St.Barnabas Hospital, NY - IM

Guest · **posting in usmle forum about Interview Experiences**

St. Barnabas Hospital is located in Bronx, NY. The program director always invites hundreds of candidates for a single position. I interviewed there in late October and there were atleast 25 candidates there for the interview. As soon as you reach the interview candidates room, you will be handed out a form to fill which containes several general questions like why you liked the program, what are your future goals etc. In addition to that, the questionnaires also contains some medical questions, including ethics, and some trigonometry questions.

As you fill the questionnaire, the program director calls out each candidate and takes them to his room for an interview. The interview is very relaxed and will last only 2-3 minutes and it mainly involves praising your credentials and finally, the program director encourages you to email him after you finish your interviews and decided that St. Barnabas is the right program for you. But, the truth is that, if he likes a candidate he will offer prematch position on the spot and will compel you to take the position by saying that this is the last prematch spot of the year. Even if you email him immediately after your interview for a prematch, he just would ignore you and will offer only to those he prefers.

After the interview, one batch of candidates will have their hospital tour while rest of them will be waiting for their interview. The hospital looks very old and like a typical new york community hospital with lots and lots of hispanics. The program is full of IMGs and consists of people from India, Africa, Pakistan, China etc. I heard the PD usually prefers people with step 3 results if you need H1 visa, although I wasnt offered a position eventhough I had step 3. The program prepares you well in terms of clinical exposure, because you get all types of medical problems there, including lots of HIV. The residents told us that they have regularly scheduled lectures, but I am not sure how effective they are. The fellowships entirely depends on the residents. There is not much research going on there. The interview ends by around 11.30-12pm.