Hey everyone!
Congrats to the people who are done interviewing, and good luck (& congrats!) to those who are still going!
I know it may be a bit early for the M3 ortho hopefuls to be checking for interview travel advice, but I thought I'd start a post anyway, while it's still fresh in our minds.
What sort of travel tips can you give to the next set of applicants? What do you wish you had known (and what great stories go along with them)?
For me -- DON'T schedule a flight which "cuts it close" to the end of the interview -- even if it saves you a few hundred bucks. I ended up rushing thru my interviews, dropping my rental car off with the tank unfilled (add another $60 to my trip), and missing my flight. Now, since I had scheduled my 5:10 pm flight because the ticket was so cheap, my ticket was considered a "special" ticket which could not be transferred to a different flight or a different airline. (oh, yeah, did I also mention that the rest of my trip, including my return home after the next interview, was also considered null and void?) i had even called the airlines the prior evening to suggest the possibility of being late and could I fly standby -- answer: No. I ended up buying a $459 one-way ticket to my next interview, then driving a total of 9 hrs home.
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Other lessons learned from this trip:
1) Always assume that the rental car agency is off-site from the airport and add an additional 1/2 hr to your travel time of getting to and from the airport (if renting a car).
2) If you think you'll be running late and/or you'll be using lots of gas, you might want to consider pre-purchasing a full tank of gas (also check with the cashier about current gas prices). This would have saved me a ton of money and a ton of hassel on my trip!
(BTW, for those planning to fill up on the way back to the airport -- Philadelphia Int'l airport doesn't have any gas stations on the way to its rental car return. Pittsburgh, however, I believe, does.)
