Neurosurgery Residency Interview Questions and Answers

Neurosurgery, this competitive yet not impossible specialty in the match, is the medical specialty concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders or injuries to the brain, spinal cord or peripheral nerves. Medical students and graduates from medical schools all over the world will be competing for the spots in the ACGME certified residency programs.


Medical students during their clerickships do chose neurosurgery among their electives if they are interested in neurosurgery residency. They will be rotating with the residents and attendings as well as watching the various neurosurgical procedures. Graduates as well will be doing observerships in these departments to get US LORs which will help them being invited to interviews and ranked higher in the NRMP match.

Among the things that have a positive influence on the outcome of your residency interview in neurosurgery is how you answer the various social and neurosurgery-related medical basic medical questions. If you can impress the program directors and the faculty interviewing you by giving reasonable answers you will definitely be ranked high enough to match. This booklet will contain the pure neurosurgery questions being asked in interviews in the past few years we gathered from hundreds of people we coached to match. We present the questions with the answers you should be answering to be on the safe side. The neurosurgery questions are not much, they are common, well known and the answer is short and to the point. Also there are the social questions that are common to all residency programs which we will give you the link to the page in the bottom of this booklet.

We strongly encourage you to study these questions and answers because answering them correctly will:

1-Give the program director and faculty a positive impression about you.

2-The more correct answers you have, the higher will be your rank in the match algorithm.

3-It will give the faculty a good impression about your medical knowledge background and hence will minimize the unnecessary further meticulous search in your profile.

4-The chief residents in turn will also recommend you to be ranked high when they do the ranking session with the faculty.

5-You will earn confidence in yourself especially when going to further residency interviews.


Before going to the neurosurgery questions and answers, let as take a minute to talk about the match statistics and criteria program directors like to see in the applicants.

The average scores for AMGs who matched in Neurosurgery in USMLE step 1 and 2 CK are 239 and 241 repectively.

For IMGs who matched in Neurosurgery the average scores in USMLE step 1 and 2 CK are 232 and 229 respectively.

About 90% of positions offered in the match go to AMGs and about 10% of positions go to IMGs. About 85% of AMGs who apply do match and about 30% of IMGs who apply do successfully match.