California rotation worthwhile?

[Lara]

I know I posted some months ago that I wanted to be close to my hometown of Montreal, but I'm coming to think that I really don't want to have to deal with snow and winter in general during residency. So California is looking pretty attractive right now, especially since it's one of the rare states that's both liberal (not a minor issue coming from Canada) and warm.

I'm wondering if anyone has some experience as to how much an away rotation can really help an average applicant (217, straight passes unfortunately) with zero ties to the state. I've been thinking about it a lot since reading one of the ResidentDiaries contributors, who was succesful in matching in peds at Stanford after rotating. I know I shouldn't get my hopes up there, but I'd like to know whether it *would* at least open doors in general on the West Coast. Rotating there would obviously be a financial hit, and I'd have to use up a vacation block early since the schedules I've seen don't correspond with my school...so I'd be disappointed if no decent Cali interviews came of it, say on the UCI level.

Any thoughts? btw, I have dual citizenship so thankfully I don't have to deal with visa issues. I almost wish I had a significant other to tie me down, at least I wouldn't feel so undecided about everything! (And if choosing electives is hard, how will making my ROL be?)

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[NYtoCA Peds]

I'm a 4th year going into peds and was in a very similar situation to yours last year. I have absolutely no ties to California, but I really wanted to go out there for residency (NY winters can be brutal!). I would highly recommend doing some away electives out there because I think that can definitely open doors and show your seriousness about moving out there. To be honest, it will also show you if you would actually be happy living there too. I did two electives in California and really enjoyed them, and I really had no problems getting interviews out there at all. I was asked (at every interview!) why I wanted to come out to california, but I found that as long as I gave an honest answer, they were satisfied and never questioned me on it.

I know that the scheduling can be tough because the schedules are weird, but one program you might want to try is children's hospital of orange county because they have rotations starting weekly or at least bimonthly which may fit in better with your schedule. I think that Harbor-UCLA may have had a similar situation as well as Children's Hospital of LA. I'm not too sure about the northern california programs though.

Hope that helped!! Good luck!!