About Thalamus Blog

Hi there and welcome to the Thalamus blog!

We’re Team Thalamus—a grassroots collaboration of applicants (past and present), program directors, program coordinators and other GME leadership. We created this blog to share our collective journeys through managing and participating in years of residency application cycles. Becoming a physician is a long and winding road, filled with sacrifice, dedication, complexity and uncertainty.= Applying to residency is perhaps the most challenging aspect of all.

So please allow us to pass our knowledge on to you, the reader. Whether you’re an undergraduate just getting started in your academic career, a medical student looking for inside tips, or a resident seeking validation (we love to give virtual hugs), this blog is for you. If you’re a program director, program coordinator, program administrator, faculty member, chief resident or GME administrator, this blog is for you also.

Have questions about the application process? Want to know what it’s like to go through the process? Perhaps some advice from a Program Director would be helpful. We’ve collected years of data to innovate interview scheduling. In fact, it’s the reason we went into business…

Oh yes, perhaps is now a good time to mention how we know all these things. Well, we’ve built software that streamlines and innovates the residency and fellowship interview management process. Thalamus is now used in over 125 of the top academic medical centers in the US and growing. Additionally, nearly all candidates use our software to schedule interviews. We’ve lived the process in every possible way; now we nerd out on it any chance we get.

We like to think of ourselves as physicians and other academics who love data, believe that the interview process creates entirely too much of a financial strain on everyone involved (several billion dollars and 3% of all medical education debt), and want to do what we can to assist applicants and GME programs in creating a better tomorrow 🙂