Elective Question

[juddson]

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Hi,

At this point I am interested in two fields, psych and path. My town has two major teaching hospitals (and medical schools) and I have done both path and psych work (either via elective or core clerkship) at my "home" institution, but not the "away" institution. Whichever field I finally decide upon (ie., psych or path), I will be applying to both my "home" program and the "away" program (in one field only, of course).

My question is this: Can my "away" psych elective (which will be general inpatient psych) be only 2 weeks, or ought my "away" elective be 4 weeks long? I gather that all else being equal, four weeks is always better than two. But what is standard? What is acceptable? Of course, if I decide to do the psych elective as an AI, it will have to be four weeks.

Thanks
Judd

 

[i61164]

A neuro resident here at Wake told me that she did a two week away rotation here when she was a medical student (I think she went to LSU for medical school). From what I hear, the neuro program here is pretty competitive and there were four "homegrown" students applying for four residency spots that year. She and three of the homegrown students matched here that year. The moral of her story was that sometimes because of scheduling issues you might not be able to pull off a four week away rotation. In that case, a two week rotation can still be enough to get your foot in the door and in her case it paid off. Of course, this is purely anecdotal (N=1).