David –

This seems to be a recurring theme.  The Tufts students have the same issues that your students experience.  Here at Tufts, the block dates are set by the medical school and they are very strict about maintaining the block dates.  Tufts applications for rotators opens on April 1st.  We review all applications and send the names of the students that we want to extend offers to the Associate Registrar who then extends the offers through VSLO.  We try to have all offers extended for all blocks July – November by the end of April / early May.  The first two blocks May & June are reserved for our home students only.

If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to me.

Starla Pathak
Manager, Educational Programs
Tufts Medical Center
(617) 636-5172
starla.pathak@tuftsmedicine.org

I’m in for this discussion! I also manage the ortho clerkship at UToledo, but as ya’ll are saying, Dept. Med. Ed. determines the medical student timelines and ours do not match up well with VSLO or other institutions.

I completed that CORD survey about a potential universal offer day for VSLO – that would be nice, but also I think difficult to implement without meticulous planning and education (to host schools as well as the students).

I fear we lose good opportunities to host a desired student due to internal registration timelines crossed against VSLO openings.  Also students don’t hear from me timely enough and withdraw.

VSLO opens next week, but my students won’t register for another month so I won’t look at VSLO apps until after they register and I know how many spots I have available to offer.

Its messy but we do it!

Our issue with our home institution is that that do not notify the students in a timely manner.  Once we decide who we like to extend a rotation to, I take the liberty of informing the students what rotation we are offering them and let them know that our home intuition will send them the official acceptance notification.  This has helped so we don’t miss out on a good student possibly rotating with us.

OHSU has a similar process to those listed here, and we feel the same. The block dates are set by our medical school, and they determine when our VSLO opens and when we can send offers to the students. Our VSLO catalog is usually posted in mid-February, applicants can begin submitting applications in mid-to-late March, and notifications are sent mid-April. I feel that is a bit late to send the offers, and I believe we definitely miss out on some students who have already accepted other offers by the time we send ours. Our visiting student blocks start at the end of June and run through November. We do still have visiting students rotating on Universal Offer Day. We do not offer interviews to all of our rotators and for those students rotating during Universal Offer Day, we let them know prior to their rotation that they will be notified of their interview offer status after their rotation ends (usually the week after UOD).

I like the guidelines too! The University of Utah is going to follow them. We’ve been very lucky to work with a Student Affairs Team who helps us with VSLO and follows our department timeline instead of their standard School of Medicine timeline. I’m interested to see how it will work with two cycles, but we can make it happen.

There’s a workaround in case your institution doesn’t adjust timelines based on CORD’s recommendations. Students apply directly to you via email, you complete your own application review via shared folders, and then you send email offers on the offer days. Let them know they will still be required to apply in VSLO and pay the appropriate fees, as well as meet institution requirements listed in VSLO, or their offer can be rescinded. It can be a lot of manual work outside of VSLO, but we were planning to do it if Student Affairs wasn’t willing to make accommodations for us.

Hi Katrina! Good luck on your next adventure!

There was some discussion, including at the CORD meeting. Right now, the medical student universal offer days are very aspirational. A lot of institutions have medical school calendars, application systems, and requirements that are not conducive to implementing the universal offer days. For the time being, these are suggestions that individual programs may implement if their systems allow.

Laurie