away electives

[joewilly]

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I'm a 3rd year student interested in rad onc and recently talked with the advisor at my school about scheduling away electives. He said unless I absolutely wanted to go to a certain program to not worry about doing this. I'm currently trying to organize my schedule for next year and wonder if it would be more valuable to do away electives and gain more experience in a field I still don't know a lot about... or use that elective time doing a research project at my institution. Any advice from what other have done and how useful the found their away electives would be of great help.

Thanks

 

[stephew]

I'm a 3rd year student interested in rad onc and recently talked with the advisor at my school about scheduling away electives. He said unless I absolutely wanted to go to a certain program to not worry about doing this. I'm currently trying to organize my schedule for next year and wonder if it would be more valuable to do away electives and gain more experience in a field I still don't know a lot about... or use that elective time doing a research project at my institution. Any advice from what other have done and how useful the found their away electives would be of great help.

Thanks

i fully disagree with your advisor. Radonc is so competitive right now, doing away electives affords you two things; letters of rec in this small field that matter a lot, and an "audition rotation" at the program. research is also an important component of the application right now. What's the right balance? Impossible to say but you need to figure out what elements of your cv you need to enhance and work from there. good luck.

 

[joewilly]

Thanks,
as a follow-up 2 part ? He suggested that I do the rotation at my institution in septermber b/c more attendings would be around and it would give me a better chance to be evaluated by everyone. If I do this, my ? is whether or not to do an away AI somewhere else in the summer prior to rotating through my own school's department?
part 2 - does anyone have recommendations on good places to do away AI's, especially programs that are more clinically oriented, and not on the west coast?