We just got sent an e-mail from the clinical department outlining the procedure to apply for 4th year clinicals. I was very upset to find out that in addition to a mandatory electives in family practice and neurology (which I fail to see how they can be called "electives."), we can only do 8 weeks of electives in a "non-medicine" specialty, including surgery and anesthesiology?

Is this standard practice in medical school anywhere else? If not, then this is terrible!! After completing the cores, and two electives which might as well be cores, you should have some idea of what you want to do. And, if your interests are not in what AUC considers a medicine specialty, why should you be forced to do the great majority of your electives in those areas?

If you want to do surgery, but only have time to do one or two surgical electives, how can you possibly be considered equally with other students who have done twice as many surgical electives (and had access to twice the number of surgical faculty for rec letters). Please tell me this is not just an AUC policy!

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AUC 5th Semester!!

yes, that is standard. if you look up US schools and their electives in 4th yr, they are required to do the majority in Medicine subspeciality.

so it is standard to have only 8wks of electives in non medicine fields.

good luck with 4th yr

skipper

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My ID says MD....wow!

President and Dean of--
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If you fail at AUC, SGU, or Ross why not transfer to SMU, if you fail at SMU, why not try another SMU.

There is a good explaination for this. To the best of my understanding, you can not get licensed in some states without neuro or fp. The school would like everyone to be eligible for 50 state licensure.

You have 12 weeks of surgery in a core. You can do a 4 wk sub-I in surgery and another 4 week elective. One recommendation should come from the sub-I as you should be treated like an intern for the most part, if it is a good sub-I. They will able to adequately evaluate you to give a strong recommendation. A good surgeon has to be a good internist b/c your have to be able to adequately evaluate who needs surgery, etc... So, medicine electives are not a waste. Btw, the surgery shelf exam is like 80% internal medicine.

OK, that makes sense. Although, "mandatory elective" sounds like an oxymoron to me. Maybe they should just be cores?

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AUC 5th Semester!!

this is not true. FP i don't know why we are required to take it since there is no styate requiring it. neuro was a required rotation by texas and texas briefly and only until 2005 when it was dropped as a requirement. i tried and tried to get out of it since i had absolutely zero interest in neuro but could not get anywhere as to why it was still required.

so no there is no good reason why we need those mandatory "electives" but yes it is the standard to only allow a fixed number of non medicine elctives

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OBGYN PGY II
I see light at the end of the tunnel!!!...wait a minute its just another freakin tunnel!

Yea, they are mandatory but the reason the school doesn't call them "cores" is because there is no core subject exam to go with them. Go figure.

They are mandatory, but there is no shelf exam required after them.

Yeah, things change fast. The last time I checked neuro was required in tx.

You will get to do what you want with the AUC clinical curriculum. There is really no issue here. Every US student does Neuro as a required course and they should since its on the step 2. Family practice, well you should probably do that too since its very much like step 2 cs.
I can see that some of the students in basic sciences may want 20 weeks of radiology or 10 weeks of EM right now, but they need to understand that its not realistic, nor beneficial to finding out "what you want to do." I have not met anyone past week 50 of clinicals that says "boy I wish I could do at least 6 more weeks of surgery sub-I and 4 more weeks of .... insert anything." As some very astute US graduates have said, dont feel bad about enjoying your 4th year of med school, leaving early, etc. Its the last time in your life that it will happen.
Those that have no friends can correct the above statements by telling me that they want MORE clinical expereince! Give me a break.