How does your school assign clinical sites?

[pumpkinpatch]

My school does it by lottery, so there is at least the element of choice with us, which is nice. However, the list we have to choose from so far (which I'm hoping will improve, but who knows) has me very worried; more than half of our sites are far away in the middle of nowhere I'm not at all interested or financially capable of relocating so I'm really nervous. I was just curious about how other schools handle this.

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[NeophyteParkour]

I don't know what the school does that I'll be attending next year, but I do know what the school does where I did my undergrad. They told me you give them a list of your top 5 sites (or whatever number) and then they make the final decision out of those top 5. They never said anything about a list to choose from in determining your top 5. So it seems like this particular school gives a whole lot of freedom.

 

[riseboi]

UM uses a lottery system. We submit our tops choices and hope for the best. Prior to that, the dept. contacts all the sites we have contracts with to determine availability for the particular rotation date.

 

[dizzy88]

Lottery number. Our coordinator takes a poll on how many people are interested in "popular" sites before hand to get an idea of how many spots she should bid for. We have a long standing program, so our site availability in and out of state is pretty good. Up until 2 years ago we were also the only school in the state, so that made things nice haha.

 

[markelmarcel]

We also do a lottery system and then choose 5 places. The person who is #1 for clinical 1 (which just happens to be me) goes to the last number for clinical #2 (and the last person becomes first) and then they let the middle people go first for the next rounds.

 

[darkangel77]

1st and 2nd year, we give out ACCE a list of areas that we'd prefer to do our clinical in. We don't always get the area we want, and we're mostly assigned to our sites based on availability.

3rd year, we give them a list of our top 5 sites based on a list of available sites. Although not guaranteed to get those sites, 90% of the time they give you one of your top 5.