As with all advice in medical school, these are relatively narrow opinions and may certainly not represent reality. More than any other part of med school, the residents you end up working with will shape how great/terrible your clerkship experience is. For better or for worse, being personable and a ‘normal person’ with residents tends to impact your evals. Some residents will unfortunately expect you to drudge through the wards like they did. Occasionally you’ll get evals from residents that are completely opposite of what you expected, but don’t worry – everyone does.

Most people advise saving your interests and the biggies (Med, Surg) for the middle of your 3rd year, so that you’ll already have some practice on the wards and at the same time, not be burned out yet. Houston rotations are superb – they cover your apartment/flights. As a private hospital that looks fancier than the Ritz Carlton, everything works so much more smoothly, despite being stuck in the dark ages of paper charts. That translates to less menial scut work for you, the scutmonkey; instead you tend to get a lot of free food, shorter calls, escape from NYC winters, and Austin on the weekends.

My friends and I preferred the DMX Cradle 2 the Crave schedule: Obgyn, Ped, Med, Surg, Neuro, Psych, Primary care

ObGyn – an encapsulated clerkship that doesn’t rely on any other clerkships, with a nice taste of outpatient, inpatient medical, and inpatient hands-on surgical services; and you’ll be delivering babies as your first true clinical experience.

NYPH residents cover both NYPH and Queens, so the experience is similar. The infamous dreaded ObGyn harpies have all graduated and the current resident crew are fantastic to work with. Taubel’s review is stellar and comprehensive for the shelf, and in the OR she’ll let you slice and dice; avoid being late around her. Ledger is extremely old school – avoid being late or using abbreviations, but his sessions are an interesting experience of how medical education used to play out. Rosenwaks is a huge player in vitro fertilization.

ObGyn at Houston seemed less hands-on, you do Gyn at Methodist (9 DaVinci robots, 4 for patients, 5 to play with) and Ob a couple stops away at the county Ben Taub. Weekly sessions with Toy (wrote all Case Files books) where he expects that you have read the chapter for discussion.

Peds – universally the nicest faculty, residents, and staff to work with. Ob’s prenatal and neonatal material makes a reappearance. TJ coordinates a useful lecture set for everyone (especially derm and heme), including a session that sorts you into Hogwarts houses based on personality. Each site has 3wks inpatient, 1wk each ED, PICU/NICU, outpatient. You get to hand out + collect the evals.

NYPH is well-liked, with a broad range of specialty services that you can join. Methodist Brooklyn is also well-liked if you live in the area or don’t mind the >60min commute each way. Be wary of taking your car to Lincoln.

Med – Esquivel is an extraordinary teacher, his problem-set sessions (calculating fluid s) and clinical reasoning sessions are extremely useful and what you expected medical school would actually be. His first impression of you tends to stick with him, for better or for worse. The shelf is now the national NBME one and includes derm, which we don’t cover. Consensus from honors students tend to include: Step-up to medicine, MKSAPP / UWorld questions.

NYPH – general services depend on which faculty/residents are on, but are typically nice. Cutler, Berlin, Ogedebe, Dodia, Jones, Horowitz are beloved. On Esquivel’s team you will be treated as if you are, and expected to think like, an intern. Teams that cover a floor generally get free lunch (residents can’t leave the floor). Cardiology (4N) – attendings are very instructive and fun, very useful for the shelf (taught how to manage CHF, read EKGs, etc). MICU – people tend not to enjoy the passivity and sadness of MICUs. ID – will definitely teach you antibiotics, useful for all shelves. Renal – enjoyed by most people, you don’t work with Weinstein, you’ll finally learn electrolyte physiology. Geriatrics – some of the nicest attendings ever, beloved elective.

MSKCC – only for GI (depressing) or Lymphoma.Houston is very laidback by comparison: the day float system means that if you finish your work on your patients

by 2pm, your team can sign-out and go home; with your team admitting new patients ~1/wk. Only short call ‘til 8pm 1/wk. You mostly join the residents’ sessions for your didactics: daily AM case conference with breakfast and daily lunch lectures with catered lunch. Residents tend to be very laidback and brilliant (most from international backgrounds that relied heavily on physical diagnosis). PharmD’s on every team are great resources for learning about drug/antibiotic interactions and dosings.

Queens - laidback

Surg – the Surg shelf (and clerkship) borrows heavily from medicine. Dakin seems to only like interacting with med students outside of the clerkship, within the clerkship he doesn’t seem to pay much heed to student concerns or lectures.

Until the admin standardizes all clerkship grading, be sure to focus on the shelf. Due to an oddity in the grading, even though the shelf technically counts for 30% of the grade, Dakin uses your national percentile (shelves are designed so that a base knowledge of the material is passing, thus 90-95% of the nation passes. So if you get a score below a 70, you rapidly fall into the 10-20 percentile range, and Dakin inputs that 10-20 for your shelf grade). In short, doing mediocre on your shelf can really hurt your grade. Get to know the PAs, Circulating Nurses, and Scrub Techs – most of them are fun, wise people who have been doing this for many years and will help you get involved in the action and stay out of trouble in the OR. Expect to hear Taylor Swift in ORs.

