In your opinion, how much did doing a rotation factor into your acceptance

[Ypo.]

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How much of an advantage do you think having the experience of a rotation and letting the attendings/residents give you in the match. This is assuming you have good people skills.

I've seen debates about this and read contradicting things in residency books, but I'd like to see a poll.

 

[Hard24Get]

I ended up choosing a place where I didn't do an away, but I think doing an away elsewhere definitely strengthened my application.

 

[MadameLULU]

I'm just an MS3, but from what I've heard this is very specialty dependent. For people going into Ortho, doing away rotations is really important, however for people going into IM, this is not the case.

YPO, i think your question would be better if it were tailored to the specialty that you're considering

 

[Blade28]

Good post above.

Away ("audition") rotations are critical in some fields (Ortho comes to mind) - some programs are notorious for not seriously considering any applicants who haven't rotated with them. In other fields, away rotations can make or break you - do well and shine, and you'll get brownie points. Perform only average, though, and you hurt your case.

 

[sikegeek]

Made all the difference in the world for me. When I signed up for the elective, I didn't know if it would be my top choice, but I knew that it was a reach and if I wanted to be seriously considered that I had to impress somebody (which my board scores were certain not to do.)

I was actually told by the PD that they've never had a visiting student that did a good job, wanted to go there, and didn't go there. So you can figure out what the implcation is. It's not a huge program, so the faculty were close enough that they could talk amongst themselves about how I did.

I also did the elective in January when they were actually making the decisions so that I would be sort fresh in their minds. Most people say to do them earlier in the year.

 

[AmoryBlaine]

Agree with what blade said about Ortho.

On the other hand I once heard a pretty good piece of wisdom from an PD (I think it was in EM but it might have been Ortho).

"Most people match a place they did not rotate, and most people who rotate at a place do not match there."

 

[Ypo.]

I'm just an MS3, but from what I've heard this is very specialty dependent. For people going into Ortho, doing away rotations is really important, however for people going into IM, this is not the case.

Yes, I can see it may be more important to do an away rotation for certain competitive residencies.

But I would think that assuming you perform well, doing a rotation could help your chances of acceptance in any residency program.

To the post above; of course by necessity the match works out that way. We can't all rotate at all the places we rank.


Again, the question is whether an away rotation can augment your chances of acceptance in ANY specialty.

 

[pseudoknot]

I've heard it said that in some fields, ENT for example, aways are not recommended. The idea is that since everyone looks so good on paper if they're competitive to apply, expectations are so high that you can only hurt yourself by doing the audition.

Clearly that only applies to some fields because I know aways are helpful for many others.

 

[hippiedoc13]

I personally think that aways are an important experience for you as an applicant, no matter what the field. Not so much for getting you the interview or the rank (though that's nice too). But rather for giving you a chance to learn more about how different residency programs can be, even in the same field, and helping you see which aspects of your chosen field are institution-dependent, versus pretty inherent to the specialty itself.