Hey bunnel,
I am a west coaster and applied at every west coast program, a bunch in the midwest, and all up and down the east coast. I got interviews at many west coast programs, got totally shut out of the greater Chicago area, and then got interest from many east coast programs. On those east coast interviews, including Harvard, I met plenty of west coast applicants...so I really don't think they go regional on their interview offers. Same thing for the other Boston area programs. Also ran into folks from all over at Dartmouth, which is about as NE regional as you get. So in my very limited experience the east coast programs seem to get very wide representation in their interviews. The midwest programs I saw similarly seemed to offer interviews to plenty of non-mid-westerners. The exception to this was the Chicago-area programs. And I heard the same from many other seemingly highly qualified applicants regarding the cold shoulder from Chicago. As for OHSU, they did interview numerous non-western applicants and in fact their residents are from all over the place. However, I had a long talk with the chair at OHSU, Jung Yoo, who told me a story about a guy from some small program in the midwest who applied there and was not offered an interview--in response he wrote a letter directly to Dr. Yoo explaining that he REALLY wanted to be there and was not simply checking a box on the ERAS application. Dr. Yoo said that he was skeptical because of the fact the applicant was far out of the western region but appreciated the guy's tenacity and apparent commitment to OHSU...so he gave the guy an interview after having been denied one. Another interesting fact I can share is that when I interviewed at USC, I got raised eyebrows from my interviewers when I said I'd be willing to move from northern to southern CA (talk about micro-regionalism!). Anyways, I guess the long and short, in my opinion, is that the resident list you find when you research a program, is probably more driven by the choices applicants make than the choices programs make. People tend to want to stay closer to home I think. Some regionalism does exist, but this can be countered to some extent by demonstrating sincere interest with away-rotations. So don't stress too hard about venturing outside your region in this process.
