Just another example of why it sounds like a great idea to consider clinical rotations when choosing a medical school but in practice is really, really, really difficult to make sense of what’s up and what’s down.
Big, HUGE, structural differences in curriculum, yes, pay attention to things like required rural rotations, lack of a freestanding children’s hospital (if you are at all interested in pediatrics or a pediatric subspecialty of a surgical field), some sort of really unique required rotation like IWWBB mentioned in post #46, or some other, glaring, obvious factor. But in general, the combination of student naivete as a pre-med, uncertainty on career path, variety of factors relating to what clerkship experiences actually end up being, and so on make me believe that it’s really just not worth the time, effort, and consideration to be a major consideration if you are one of the lucky ones to have a decision to make.
As for away rotations - limiting my discussion to those during the M4 year that must be applied to through the Visiting Student Application Service - their utility depends on the field. For some they are an absolute must - Ortho in particular places a high priority on completion of an away. For others they are useful for exposure to a field either unavailable at your home institution or one that your home institution doesn’t allow students to rotate through - this commonly occurs in pediatric subspecialties. International ones are a great post-interview/ROL opportunity too, as such travel becomes much harder to complete after that M4 year.