Ob Gyn Need advice on away rotation

[faaiobgyn]

Hi, I was offered an away rotation for general Ob Gyn in November (which is during the peak interviewing season, thus my dilemma) at a mid-tier/top academic program that I'm very interested in for residency.
I'm trying to decide whether I should go ahead and do the away in november (ace it and increase my chance of doing residency there) vs. doing a light elective during November as I had planned and just focus on doing well on other interviews that I get.
My step 1 is 238,
GPA 3.45 at a top 100 US med school

Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

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[Biology101]

Go ahead and if you have to miss a few days thats ok. Biggest advice with scores like that, just do one or two away rotations and get a letter of rec. You'll be ok.

 

[anonperson]

I'm not sure if it's worthwhile to be honest. Away rotations will most likely hurt an applicant than help to be honest. You have 4 weeks to annoy someone, have the appearance of laziness, screw up in some way. Your step 1 score is good for OB. I'm not sure how your third year scores were, but if you have a mix of honors and passes you should be able to match at a good place. Also, I'm not sure how it would appear to a program if you're doing an away rotation and missing significant time due to interviews. At your home institution it's usually not a big deal but it's hard to assess how they would feel.

I'm a bit confused specifically on the timing. Are they already offering interviews in general? Did this program already offer you an interview?

 

[faaiobgyn]

Go ahead and if you have to miss a few days thats ok. Biggest advice with scores like that, just do one or two away rotations and get a letter of rec. You'll be ok.

Thank you Biology101 for your advice!

 

[faaiobgyn]

I'm not sure if it's worthwhile to be honest. Away rotations will most likely hurt an applicant than help to be honest. You have 4 weeks to annoy someone, have the appearance of laziness, screw up in some way. Your step 1 score is good for OB. I'm not sure how your third year scores were, but if you have a mix of honors and passes you should be able to match at a good place. Also, I'm not sure how it would appear to a program if you're doing an away rotation and missing significant time due to interviews. At your home institution it's usually not a big deal but it's hard to assess how they would feel.

I'm a bit confused specifically on the timing. Are they already offering interviews in general? Did this program already offer you an interview?

Nope, they haven't offered me an interview yet, but I hear that if you do an away they most likely will give you an interview out of courtesy.

 

[theshellyb]

Honestly, this sounds like a bad idea. You're not going to be missing "one or two days" - you're going to be missing A LOT. I turned down an away rotation at an institution I'm interested in that was offered to me in November for exactly this reason. Fortunately I was able to pester the school into giving me an away rotation in September with some persistence, but this was back in May. Kindof late to do that now, I assume (but try!).

Take a look at the interview dates for a sampling of residency programs here: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/c-o-2015-interview-dates.1088874/#post-15561489

You're going to have to have a lot of time in November for interviews. Being absent that much during an AI is, in my opinion, not a good plan.

 

[VivaLaVida]

I was told that for OB/GYN to do an away rotation only if there was a "must-match" situation (ie. spouse in another city or some other extenuating circumstance where you REALLY needed to match to a certain program/region). Otherwise I was told it had a huge potential to hurt you rather than help you. I am just a fourth year as well, but I would never consider doing an away during November. It is definitely not missing one or two days unless you only plan on going on ONE interview during that time. Almost every OB/GYN program has the majority of interviews during the month of November so you should plan on missing for multiple interviews....likely one a week! AND keep in mind that interviews are not one day long...it is generally expected that you attend the residents dinner the night beforehand (and it is beneficial to you anyway for a multitude of reasons). I think this has huge potential to reflect very poorly on you.