<p>Yes, General surgery. Right now he “thinks” he may want to pursue a fellowship in either Pediatric surgery or vascular surgery which is why he chose the GS route.</p>
<p>He was very tired of the interview process near the end especially after two back to back weeks of literally going coast to coast for three interviews each week with only one day home in between. He decided to cancel the three remaining interviews since he felt they would fall in the bottom quarter/half of his ROL …here’s hoping he didn’t make a mistake and not rank enough schools…</p>
<p>As ginnyvere said, nothing to do now except wait and for the parents, worry once again…</p>
<p>It depends what field you’re going into, where you’re applying, and how many interviews you want to do. I spent just above $3.5k. Internal medicine has lots of interview dates, so I could group interviews geographically. And I think I was always offered a discount on my hotel room, and a few paid for my hotel room completely.</p>
<p>If you’re depending on financial aid, it’s usually built into the budgets for fourth year. Lots of people do end up taking out more money for the interviews.</p>
<p>If I may ask a question as a side topic. DS has been asked to select a rotation schedule by March 19th. He lucked out in that he has got a very low lottery number (in teens out of 200). </p>
<p>I would appreciate advice from all of you as to how to select the most appropriate sequence. DS seems to think that selecting IM as the first rotation with Surgery and elective in the middle of 3rd year would be best. I have seen some mention that Pediatric or Family Medicine is better to have first and IM and Surgery in the middle. </p>
<p>What are your recommendations? Thanks much!</p>
<p>Depends somewhat on his career desires - if he thinks IM is his future, I think it’s best NOT to make it first. </p>
<p>In general, the order doesn’t really matter that much. But I think it’s wise to avoid putting anything a student is interested in first or last is a less than ideal choice. At the beginning of 3rd year, students are clueless and practically helpless. It’s tough to make an outstanding impression when you’re still learning where the bathrooms are and what rounds really entail. Putting it last, and you run the risk of not liking the field as much as you anticipated (I’ve seen it happen), which could be a disaster in terms of then figuring what field you’re going to apply to for residency. </p>
<p>In theory, since so much of each shelf exam is medicine heavy (the surgery shelf is entirely the medical management of surgical problems), the thought is that taking IM first will lead to better shelf scores during the rest of the year. Not sure if this has actually been demonstrated to be true. </p>
<p>The other med students can weigh in as well, but the first shelf was a significant shock - lots of people in my class weren’t quite ready for the question length and struggled to finish on time. The family med shelf is difficult because of the breadth of information it tests - would have been much easier after having done IM and OB/Gyn, but as the first shelf, would be a killer. Peds is a difficult shelf as well because there’s so much stuff in peds that doesn’t appear anywhere else (genetics and developmental milestones in particular).</p>
<p>Again, the bottom line is that the actual order is not really important. There are good ways and better ways to set up 3rd year. If your son knows what direction he’s heading, in my opinion, putting that rotation in the middle of the year is probably a better way to do it.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It is best to honor the rotation in the field you want to go into. So, I third the advice about not doing that rotation first or last.</p></li>
<li><p>If you are not sure what field you want to go into, try to honor your surgery and/or internal medicine rotations. Those are rotations almost every specialty looks at. For that reason, I wouldn’t take either of these rotations first. There’s some thought that if you make internal medicine your last rotation of 3rd year, that’ll help for Step 2 (assuming you want to take Step 2 right after third year).</p></li>
<li><p>I wouldn’t put internal medicine and surgery back to back. They are probably the most grueling as well as most important rotations of third year. Definitely put some filler (family med or an elective or something) in between.</p></li>
<li><p>If your school offers an option to take an elective in the 3rd year, I would exercise that option to try out a specialty you may be interested in (whether it be radiology or derm or anesthesiology). That way you can find out early on if it’s not for you or to get letters of rec if you do end up applying into it.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My kid already submitted her 3rd year request, but has not heard yet. Seems like she got similar advice to that which has been mentioned above, though it all depends on the big computer as to which rotations are assigned in which order.</p>
<p>Thanks to all of you very busy students, interns, and residents for taking valuable time out of your schedules to give the 3rd years the benefit of your experiences. Greatly appreciate your advice. Will email it to my DS and ensure that he pays it forward to the younger students.</p>
<p>Good vibes from down in Texas. Y’all rock 'em. </p>
<p>As to 3rd year rotations, I sent my D the thread advice. She basically told me that they don’t pick till the end of the month and she’d think about it when she had time to think about it. Gee. Snippy, snippy. ;)</p>
<p>Next Friday we are heading up to NYC for an extended family dinner post our niece’s match. I have gotten the impression that there can occasionally be a bit of wink-wink that takes place during a residency interview…that if the interview goes particularly well there can be a “if you list us as your number one - we will take you”. Am I correct in this?</p>
<p>Monday is Match-NoMatch day. Students will receive an email at noon indicating whether or not they matched. Should they failed to have matched, then there’s a re-match process to find a position. Then, on Friday (no longer Thursday) the match locations will be revealed at 12 noon by paper and 1 pm by email.</p>
<p>Elleneast:</p>
<p>Those wink-winks are not binding, questionably adherent to the rules of the NMRP, and in fact can be quite misleading. Students should NOT take those statements into consideration when ranking programs. It is easy to get burned. My mentors told me this, and I actually experienced it with the match. Luckily, things worked out quite nicely for me, but that isn’t always the case. Students should rank programs according to their own personal feelings and ignore hints dropped by the programs.</p>