Is there a period within the year when US students do their electives? I ask because I'm an International medical student looking for a visiting clerkship, but I want to know which months have better space availability in general
Months with biggest amount of US medical students in electives?
- Thread starter gilaze
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3rd years have a month of elective time. 4th years have 6+ months and how they choose to spread them varies a lot by student. Most take their Step 2 CK, take their Sub-I, and take some easy months (non-medical electives) from November to January to make time for Interviews so that’s probably the best time for you overall in that you’ll only encounter third years, but less 4th years but it’s not something to hang your hat on. After January, it becomes busy again as 4th years start taking electives to learn various things in anticipation of residency and of course 3rd years are around all year.
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If you're planning to do a visiting clerkship in hope of impressing the people to seriously consider you for their residency program and/or get good letters for your residency applications, you typically should do a subinternship on one of the main services (eg. general hospital internal medicine rather than a medicine subspecialty, inpatient or consults rather than a more focused elective for psychiatry etc). The most popular months for American medical students to do these rotations are July-September (+/- October depending on specialty); this is absolutely the worst time for visiting international students to apply. November and December (+/- January) are the hottest interview months, i.e months senior American medical students will be taking a lot of time for interviews, so they normally won't schedule any serious rotations during this time, which makes it the best time for visiting international students.
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