apuddy
OSRR Newbie
Posts: 2
(3/13/02 9:25:03 pm)
24.51.104.52
Reply | Edit | Del All when is it too late to be doing an away rotation?
is december too late? november? i realize its not ideal but i would like to do 3 - october, november, december. Thanks for any advice!
IamNikolas
OSRR Fellow
Posts: 173
(3/13/02 10:18:46 pm)
205.188.195.38
Reply | Edit | Del aways
You can do aways up till end of january if you want, and I know of a couple of people who did this (one guy did ortho in September, November and January). It may actually be to your advantage to do them late because they'll be much more likely to remember you during interview season. The only advantage to doing early electives is that you can generate letters of rec in time for your application (you should have all letters SENT by mid to late october -- all of mine were sent mid-october...this is sometimes out of your hands as letter writers may procrastinate). But if you already know of people who will write your letters, this is a non-issue.
A couple of things keep in mind if you want to do a late elective...make sure that program doesn't interview in november or early december because you could be wasting your time if your elective is later than that date. Look at the interview threads from a few months ago to get an idea of when programs interview...HOWEVER I'm not certain whether most programs interview on the same days year after year, as i did hear on the trail that some programs had changed dates from previous years. For example, i heard a couple of years ago, Hopkins and Penn had conflicting dates, but this year Hopkins was in early december, penn in january...so things do change and you should keep that in mind.
The other thing about doing late electives: you may have to skip a number of days to go on INTERVIEWS!! -- this may not go over very well at some places.
I'd say january is really pushing it...but december and definitely november are fine in my opinion.
