Scheduling Year 4: Some Things to Consider
Year 4 is when you finally have the opportunity to explore areas of medicine that you have a personal interest in after developing the core knowledge in Years 1-3. Think about what fields you have ruled in and out and use that to guide the way you plan out your year. You start scheduling in late March/early April, so keep that in mind and try to think of what may work best for you early on. If you do not get the desired schedule, do not panic. Things will still work out in the end. You will have a presentation at school regarding planning Year 4 as well.
Required Events for Year 4
- 3 Required Clerkships (Emergency Medicine, Ambulatory Medicine, SubI)
- Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (deadline: score posted by January 31)
- Step 2 Clinical Skills (deadline: score posted by May 31) – spots fill up quickly, especially for the Chicago site; think about when you might want to take it early and try to start registering around February or March of Year 3.
- ERAS (app. available early July and can start submitting early September)
- OR SF Match Application for early match (app. available early June and can start submitting mid-August/early September)
Some Tips for the Rest of Your Schedule
- July and August are great months to explore or re-explore the fields that you are interested in. They are early enough in the year before you can start submitting ERAS that you can change your mind. If you already know what you want to do, you can do some additional rotations in the field, especially if it is a competitive one.
- November, December, and January are typically the interview months. Considering you can only take 5 days off during electives and 2 days off during required clerkships, you may want to schedule a month off either in December/January for regular match or in November/December for early match so you can focus on your interviews. It may be better to not take December off for interviews since generally the last half of the month is not used for interviews due to the holiday season.
- If you are not satisfied with your Step 1 score, take Step 2 CK early and try to do really well. Figure out when the latest is that you can take it to have your scores sent to be reviewed with your applications. It should take about 4-6 weeks to receive your scores so factor that in when scheduling your test.