although every program is unique in its own way,” said AMA member Liz Southworth, MD, a pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery fellow at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. She advises that residency applicants “quickly jot down some thoughts” after the interview is completed.
Dr. Southworth specifically recommended the National Resident Matching Program’s Prism app, which she said is “nice because it lets you rank programs as you go.”
Bukky Ajagbe Akingbola, DO, an ob-gyn in Colorado who recently completed her residency training, spoke of a colleague who recorded short videos of his impressions following his residency interviews.
“As it came time to rank those programs, he’d have those videos as a resource to rewatch,” she said. “It’s a long interview season and it may be hard to recall how you felt about [an] interview you did in November come January.”
Skip the postinterview follow-up note
A 2025 webinar organized by the AMA Medical Student Section features advice directly from several residency program directors—across a variety of specialties—about what medical students most definitely should and should not do when interviewing at residency programs.
While applicants might have some inclination to express your gratitude for your interviews, residency program directors generally seem to think that’s not a good idea.
“Our recommendation is actually no pre- or postinterview communication is needed,” said Adena Rosenblatt, MD, PhD, the director of a dermatology residency program in Chicago. “At least in our specialty, it really doesn't have an impact as far as the final ranking decisions. So we have it very clearly stated that you do not need to provide any thank you. We assume that you are thankful for the interview, just as we're thankful that you interviewed with us, and that no communication on either side doesn't mean a lack of interest.”
It is also worth noting that the National Resident Matching Program has rules around post-interview communication, stating “applicants may request and exchange clarifying information with programs following the interview but must not solicit or engage in post-interview communication for the purposes of influencing or ascertaining a program’s ranking intentions.”
Use your network for GME program insights
The interview is an important data point for your rank-order list, but it’s hardly the only one. During an episode of the “Meet Your Match” series of the “AMA Making the Rounds” podcast, AMA member Chadd K. Kraus, DO, DrPH, MPH, said that alumni outreach is an avenue that can help applicants gain deeper insight into a residency program.
“So many programs have a long track record of putting graduates, alumni from their residency and fellowship programs, out into practice,” said Dr. Kraus, a former associate director of an emergency medicine residency program. “And while some of those experiences may be more dated—someone may have trained in a program 10 years ago—you still are able to, again, put more pieces of information into your decision and make a more informed decision.”
While acknowledging it can feel awkward to “cold call” alumni, it’s not all that uncommon or at all out of place, Dr. Kraus said.
“Specialties and communities in medicine are very small,” he said. “And so, there are usually not many degrees of separation between you and an alumnus from a program,” he said. “You can get a little bit more information about what really it's like to train in that program, what professional opportunities that alumni have had because they trained in that program.”
As Match Day grows closer and applicants finalize their rank-order lists, don’t forget to consult FREIDA™, the AMA’s comprehensive residency and fellowship database, which includes more than 13,000 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited residency programs and offers a streamlined user experience.
