I am a 4th year medical student at ROSS University...Step 1-214...Step 2-230....I am applying ot the 2009 match but i am not beginning my internal medicine rotation until aug 18. How much will this hurt my application? I have 12 weeks of internal medicine and by then will be too late to obtain a letter of recommendation. Does anyone have any advice for me? PLEASE HELP!!!!!

I am confused. Usually, you must complete all of your third year clerkships, including IM, before proceeding to fourth year. Some medical schools are now allowing students to defer one clerkship to the 4th year, usually to allow a third year clerkship in anesthesia / Derm / Rad / Rad Onc / etc. Deferring the clerkship you are interested in to your fourth year would be a poor decision. If you clarify your situation, I'd be happy to help.

Actually, this varies by med school. At Baylor we only had to finish our core clerkships by end of December of 4th year and could take electives if we wanted in our 3rd year (though alot of electives (esp medicine and surgery) had core prerequisites). So, theoretically, you could save 6 months of your year of cores until 4th year. Of course, if you saved OB/gyn or psych or whatever for Nov/Dec of 4th year and then surprise! you turned out to love it, it would be tough to try to match that year (unless you stayed in-house, probably).

aProgDirector Thanks for your advice in advance. I am interested in internal medicine but, unfortunately, i wasnt able to start the rotation until august 18 of this year. I would have loved to complete this rotation long ago, but with the way my rotation scheduled, it fell towards the end of my 4th year. I want to know how much this will influence my application. By the time i am done with the rotation, it will be too late to submit a LOR; unless I ask for one after 4 weeks of the rotation. I am also considering anesthesia, and PMR. Nontheless, the IM core is an important LOR to have. Being that I have already finished all of my board exams, do you think that it will somehow help my application? Your advice is really appreciated!

If you are starting in August, you will still have time to get a letter of recommendation. when I was a 4th year student, I didn't really do my subI until September or October (I can't remember which). I didn't have any letters of rec from 3rd year because I hadn't though to ask for them. I got one from my subI attending. If they can write it reasonably fast, within 2-3 weeks, then you could get one from somebody you worked for in August or September, maybe even early October, but that's cutting it close.

I'm more concerned that you pick a specialty that you'll actually halfway like doing. I mean, you'll have to do it for like 20-30 years, so you need to at least like it somewhat. Not having done ANY internal medicine clerkships is a problem if you want to go in to internal medicine. Maybe you should wait until October or so to turn in your ERAS application...that would be plenty early if you end up wanting to do internal medicine. The programs won't even look at your application until they see your Dean's letter (usually not produced until November 1st by US med schools...when does Ross get yours done?). Also, when are you going to be finished with your 4th year? You don't want to totally rush your decision...if you are really crushed for time it might be better to wait one year for the next Match...although I know that might be painful (financially and otherwise). I guess you could just go for a medicine prelim year if not totally sure you want to do medicine (but are sure you want to do something that requires a medicine prelim year).