Visiting rotation at stanford/ucsf/ucla

[rdevnani]

Hello, I am looking to do a visiting elective at either stanford, ucsf, or ucla. I am going to be doing internal medicine and will most likely do either critical care or heme/onc. Anybody from any of those schools above suggest a specific rotation that is particularly excellent or with preceptors that are particularly great that I should try to rotate with? I think I am going to want to end up at one of those residency programs so I am trying to get the most out of it.

thanks everyone

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[ucsfstudents]

For UCSF: A rotation at Parnassus would give you good exposure to the faculty, excellent teaching, and sufficient autonomy.

Good luck!🙂

 

[stankem]

Bump. Also interested anyone here any away rotation success stories at Stanford or UCSF? Good educational experience is an added bonus but not necessarily the goal here.

 

[Superfrost]

When I did a rotation at stanford they sent me to the valley, still a nice place tho.

 

[SalseraDoctora]

Anybody know whether doing clerkships at Stanford helps with your residency application? Sounds like a dumb question (obviously unless you suck it can't hurt), but does anybody actually know?


Also does anybody who has already done a visiting clerkship at Stanford have any thoughts on it that they would like to share? Did you enjoy it? Were you impressed?

 

[P Diddy]

I did a visiting clerkship at Stanford. It was a fantastic experience and much better teaching than my podunk med school. The housing was quite expensive so I ended up paying $800 for the month to sleep on the floor of some guy's empty room in East Palo Alto. I biked 45 minutes to the VA and back almost every day (some days I would bike to the Marguerite, which was marginally less biking). Despite this, I loved the program.

I did not get an IM interview at Stanford (likely due to my podunk med school's reputation) despite a glowing eval for the rotation, AOA, high Step I etc. I emailed the attending who wrote my eval to tell him I got interviews at UCSF, MGH etc but haha not Stanford. He got mad and emailed the residency director and got me an interview. I matched in IM at Stanford.

A lot of people will tell you aways can only hurt you. That is complete bull****. I would not have received an interview at SUH had I not done an away, since I would not have had anyone to advocate for me. It may be different at other institutions (UCSF?), but multiple residents I know here did electives at SUH as medical students from other institutions.

Come to Stanford. It's awesome.

p diddy

 

[jdh71]

I wouldn't do a sub-I or "audition" IM rotation at any of those institutions because it won't help you. You might think it will but it won't. You will do better nailing your Sub-I at your home institution where you don't have to figure out the system for two weeks. If your app is not execellent, it won't matter if you rotated at any of those places, especially USCF - bottom line, remember that before you go.

If you decide to do an away rotation at any of those places, do a sub-speciality service. I can't speak for heme/onc, but the pulm/cc at all of those places is excellent.

If it were me I'd probably want to do pulm at UCSF and MICU at Stanford.

 

[SalseraDoctora]

Thanks guys (or guy and gal as the case may be) for the input. Very helpful.🙂

 

[neopentanol]

I did a visiting clerkship at Stanford in 2001 in cards consult right after 9/11. It was a fantastic experience and much better teaching than my podunk med school. The housing was quite expensive so I ended up paying $800 for the month to sleep on the floor of some guy's empty room in East Palo Alto. I biked 45 minutes to the VA and back almost every day (some days I would bike to the Marguerite, which was marginally less biking). Despite this, I loved the program.

I did not get an IM interview at Stanford (likely due to my podunk med school's reputation) despite a glowing eval for the rotation, AOA, Step I > 260 etc. I emailed the attending who wrote my eval to tell him I got interviews at UCSF, MGH etc but haha not Stanford. He got mad and emailed the residency director and got me an interview. I matched in IM at Stanford and am now an attending here.

A lot of people will tell you aways can only hurt you. That is complete bull****. I would not have received an interview at SUH had I not done an away, since I would not have had anyone to advocate for me. It may be different at other institutions (UCSF?), but multiple residents I know here did electives at SUH as medical students from other institutions.

Come to Stanford. It's awesome.

p diddy

This is a bit disheartening. Such a powerhouse of an app and no interview? Crikey.

 

[doopdidoop]

hey guys,

thought i would reply here instead of creating a new thread. i have been thinking about doing an away rotation at stanford in pediatrics. i wanted to see if there was anyone out there who has done this with some success. the reasons i was thinking of doing this is that i want to match in california since my parents and brother are planning on moving there in a 2 years and im coming from a southeastern state school - i basically want to show the programs in cali that i was willing to pack up and do an away really far away from home for a month. i grew up in california and have a lot of family in the palo alto/bay area (thankfully that means free housing yay!) but i cant think of a way to cleverly put that on my cv/application haha...still working on how to incorporate that into my personal statement without coming off like a schmuck. step 1 240, H/HP so far on all rotations, peds grade is not back yet.

anyways, does anyone have any insight they can offer? just thought i would have a better chance at an "in" with the california programs with one rotation done out there. any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[CharlieL]

I don't know if rotating at Stanford will help for other CA programs, as they probably wont even know you rotated there unless it shows up in the comments on your deans letter (usually the title just says "visiting clerkship" or something like that) or if you tell the programs. Or if you get a LOR...

In general, audition rotations are a great way to show a program you're really interested in them and get a leg in the door. They can often hurt you just as much as help you, so you really have to work hard. Just make sure you work really hard, try to make a really good impression on the people that matter (including the residents--probably really important in a specialty like peds where they care about your personality and how you mesh with others)

Did you go to college in the Bay Area? Plenty of interviewers have commented on my undergraduate education, so if you did that's one way to show your CA connection...

 

[doopdidoop]

thanks for your reply! i unfortunately didn't go to college in CA - any other ideas on how to get people to notice? i plan to apply to some of the other UC schools through vsas but really hoping stanford pans out since it's so close to where my family lives.