Luckystar,
In your 3rd year you have less freedom than you do in your 4th year. In the 3rd year you must complete 16 weeks at a hospital and 8 weeks in a family practice clinic in one of the 6 regions. Mostly the 3rd year regions are midwest to east coast, the 4th year has more regions in the west. You also do 16 weeks of core electives which have to be 4, 4 week sessions of family pracitice(or internal med), peds, psych, and ob/gyn. There is a long laundry list of places you can go for that and if the place you want to go isn't on the list, you can work with clinical affiars. About half of our required hosptial and clinic rotations are in or very near Iowa. As for fourth year, you spend most of that in electives so it is back to the laundry list. And when you have "true" electives, you can go anywhere you want and work with MD or DO. People often use this as an oppurtunity to rotate through the hosptial they want to get a residency at, get a foot in the door. As for me, I'm young and lived in Iowa all my life so I am, to put it simply, OUTTA HERE!!! I have my 16 weeks of core electives first so I don't know where I'll be going but I'm thinking upstate NY or maybe Colorado...or maybe somewhere in the south. . . Then I have my 16 weeks of hospital time which I was fortunate enough to get Mt. Clemens in Michigan which is a great (and highly coveted spot) osteopathic teaching hospital The after that, I have 8 weeks in Houston, Tx for my family practice clinic. When I'm done with all that, I have 8 weeks of true elective time before my board break and I might try to stay in Houston b/c they have an amazing childrens hospital. Ok that was more than you proabably cared to know but people are usually curious about rotaions so I thought I would explain the process.
Katie