3rd/4th Year Curriculum

[The Duck Knows]

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[joker2400]

Hey everyone, I have a fairly specific question and wanted to see how 3rd/4th year is handled at your schools. To give some background, my school doesn't have great research for my specialty of choice, so I'm taking 2 months out of 3rd year to do research at another institution. As a result, I'll have to push a rotation (probably Psych) to 4th year.

The problem I'm facing is that my admin wants me to take Psych during July/Aug of my 4th year (prime away rotation time). They seemed confused as to why I would want to do aways rather than my last 3rd year rotation during that time. Do any of your schools allow you to push Psych or other rotations until after interviews? I'm hoping to find a way to relieve their fear about letting me shake up my schedule.

You might have trouble finding places that will allow aways without having your core rotations finished. My school requires all 3rd year rotations to be passed before moving on to 4th year rotations.

 

[Psai]

We have elective time but the main cores are all taken in 3rd year. The only exceptions are if you needed extra time for step 1 or something like that. 2 months is very little time. It takes forever to get a project set up, get irb approval etc. If you want to do research, it might be better to do it when you have more time such as a year off. I cant see my school allowing for a rotation to be pushed back for research and it would definitely be done at the beginning of 4th year.

 

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[ortnakas]

We have elective time third year and we can do those electives anywhere, but we can't push any cores into fourth year. Third year rotations are strictly third year rotations, and fourth year rotations are strictly fourth year-- you have to be done with third year to officially start fourth year, take Step/Level 2, etc. We can move around 4th year a bit to accommodate auditions, but moving a 3rd year rotation to the middle of fourth year would be a no go.

Could you cut back to one month of research and move psych into one of your research months?

 

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[mvenus929]

This is the advantage my school gave us--third year (and thus fourth year) started in February, so we had ample time to both do away rotations before most schools were even considering it, and do research before applications went out.

I can't think of many programs that would allow you to do an away rotation without having completed third year. I'd advise you to put it off until after your away rotations, so you can do some research at the beginning of interview season and have something to talk about on interviews. Even if you only did a month and came back at the end of fourth year to finish the rest. I don't think you'll have much luck pushing a core third year rotation to the middle of fourth year and still be allowed to do 4th year rotations during that time.

 

[The Duck Knows]

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[Mad Jack]

Hey everyone, I have a fairly specific question and wanted to see how 3rd/4th year is handled at your schools. To give some background, my school doesn't have great research for my specialty of choice, so I'm taking 2 months out of 3rd year to do research at another institution. As a result, I'll have to push a rotation (probably Psych) to 4th year.

The problem I'm facing is that my admin wants me to take Psych during July/Aug of my 4th year (prime away rotation time). They seemed confused as to why I would want to do aways rather than my last 3rd year rotation during that time. Do any of your schools allow you to push Psych or other rotations until after interviews? I'm hoping to find a way to relieve their fear about letting me shake up my schedule.

We only get two weeks of electives in all of third year. Not completing a third year requirement bars you from moving on to fourth year. They're called "core clerkships" for a reason.