Stanford Hospital and Clinics uses the J-1 visa program sponsored by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG). Stanford does not sponsor H-1B visas for graduates of international medical schools. Graduates of Canadian medical schools must also use the J-1 program.

Radiology residency programs, including ours, receive a large number of applications. In soliciting letters of recommendation, we suggest that you get letters from faculty members who know you and your work very well, rather than from a famous faculty members with "big names" but who do not know you personally. Ideally you will have a mix of letters from clinical faculty in diverse specialties, both in Radiology and from your clinical clerkships. If you have done substantial research, for example in an MD-PhD program or a dedicated research year, an additional letter from your research mentor or advisor is expected.

We will be matching for 9 residents and typically receive approximately 700 applications. From this pool we select 112 candidates to interview in January and February. As much as we would like to, we cannot interview all interested or qualified applicants. Most candidates selected for interviews have high USMLE scores but we do not use a fixed "cut-off", more importantly we do not grant interviews based on high scores alone. In the interest of full disclosure, for the most recently available data our matched applicant mean Step 1 score was 249 and mean Step 2 score was 256. Factors such as specific research or clinical achievements, clerkship grades and narrative evaluations, AOA, personal characteristics and path to radiology are more important. Please note that a rotation spent here during medical school is neither necessary nor sufficient to obtain an interview. You should view an away rotation as an opportunity to learn about our program.

Stanford is both a premier research institution and a nationally-recognized clinical referral center. Because clinical skills are paramount on our demanding and intensive hospital rotations, successful candidates will have demonstrated outstanding performance in the core clinical clerkships. We also hope that those who seek a clinical career primarily will want explore the opportunities presented by our numerous and varied research programs. First and foremost, candidates should have the personal integrity, collegiality, and strength of character necessary to thrive in clinical medicine.

Candidates are interviewed on one of eight days during the months of January and February. Candidates will be interviewed by six faculty members and our chief residents. Each selection committee member interviews every applicant in order to elicit the broadest possible picture of each interviewee. This tight time frame makes for an intensive interview process for our selection committee, but enables us to maintain a vivid picture of each applicant during the ranking process.

Approximately 14 applicants are interviewed each day. Half of the interview group will interview in the morning and half in the afternoon. Further details will be provided along with the invitation to interview. Please plan to derive as much information as possible about our program on the interview day, as we cannot and do not grant "second-look" visits.

Radiology faculty and residents work one-on-one every day, all day, throughout the residency program. Therefore, the interview is a very important factor in resident selection. When the dust has settled and USMLE and clerkship grades have been tabulated, MSPE and recommendation letters have been decrypted, and personal statements have been deconstructed, the selection process depends a great deal on whether we feel applicants' character and personality are a good fit for our program. Our residents are highly intelligent, intellectually curious people who strive to excel in whatever they do. Most importantly, we pride ourselves on the esprit de corps and camaraderie among our residents, fellows, and faculty. Meeting applicants is vital to our selection process. We believe you should view the interview day as an opportunity to meet us and determine whether Stanford is where you want to spend the four most important years of your medical training.

Best of luck and congratulations on your choice of the most exciting and dynamic medical specialty there is--Diagnostic Radiology!