Hey, I was in your shoes last year, and I am in the application process as we speak. I am also from a hands off kind of med school so I had to look on my own for the experience. I did some research this fall, and it was a great look at the academic side of the field. In terms of finding research electives in OTO there are alot of them out there at different schools. I didn't even know they existed until I started scouring big programs electives list. One way is to start applying to all those away electives and hope something happens, but it will just be luck if it does. This is how I did it, but I lucked up. The communication between the people that you apply through "the med school secretary" and the actual clinical departments is very poor. I recommend you actually get on the horn and start contacting people in the actual Oto departments. Start at the bottom with the secretary and work your way up to the boss. Most will be happy to help. These people do so much research, someone will have something for you to do, but you gotta put in the leg work to find it. You will probably still have to fill out elective forms and such, but things move alot quicker if a project is already planned for you.
