I’m the nut who did 28 interviews.  I highly recommend you do between 15-25.  People must think I had money to burn, but I actually spent < $5,000 on interviews.  Some tips:

1) Google calendar—I echo StemCell’s advice here.  Geographically/temporally lump your interviews
2) Don’t stay in hotels—I only spent 2 nights in hotels I paid for.  In the majority of places, I stayed with friends/family, but in 3 cities I used http://www.couchsurfer.com to find someone willing to put me up for a couple nights. 
3) Priceline.com for car rentals—often spent $8-16 a day for cars
4) Drive/carpool to as many places as possible—I drove anywhere within an 8 hour drive (luckily I’m from the east coast, so 2/3 of my interviews were drivable, I flew to 9)
5) Schedule easier/more laid back rotations in Nov/Dec/Jan with faculty who will be supportive of your taking days off.
6)There are no safety schools in NS—make sure you cover the full spectrum of levels of programs.  Don’t overestimate your application.
7) If you have enough interview offers and are interviewing at programs of all tiers, cancel expensive trips and/or places you really don’t want to go.
8) Have fun—The process is draining (financially and physically), but a lot of fun.  Great company and food.  The only time in the near future you’ll get to chat one-on-one with many of the leaders in the field and learn more about NS and where it’s headed.

Finally, while 28 was perhaps too many and a little crazy--you want to be a neurosurgeon, right?  You’re willing and eager to work 90+ hour weeks, stand up for 12+ hour cases with maybe 1 bathroom break, be chronically sleep-deprived for 7 years, etc.  Is it really that hard on you to go on a few extra interviews?  Drive for a few extra hours?  Schedule 5 interview days in a 1 wk span?  Crash on a few extra couches?  Even though I was fortunate to have matched at one of my top 3, I would do it all again.

Shanna - 26 April 2009 03:52 PM

Thank you for the useful tips!
Ever think about publishing a guide book for “matching into neurosurgery”? I’d buy it.

I think UH with the wisdom of many is more valuable than a book. Plus, its free However, it is true that stuff is not always as easy to find on UH as in a book where you can just go to the table of contents. With the ever-increasing amount of good info on UH, it is perhaps also becoming somewhat more unwieldy to find that one really helpful thread that answers your question. Searches can dredge up quite a bit of junk along with the useful info. When I started looking at UH a couple of years ago, I would say within a couple of days, I had read pretty much all the useful info. Now there is much more to wade through.

Perhaps we could start a “Uncle Harvey’s Guide to Applying to Neurosurgery,” as a skeleton WIKI, with links to the most informative threads listed by topic, starting from “is Neurosurgery right for me,” and “Do I have any hope of matching into neurosurgery” right through to “getting involved in research,” “when, where, how and why to do sub-Is,” preparing your application, getting letters, interviewing, etc, etc… Anyone who stumbles across a useful thread could add a link under the appropriate subheading of the WIKI (or add a new subheading if needed). Also, if in developing the outline, we find there are topics for which not much useful info has been written, new threads could be started and linked to fill the void.

Just an idea. If no one has started something in a week or two, maybe I’ll take a shot at it, when I’m not in the middle of packing and moving Might be nice once it is set up, if it seems like it could be helpful, to have it prominently featured on the UH home page, so new-comers can quickly get access to the best info on UH rather then wading aimlessly through recent posts hoping to find relevant wisdom before even knowing what questions to ask...?