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- May 12, 2009
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Hello everyone,
I would love to get some opinions on a logistical challenge I'm currently facing, as well as one other issue related to residency applications. I'm at the end of a (confusingly) wonderful third year and I'm finally recognizing that I love to cut and sew. Because I absolutely loved head and neck anatomy, I'm now trying to get exposure to ENT this summer or early fall.
This realization comes unfortunately late in the year, so I'm faced with currently no open 4-week rotations at my institution. I will be talking with the ENT career advisor/clerkship director in the coming weeks and who knows, perhaps something will open up, but in the meantime I'd love to solicit your thoughts to be better informed about potential options.
All that is currently available is a 2-week rotation in July at the local VA hospital and a 2-week rotation in late September at our major academic hospital. The former would allow for earlier exposure to ENT to help determine whether or not I'd want to go into it, then I'd have to scramble or beg for an opening in a 4-week rotation later in the summer. The downside is that it would focus on areas within the field that are least interesting to me: sleep apnea, cholesteatomas, etc., and I'm of course not guaranteed a timely, subsequent 4-week rotation. The late September rotation would entail very interesting H&N operations, microvascular surgery, etc., but obviously would provide confirmation of my interest far too late to apply this cycle.
Based on the sticky, I would hopefully be a fairly competitive applicant, with a 257 Step 1 score, 4 Honors/2HPs (in Peds and Psych) in core rotations, junior AOA, several research grants and multiple first-author publications under review and about to be submitted, though on topics more in the domain of internal medicine.
Would a year of research provide appreciable benefit to my application? If so, that would help solve the aforementioned scheduling issues as I'd do a 4-week Sub-I next summer. On the other hand, if the pieces fell into place and I ended up loving ENT this summer with enough rotation time to get good LORs, it'd certainly be more convenient to apply this cycle.
I apologize for the long soliloquy and recognize that there are many unknowns with respect to the scheduling situation that make advising difficult. Nonetheless, I'd love to hear from anybody who's faced a similar scenario or who's getting a sense of any reasonable strategies with which I could proceed.
Thank you for your input!
I would love to get some opinions on a logistical challenge I'm currently facing, as well as one other issue related to residency applications. I'm at the end of a (confusingly) wonderful third year and I'm finally recognizing that I love to cut and sew. Because I absolutely loved head and neck anatomy, I'm now trying to get exposure to ENT this summer or early fall.
This realization comes unfortunately late in the year, so I'm faced with currently no open 4-week rotations at my institution. I will be talking with the ENT career advisor/clerkship director in the coming weeks and who knows, perhaps something will open up, but in the meantime I'd love to solicit your thoughts to be better informed about potential options.
All that is currently available is a 2-week rotation in July at the local VA hospital and a 2-week rotation in late September at our major academic hospital. The former would allow for earlier exposure to ENT to help determine whether or not I'd want to go into it, then I'd have to scramble or beg for an opening in a 4-week rotation later in the summer. The downside is that it would focus on areas within the field that are least interesting to me: sleep apnea, cholesteatomas, etc., and I'm of course not guaranteed a timely, subsequent 4-week rotation. The late September rotation would entail very interesting H&N operations, microvascular surgery, etc., but obviously would provide confirmation of my interest far too late to apply this cycle.
Based on the sticky, I would hopefully be a fairly competitive applicant, with a 257 Step 1 score, 4 Honors/2HPs (in Peds and Psych) in core rotations, junior AOA, several research grants and multiple first-author publications under review and about to be submitted, though on topics more in the domain of internal medicine.
Would a year of research provide appreciable benefit to my application? If so, that would help solve the aforementioned scheduling issues as I'd do a 4-week Sub-I next summer. On the other hand, if the pieces fell into place and I ended up loving ENT this summer with enough rotation time to get good LORs, it'd certainly be more convenient to apply this cycle.
I apologize for the long soliloquy and recognize that there are many unknowns with respect to the scheduling situation that make advising difficult. Nonetheless, I'd love to hear from anybody who's faced a similar scenario or who's getting a sense of any reasonable strategies with which I could proceed.
Thank you for your input!
