Questions to Ask During a Residency Meet and Greet
Questions for the informal part of the interview trail: the pre-interview dinner, the resident social hour, or the virtual meet and greet. These are the things residents will answer honestly when no programme director is in the room, covering hours, support, cost of living, and what people here actually do after graduating.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
How did you end up here, and would you rank it the same way again?
The most useful question of the evening, and the pause before the answer often carries more information than the answer. A resident who says yes immediately and then gives a reason is a different signal from one who says the programme has grown on them.
- 2
What did you not know about this place until you started?
This invites the thing that is not on the website and does not fit into the formal interview day. It also lets a resident tell you something positive that the programme is bad at advertising, which happens more often than you would think.
- 3
What time did you get out yesterday?
One concrete day beats any general statement about the hours being reasonable. Asking several residents the same question across the evening gives you a distribution rather than an anecdote.
- 4
Who covers when somebody calls in sick?
The backup system tells you how much staffing margin the programme has. If the answer is that a specific person is on call for it every week, that is a healthier arrangement than everyone quietly hoping nobody gets ill.
- 5
What are you responsible for here that ancillary staff do at other hospitals?
Blood draws, transport, placing lines, chasing records. This varies enormously between institutions, it is entirely invisible on a rotation list, and it is one of the largest differences in daily quality of life.
- 6
What is your census on a busy month?
There is often a stated cap and a real number, and residents will tell you both. Ask what happens when the cap is exceeded, because the answer describes how the programme treats its own rules under pressure.
- 7
Do you actually get to didactics, and is that time protected in practice?
Protected time exists on paper nearly everywhere. What you want to know is whether residents are pulled out of teaching for clinical work, and whether anyone notices when they are.
- 8
Where do residents live, and what are people paying?
Residents know real rents in a way that a relocation page does not. Salary is easy to compare across programmes and useless without this, since the same number is comfortable in one city and tight in another.
- 9
How do people get to work, and is parking included?
A small thing that repeats every day for several years. Paid parking, a long shuttle, or a commute that is unpleasant at 5am adds up in a way that people underrate when comparing programmes.
- 10
What do residents here do on a day off?
The answer tells you about the city and, more usefully, about whether people have days off in a form they can use. Hesitation about what anyone does outside the hospital is itself an answer.
- 11
Are there residents here with partners or children, and how does that go?
Ask about parental leave in practice rather than policy: whether anyone has recently taken it, how the schedule absorbed it, and whether it extended their training. Policies exist widely and are used unevenly.
- 12
Who do you go to when something goes wrong?
You are listening for a name and for how quickly it arrives. A resident who names a specific chief or faculty member without thinking is describing a real support structure, and a pause here is worth following up on.
- 13
Has anybody left or transferred out, and what happened?
Ask gently and expect that everyone knows the story. Departures are normal and the details matter: a resident who switched specialties is a different situation from one who left because of how they were treated.
- 14
What changed after the last resident survey or accreditation review?
This tests whether feedback goes anywhere. A specific change, even a small one like a fixed call room or a new night float structure, means residents here have some ability to alter their own conditions.
- 15
How much autonomy do you have now compared with your first year?
Best asked of a second or third year, and ask for an example rather than an impression. Programmes differ sharply in whether senior residents run things or remain closely supervised, and both models suit different people.
- 16
What do attendings expect from an intern on the first day?
The answer tells you how supported the start is and how steep the beginning would feel. It also gives you something concrete to prepare, which is worth having regardless of where you match.
- 17
What is the hardest rotation, and what makes it hard?
Every programme has one and residents will name it instantly. The reason is what matters: busy and well supervised is a normal part of training, while busy with nobody to call is a different thing entirely.
- 18
Where did the last couple of classes go afterwards?
Ask about actual destinations rather than fellowship match rates in the abstract. Whether graduates went where they wanted, and whether the programme helped, is the question underneath it.
- 19
Is there anything you would want to know if you were sitting where I am?
This hands the conversation over, and residents often use it to volunteer the thing they cannot say directly. It works better late in the evening than early, once you have talked for a while.
- 20
Who else should I talk to tonight?
Purely practical and easy to forget. It gets you to the resident whose situation resembles yours, whether that means a parent, someone who moved a long distance, or someone from your background.
Working a residency social
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
How the evening actually works
How the evening actually works
It is informal, and it is not off the record
Residents are rarely asked to score you and often are asked for impressions, particularly strong negative ones. Behave as though the evening counts a little, without behaving as though it is an interview, since visible performance is the thing residents comment on.
Talk to three or four people, not one
Any single resident's view is shaped by their year, their rotation this month, and their mood. Asking the same two questions of several people is how you get a range instead of an anecdote, and it is also easier than sustaining one long conversation.
Find the second years
Interns are still in the hardest stretch and often have no comparison. Third years are close to leaving and remember the difficult parts less sharply. Second years have been through a full cycle and are still living in it.
Ask about today, not about the programme
Specific questions about yesterday, this rotation, or last week get honest and detailed answers. General questions about culture and support get the same three adjectives at every programme you visit.
Reading the room
Reading the room
- Who came. A dinner attended by residents from every year, on a weeknight, means something different from one covered by two people who were assigned.
- Whether residents talk to each other or only to candidates. Programmes where people are friends look different from programmes where people are colleagues.
- How they talk about their seniors and their attendings when the answer is unguarded.
- Whether anybody arrives late from the hospital, and whether that is treated as normal.
- How quickly a hard question gets answered honestly rather than deflected with a joke.
- Whether the same complaint surfaces from unconnected people. That one is real.
Save these for the formal interview day
Save these for the formal interview day
- 1Board pass rates, case or procedure numbers, and anything that needs an official figure.
- 2Curriculum changes, new rotations, and questions about programme leadership plans.
- 3Research support, funding for conferences, and protected academic time.
- 4Contract details: salary, benefits, leave allowance, moonlighting policy.
- 5Anything you would want in writing, since a resident's answer at a dinner is not a commitment from the programme.
- 6Follow-ups on anything a resident told you that surprised you. Ask the programme directly rather than repeating who said it.