Strongly recommend clerking at Kaiser San Fran over Santa Clara. Kaiser SF has top attendings in the profession such as Schuberth, Ford, Patel, Hamilton along with a slew of younger attendings who are well trained that residents work with. It's a very strong program both academically and surgically. I externed there as a student and loved it.
Their clinic is kind of slow but it offers a little bit of everything. You will see a lot of surgery there. Attending personalities are varied but overall it's a very academic program so they are pretty serious but they have fun too.
I didn't personally extern at Santa Clara but I hear it is a good program BUT they seem to be firing or filling a spot the last 1-2 years. Not sure what is going on over there.
Rule of thumb: pretty rare to land a program without externing or at least visiting. Some people do but for the competitive programs you need to extern to be a serious applicant for a spot. Yes there are exceptions...
