TUCOM MS-III or IV

Core 3rd year rotations were set up by lottery. Originally they had said it would be by grades, but they subsequently reneged on that one.(I got screwed) Electives are basically set up on your own, but you'll want to do your electives outside anyway at teaching hospitals.

My advice to you would be to DO AS MANY CORE ROTATIONS AT TEACHING HOSPITALS AS POSSIBLE. My only real bump in the road at residency interviews was the fact that my 3rd year medicine rotations were at a non-teaching hospital(thank you lottery!). While the rotation was good(primarily because the Dr was awesome) I still got questions about it, and I'm not sure if I answered it to their satisfaction.

Second piece of advice: Do lots of oral presentations in your 3rd year. In my case, I hadn't done ANY until my first outside elective(ICU!)at the end of 3rd year. Predictably, the first handful of presentations were like oral diarrhea. Fortunately,the rotation went well after and I still got a good grade. Teaching programs are going to expect you do be able to do this when you show up. If your attending doesn't make you do these at the non-teaching hospitals take the initiative and arrange to do them anyway, or even with someone else if he/she isn't so inclined.

Aside from that, it's good to train at a teaching institution early so you're not caught with your pants down when you go out for outside electives, especially at places where you might want to go for residency. Generally speaking, you will have a lot more responsibility and will be expected to be more independent. So get used to this early.

Good luck. If you are mindful of the 2 points above, I feel you will receive the equivalent of training at any other program.

 

dcdo,

Where did you do your 3rd year core at? Is Long Beach a teaching hospital? I thought most of TUCOM's core hospitals are teaching hospitals. Thanks.

 

I did my core medicine at San Pablo. The Long Beach, Downey and San Joaquin locations are teaching hospitals. There may be others now but I'm not sure. We didn't have San Joaquin when I was a 3rd year. You definitely have more choices now, which obviously is a good thing!

 

just wanted to start this line again because i'd like to see what current 3rd and 4th years have to say about their clinical rotations and the process of getting them lined up...also i'm sure the TUCOM class of 2006 would like to hear this...

anyways, a friend recently told me he (he's an intern at UCSF internal medicine) that he had a touro medical student in his rotation and was very impressed by her skills and knowledge...so is it difficult to get rotations at big names like UCSF and Stanford in the bay area?

also any insight and advice on on-campus housing would be great too...any ideas on how we can acutally see one of the apts on campus? THX in advance...

chi718

 

Getting electives at big name schools isn't really a big deal, as they aren't particularly selective about who you are except in the case of foreign grads. The only real anti-DO bias I have seen in the bay area is Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. For whatever reason they don't allow DO students for medicine or GI rotations. However, other rotations are available there, so who knows why that is.