The ACS has an option for medical student membership, but is there any practical benefit for med students to attend the annual ACS conferences? And if so, would going during your 4th year be the only useful/possible year to go?
Hmmm... When I went to New Orleans this past October there were several medical students I ran into at various events, primarily places where there would be a resident meeting of some sort. So I ran into a lot of medical students, actually, but I fail to see the primary benefit of unloading all that cash to go to the ACS if networking is the intent.
The lectures can be above the heads of some attending level people in attendance, so definitely some residents and even more medical students would be just utterly confused by what they hear there compared to what they've read. I know I was on several occasions.
🙂
I'd give you this advice. If you know the PD (Program Director) or Chairman of Surgery at your med school is going to the ACS, I'd approach him or her about your interest in General Surgery and in attending the ACS conference, and ask if any of the residents are going. That way, at the very least, you'll have some people to fall back on. I'd think this is a better idea because you can at least get to know your Chairman or PD better (who won't know you from a hole in the wall if you haven't been badgering him for the last several years anyway) and give him a better impression of you as a potential candidate for your home General Surgery program.
This may also work out well if he or she thinks you're a superstar and starts introducing you to other PD/Chairman friends as "this excellent med student at my school who wants to be a General Surgeon" while at the ACS. That would be the best.
But if you're at one of those places where NO ONE from your school is going, then you're kind of stuck. There are only a few of those resident/med student mingling type of events at the ACS and they're hard to find sometimes, so you may end up just walking around town not knowing what to do with yourself. It can get lonely when you're in town for a conference and you actually only go to the conference.
🙂 Although next year's Clinical Congress is in San Francisco, CA. There's always the mountains and the Bay Area to hang around in...
I should preface all this of course with the only time I did something similar was while in residency when I accompanied my Chief of Vascular Surgery to the SVS meetings where he introduced me to his friends in the ivory towers, and I networked and schmoozed with the big wigs in Vascular. It certainly helped for the interview trail and I landed what I consider a great fellowship.
