Research year denied by med school admin - advice???

[honeybeehey]

Has anyone ever had their research year or leave of absence request denied by their school?

I am a MS2 at a mid-tier US MD school. I am pretty set on applying to a competitive surgical subspecialty. I saw an opportunity to work in my dream lab for a year. I submitted a Leave of Absence request for the purpose of doing research in this lab, after having discussed it with my PI and obtaining funding.

My school denied to approve this leave of absence request on the basis of "lack of capacity" in the class below me. They've been accommodating all the people who had to repeat M1 or M2 year in the next class, so I really don't understand how they can claim that they don't have room for me to join the next class.

Do you have any advice for me? Is this even legal? I am actively searching for a lawyer right now, but I am scared that if I escalate things, med school admin will become more retaliatory and try to sabotage my residency applications or something.

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[RangerBob]

I'm kind of shocked. I've never heard of a research year getting turned down. Particularly when the student has a PI and funding set up (and is trying to match into a competitive specialty).

Lawyering up is always a last resort. It won't go over well with the school, and ideally you want their goodwill.

If there's no formal appeal process then I would talk with your PI for advice, and also talk directly with the dean of the med school. Set up an appointment. Perhaps have your PI attend?

 

[wysdoc]

Has anyone ever had their research year or leave of absence request denied by their school?

I am a MS2 at a mid-tier US MD school. I am pretty set on applying to a competitive surgical subspecialty. I saw an opportunity to work in my dream lab for a year. I submitted a Leave of Absence request for the purpose of doing research in this lab, after having discussed it with my PI and obtaining funding.

My school denied to approve this leave of absence request on the basis of "lack of capacity" in the class below me. They've been accommodating all the people who had to repeat M1 or M2 year in the next class, so I really don't understand how they can claim that they don't have room for me to join the next class.

Do you have any advice for me? Is this even legal? I am actively searching for a lawyer right now, but I am scared that if I escalate things, med school admin will become more retaliatory and try to sabotage my residency applications or something.

See if you can get approval for the research year between year 3 and 4 instead.
It's not helpful to get your heart set on "one and only one path" to your goal and over-reacting to being turned down will not help your chances at some alternate timeline.

 

[Med Ed]

My school denied to approve this leave of absence request on the basis of "lack of capacity" in the class below me. They've been accommodating all the people who had to repeat M1 or M2 year in the next class, so I really don't understand how they can claim that they don't have room for me to join the next class.

Perhaps they don't have room because they are accommodating all the repeaters. Rather hard to say without more detailed information regarding your school (that we won't have access to).

Do you have any advice for me? Is this even legal? I am actively searching for a lawyer right now, but I am scared that if I escalate things, med school admin will become more retaliatory and try to sabotage my residency applications or something.

Is it legal? I'd be surprised if denying a LOA violates any type of statute.

Lawyers are only helpful if the school has violated its own written policy, or if the school is breaking a state and/or federal law in its actions.

Read the student handbook on appealing such matters and get back to us.

 

[RangerBob]

See if you can get approval for the research year between year 3 and 4 instead.
It's not helpful to get your heart set on "one and only one path" to your goal and over-reacting to being turned down will not help your chances at some alternate timeline.

I think this would actually be the best way to proceed.

Transitioning to M3 is a big step. Having a recent M2 experience and going through M3 with friends and familiar faces would make it a lot easier.

 

[operaman]

Agreed. I feel like most students take their research years between 3/4 as well which may be why we’re all so used to it being a rubber stamp approval.

M3 has such rigid rotation requirements and number of students per rotation is also somewhat limited. There probably is a potential capacity issue especially if your class has more than average number of repeaters and the class below has lower than normal attrition. Funneling a couple extra students into M4 is much easier because not everyone does the same rotations and there’s typically a lot of off time built in for interviews or research.

If you can, I think between 3/4 is a much better move. A lot of clinical knowledge tested on shelf exams is derived from the basic science step 1 stuff and your recent M1/2 experience will help you do well. A year off will mean some level of knowledge loss that may hurt you on shelf exams and possibly impact clinical grades. You lost some general knowledge in a research year between 3/4 as well, but you usually gain a year of specialty specific knowledge and familiarity and then you hit M4 doing sub-Is and aways in that field.

Definitely don’t lawyer up - you’ll just blow all the good will you have and they probably haven’t broken any laws. This will be won on a human to human level and may require a bit of compromise. If they allow the 3/4 year, grab it and you’ll ultimately be glad the timing worked out that way.

 

[operaman]

I’ll add one more thought for taking it between 3/4-

You may change your mind re specialty after doing clinical rotations. I mentor a number of med students interested in ENT at my school and every year some of them change their mind during M3. Every student has a different reason, from not liking the OR as much as they thought they would to discovering another field and realizing that’s what they want to do for a career.

Much easier to change course when you save a potential research year for later. I just had a student who was bound for another field who fell in love with ENT during M3 and is heading off for a research year at a top program starting this summer. So especially if you find yourself drawn to another competitive field entirely, you’d have time to find a research year in something else and build a strong application for that.

 

[collegestud2013]

Agreed with above. Would try doing the research year between M3 and M4 anyways. This is assuming you still want to go into the same surgical subspeciality at that point. Also ideally should get your Step 2 score back and make sure it's competitive for that specialty before committing to a research year (in the past, Step 1 was useful for this before it went P/F but nowadays it gets harder to gauge competitiveness early on, with more schools moving towards P/F in preclinical years).

Agreed that lawyering up will just get you on the bad side of your med school deans, and they will likely end up with being less-than-supportive, which never good for someone going for a competitive specialty.