rotation terminology
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Clerkship is any rotation that an MS3 or an MS4 completes. Some are required, some are elective.
Audition rotation is a rotation usually done at an outside institution. Usually done when you REALLY want to do residency at that institution, and are hoping that your performance during that audition rotation will show that you would be a good fit for that program.
Sub-I is any 4th year rotation where you're expected to function either near or at the level of an intern. Similar to an "AI" (Acting internship).
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No. Clerkship is most frequently used to describe a core rotation, although I guess from smq's post it is sometimes a synonym for "rotation" generally. Otherwise I agree with the prior poster. A sub-I is a type of rotation done in 4th year which is designed to simulate being an intern, and you are given more responsibility, more patients etc. You still have supervision but otherwise are expected to function as you would post-graduation. As such, a good recommendation from this can be helpful to residency directors to gauge how you will do in their program. An audition rotation, also known as an "away rotation", is where you do a rotation at another med school or hospital, and basically are auditioning for a residency. If you do well there, when it comes time to rank people, you may have an advantage over the folks the program doesn't know as well.
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quick question: how hard is it to get into an audition rotation? is it like applying to medical school? do you guys have the equivalent of an MSAR (or US News) that tells you the percentage of people accepted for an audition roation or how competitive the program is? For example, harvard is a hard medical school to get into, but how do you know which audition roation is hard to get into? Do you apply to like 30 programs hoping to get into one of them?🙂
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Not as hard as getting into med school because not everybody wants to go to the same place in the same specialty in the same month. But you do have to be realistic, because programs don't want to take folks who have no shot on paper. There would be no value doing an audition rotation at a top program (in the specialty) if your stats are very borderline for that field. You really want to sit down with a mentor in the specialty to decide what places are realistic for you and which places you want to give yourself that extra bump by a good audition. The goal is to use the month to sell yourself to a program that couild actually happen. You don't do this in a vacuum or simply shoot out a zillion applications to see what sticks, IMHO. But yes, you likely will have to apply to more than one, carefully selected, place.
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By the time anyone currently 'premed' gets to this stage most if not all schools/programs will be utilizing VSAS, complete with fees and immunization requirements and bureaucratic BS. So in that sense at least it's a little like applying to med school.
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- No, there is no MSAR as of yet.
- Right now, for MOST specialties, the process is nothing like applying to med school. Unlike med school apps, most places don't want LORs, they don't want a personal statement, and they don't want to know your Step 1 scores, etc. (Note that this is changing, though, for some of the more competitive specialties, like derm.)
- No, you definitely don't apply to 30 programs. It's a hassle to schedule away rotations; if you have 15 places that have accepted you, that's a huge pain.
- The audition rotations that are hard to get are usually the ones that are the top places in their field.
Kind of. I think that this is a little simplistic.
The value of doing an audition rotation at a top program is that to prove that, despite your borderline stats, you're much better in "real life" than you are "on paper." This is risky, though, in that you actually DO have to be stellar while doing your away rotation.
Some top programs will also offer a courtesy interview to EVERYONE who does an audition rotation there - this is particularly true of the surgical subspecialties. By doing a great job on your audition rotation, and having an automatic interview invite, you could conceivably muscle your way into a program that would ordinarily be beyond your reach.
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I don't disagree with what you are saying. But I still think you get a lot more bang for your buck if you are auditioning at programs within your reach, rather than hoping to wow somebody at a program that really isn't interested in you on paper. But sure, people now and then do get lucky, just like sometimes people do win Powerball. Not the highest yield use of your away months though IMHO.
