fourth year electives

[InternationlDoc]

Hello Folks,

I was looking through some institutions and their fourth year elective policies and this setting up electives looks to be quite competitive. Could somebody please elaborate?

for example, I want to set up away elective in "fourth year" now that means that my 3rd year officially ends in mid june and lets say I start from July, then I only have July and August to collect my LORs in said specialty?!! thats hectic - what if I do not get the place where I want to rotate; what is the acceptance % (as in if I apply to 5 places to do aways, would I get 1 acceptance?). Also timeframe is important. i mean getting UCSF for derm elective might be nice, but not in Novemeber since you couldn't get a letter from the big shot.

...wow.. this is getting stressful already. Please advise.

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[SouthernSurgeon]

Hello Folks,

I was looking through some institutions and their fourth year elective policies and this setting up electives looks to be quite competitive. Could somebody please elaborate?

for example, I want to set up away elective in "fourth year" now that means that my 3rd year officially ends in mid june and lets say I start from July, then I only have July and August to collect my LORs in said specialty?!! thats hectic - what if I do not get the place where I want to rotate; what is the acceptance % (as in if I apply to 5 places to do aways, would I get 1 acceptance?). Also timeframe is important. i mean getting UCSF for derm elective might be nice, but not in Novemeber since you couldn't get a letter from the big shot.

...wow.. this is getting stressful already. Please advise.

Most electives are first-come-first-serve, at least the ones I've looked at. If you are actually interested in UCSF, you need to use that VSAS thingy (and UCSF hasn't made their app available yet).

I think you could very feasibly do an away in Sept. (or even Oct.) and still get a letter.