Declining Interview Etiquette

[darkwingduck]

I was just wondering if anyone had any experience declining an interview.  I have a time conflict between two interviews and I've already confirmed one program, but would like to now decline it in favour of another one where I'd prefer to match and am sure I am more competitive for matching.  Is it unprofessional to just apologize, say there was a time conflict, and that I'd have to now decline?  Any advice greatly appreciated!  I've been sweating over these emails and wondering what to do these past few days.  

[Scintillating]

I'm planning to decline an interview I have already accepted. I plan to tell them that I am sorry for the inconvenience that I am causing them and that I had difficulty booking travel plans. I believe schools are accustomed to some declines and it'll be fine since you don't want to match there anyway.

[rogerroger]

Who cares, the program won't care. It is very very likely the people running the interviews will be happy. They are probably interviewing a ton of people. One less interview is not going to upset the interviewers. In the process maybe you will make another applicant happy.

 

When I applied during CaRMS I was silly and I applied to way to many programs. The result was too many interview invites. I couldn't possibly attend them all. I just emailed them back saying, "I'm sorry I cannot attend the interview, thank you for the invite".

 

But there was one time I screwed up. It's a funny story. There was this one program I really didn't like. It made a very bad impression since the time I applied. It was so bad it became sort of a joke between me and my med school friends. I forwarded a very poorly written email the program sent me to my friends. In this message I was ranting about how crappy the program looked and basically mocking the program. Then I hit send. I few moments later I realized that my friends and the program admin got the email. The next day I got an email from the admin confirming my rejection to interview. Whoops! Pretty funny at the time and in hindsight.

 

There were no ramifications. I still got into the speciality I wanted. Life went on.

 

The point of this story. Say what you want. No one cares. Be polite to be a decent person.

[rmorelan]

I would agree - declines are expected. You be polite but have to look after your own interests there.

 

Interesting this year though how often people are saying they are getting interview invite conflicts. That is supposed to be relatively rare in the CARMS system we have.

[Lactic Folly]

Not unexpected if one applies to more than one specialty (and gets a decent number of interviews), since CaRMS only coordinates dates within each specialty.

[rmorelan]

Not unexpected if one applies to more than one specialty (and gets a decent number of interviews), since CaRMS only coordinates dates within each specialty.

 

well sure, it just sounds like there is a bit more of it this year.

 

could be sample size of course.