Since I am interested in academic medicine, I applied to a lot of the "big name" academic institutions throughout the country. I initially applied to 16 institutions. At that point, I knew very little about these programs. Since there is very little printed information about programs, I found it most useful to talk to residents at my own institution to find out which programs they had applied to and strongly considered. While I received interviews at most of the places to which I had applied, I only ended up interviewing at 9 programs. I narrowed this down after realizing that there were areas of the country that I had no intention of moving to! Also, at this point, I had learned from residents that certain programs were known for being either too malignant or too disorganized, etc.