Student rotations in June and July

[joshua_msu]

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I am finding that a lot of the outide programs that I wish to do an elective at, do not offer rotations in the June/July period. I understand that at that time a lot of residents are coming and going, but has anyone ever run into this problem? Is this common?

 

[DrRobert]

99% of programs will not let you rotate there until you are a 4th year medical student. It is pretty standard across the board that 4th year does not start until July. Therefore, it should be no surprise that no programs will let you rotate in June.

July is program-dependent. I'd say 50% will accept visiting students that month. But July is not the ideal month to do an away rotation anyway for reasons that you already listed. August and September are the golden months.

 

[jennyboo]

I did an away rotation in June (end of third year).

It usually is required that you are a "fourth year." What that means is that your school must declare you to be a fourth year medical student. Technically my school started the year in July like every other place... but... the lady who does the scheduling in my school said it would be no problem to declare me a fourth year medical student a month early (all other things being equal, and graduation being officially in May anyway, not the end of June).

June was a nice time to do an away as well, since 1) weather was nice, and 2) The CA-1's were almost CA-2's at the time and that gives you a good range of people who are experienced enough for a student to work with.

Kudos to you for thinking of it now, though. If you get your materials together now, you'll get your applications in long before other people are starting to think about and apply for aways, and you're almost certain to get your first choice. I was downloading and preparing my applications around this time last year and sent them in by their respective March deadlines, and got exactly what I applied for with no one saying "We have no more room."

 

[Idiopathic]

I did one in July. I wouldnt necessarily reccomend it, but its certainly okay. I think June would be ideal, since everyone's comfortable, about to graduate, etc. but June is pretty rare to get. I picked a very competitive program (I guess) for my first rotation, and there were 18-20 rotating students (only about 25 OR's) and so this was the worst part. I would make sure and check with the program about how many they take each month (one took 20, one took 4...definitely more one-on-one time with the latter).