Core Clerkship Length

[Chuckitt20]

Hello everyone. I am a MS III trying to apply to out rotations through VSAS for some 4th year rotations. I have a question about what counts for Core Clerkships. I have found several school that require 8 weeks Surgery, 6 weeks OB/GYN, and 6 weeks pediatrics. The problem that I have run into is that at my school those clerkships are only 4 weeks long. I have a couple of electives at the end of this year that I can use to add to my length, but I was wondering if they have to be in that general specialty or if I can use sub-specialty. For example I have a 4 week surgery core clerkship and if I do 4 weeks of orthopedic surgery, would that count as if I had met the 8 week surgery clerkship requirement? Or with Pediatrics, I have 4 weeks of general peds, and am considering starting 4th year with a pediatric physiatry. Could I add those together to make my required 6 weeks of pediatrics? I know that there might be some variance from site to site, but I was just wondering if in general this would work or if most places want to see just the core specialty to fulfill the clerkship requirement. Thank you for any input that you can add!

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[Crayola227]

most of the places that you apply to that are looking for you to have completed core clerkships, are looking to see if you completed them to YOUR school's satisfaction

they may have a list of what they consider core, like FM, IM, Peds, etc, but often don't get as specific as # weeks as they know that varies school to school

there might be some places that are more stringent, but in my personal experience I didn't worry about it, it was cheap enough to apply I just applied where I wanted to go and crossed my fingers.