Congrats everyone!!!
Silent follower here of the thread. Any small tid bits of advice to throw down to the peons who will undergo the match in 12 months?
I am particularly wondering now in retrospect if you felt there was a significant amount of regional bias based on where you got interviews. Also, anything you realized was important with regards to selecting a program that you didn't realize beforehand? Personally, I am now feeling very much like I would rather not go to a small program as I think I might get burned the hell out by a say a q2 call for 12 months.
For your first question, I don't think there was much regional bias (of course a little exists, more so in the MidWest?!), even as an IMG requiring visa from a community hospital. I applied to about 120 programs and ended up getting 21 interviews from all over the country (NY, NJ, CT, PA, MA, DC, NH, FL, NM, GA, MD, AZ, CA, TX, MN, etc) and a lot from top-tier institutions. I matched at my #2.
For your second question, I was an underdog to begin with, so I wasn't particularly picky when I was applying, but when I was ranking, I was very cautious. During the interviews, I realized fellowship programs are very similar but also very different. Research curriculum (# of months, Master's degree, mentor availability, basic vs clinical, database, etc), strength in subspecialties (IBD, hep, advanced, etc), clinical training (scope volume, scutwork, patient populations, call schedule, etc) and overall vibe of the program (cutting throat vs friendly, facility, location, etc) were all very different.
So, it really comes down to your personal choice of what you value the most in your life. For ex, if you like IBD research, go to UChicago, Mt Sinai, if you like hep research, go to Yale, if you like transplant, go to UCSF, if you like everything, go to UPenn, Harvard, UCLA, etc (don't quote me on this, just from personal bias). If you want to do solely private practice and zero research, going to a big academic center might be a torture for you, since you'll have to produce some research. If you go to Mayo, you'll get amazing clinical research training but you may not get as much scope volume compared to other city hospitals. My friend who wants to do private practice ranked a great community program with huge scope volume in a city center higher than a decent rural state university.
Another note is that if you are really looking for an academic career, whether an institution has a great mentor to do research with might be more important than a superficial "reputation" of the program. For ex, Baylor COM has Dr. El-Sarag, Yale has Dr. Garcia-Tsao, etc and might be better than other amazing places if you want to do hep research (also don't quote me on this).
Call schedule is tricky, as it is determined by not just a size of the program (# of fellow) but also how many hospitals you have to cover. Many big institutions actually have bad call schedules (famous UCLA q2 schedule despite 7 fellows, I don't know if it is still true). But, more importantly, I honestly don't think that call schedule really matters, as you will be busy as a first year fellow anyways wherever you go, so I would rather go to a good institution I want to go to than meh program with loose call.
Last advice is that when you apply, where you did your residency, where you went to med school (IMG vs AMG), visa status, quality of research and LOR ALL matter, but different programs look at different things, and you'll never know before you apply, so please apply broadly. If you are an underdog like me and cannot change your residency program, IMG status and visa, devote your time in research (a couple of first author, real research is better than 10 second+ author case reports) and try to get the best possible letter from the biggest name possible. During many interviews, so many PDs told me that they really want to take me despite that I am from community hospital, because "those worldly renown people" wrote me "one of the best letters they have ever seen, that you should be thankful to them" AND I can actually do research independently from top to bottom (study design, statistics, manuscript development, oral presentations), and that's what they're looking for.
Also, please be aggressive during your application season and send them an email (best through connection) if you didn't get an interview. I got interviews from Stanford, UChicago, Dartmouth and Baylor after I sent them an email. UPenn and Mayo didn't give me an interview, but PD replied to me personally that they will re-read my application (at least a response). One PD told me that I was initially "filtered out" due to visa. Again, personal opinion, and don't criticize me! Just trying to help! haha