NYPH - Gen Surg, traditionally the most disagreeable of people, is particularly malicious at Cornell. Residents quit or are fired annually and can be hit or miss. Michelassi is an exceptional teacher and his surgical reasoning sessions are very useful. Students generally have unpleasant experiences with Eachempati and Barie in the SICU. Yellow service – Endocrine, well-liked. Red – abdominal + trauma, very hit or miss. Blue – bariatric, generally liked. Milson and Pomp are internationally renowned, and great to work with. Transplant – Cornell lost a lot of transplant surgeons, so now they operate twice a week (AVFistulas and only kidneys), very laidback, not very hands-on, Kim and Watson are great, avoid Kapur (known for throwing tantrums in the OR).

MSKCC – a new addition, but highly enjoyed by the guinea pigs so far. Fewer residents, so more hands-on. MSK attendings love having students to teach and are fantastic.

Lincoln – very hit or miss. Only place where you might see trauma, very hands-on (county hospitals are free-for-alls), but there can be difficult attendings and residents. Few responsibilities mean you can generally slip away to study more.

NYPH Downtown – a new addition, no residents as of now, so should be very hands-on. Houston – primarily abdominal and wound debridements (everything is huge in Houston, particularly the patients). The attendings are okay, hands-on for students, the residents are much more laidback and instructive, few didactics. Caplan and Bass are great. Starting pre-rounding at 6:30am is feasible.

Queens – expect to use the shuttle prior to the one the residents use. The clerkship has long been unsympathetic to shuttle timing and issues with students.

Electives: Urology – the nicest people you’ll meet anywhere, fun short diverse surgeries, you will master foleys, extremely well-liked elective. Vascular – amputations, can be tedious. Plastics – attendings enjoy teaching, pretty hands-on despite the patient population, residents can be high-strung, you have to carry their supply bag for rounds, will teach you proper technique and how to suture, Otterburn is great. Neurosurg – laidback elective, very hands-off other than drilling skull. Ortho – close ties to HSS, residents epitomized the ortho bros, well-liked. Ophtho – very laidback, all elective, very well-liked. Breast – generally well-liked. Cardiothoracic – Isom enjoys teaching students, but very hands-off. ENT – attendings enjoy teaching students, well-liked. Peds – not very hands-on, few cases. Trauma – what trauma? Burn – unique experience, well-liked, but variable case volume.

Neuro – Safdieh is another of Cornell’s educational juggernauts. His weekly sessions are exceptionally useful, he writes AAN practice questions for med students, very helpful for shelf. On the wards the answer to everything is Steroids and IVIG.

NYPH – well-liked, 2x 2wk blocks. Child neuro is very laidback (often done after AM rounds, by 10AM), amazing attendings and residents, can be very depressing. NeuroICU – 80% postops, 20% depressing comas, very little work. Stroke – you will see enough on night calls, but good attendings. Consult service – neuro is the busiest consult service in any hospital.

Queens – attending often takes students out to lunch, relatively laidback, well-liked. MSKCC – only depressing tumors (not especially helpful for the shelf), but amazing attendings, see Posner if you

can, he is a living neuro legend (described locked-in syndrome, created the brainstem exam, etc). Houston – long hours, immensely busy (a very well-respected dept), as an example on my Medicine clerkship my

patients included neurosarcoid, neurocysticercosis, bulbar ALS, myasthenia gravis, multiple sclerosis, EBV meningiomyelitis, cerebral palsy, etc.

Psych – Gordon-Elliot took over for Klimstra, must clear all absences with her or she has you make them up in call and caps your grade at a pass. Strong didactics. Developmental and degenerative neuro disorders pop up on the shelf.

Westchester – extremely well-liked despite needing to commute via Cornell schoolbus, can’t leave early unless you drive. One of the most respected psychiatric hospitals with living pysch legends like Kernberg (codified borderline), entire floors devoted to psychotic/personality/eating/child disorders, etc, you’ll even see Capgras (believing everyone is an imposter).

NYPH – less busy but more hours depending on your resident, services are 2x 3wks of either consults (whole team will do 4/day), inpatient (generally homeless schizophrenics or manics), ED (12hrs/day, but you get all Fridays +

weekends off), or partial (very laidback, patients go home after group sessions). Attendings tend to manifest whatever psychiatric disorder they specialize in.

Primary Care – Demopoulos is a great teacher. Shelf has cameos from ObGyn, Peds, Neuro, Psych, and outpatient medicine, is generally considered one of the harder, more comprehensive shelves. Derm and ped ortho also pop up, which we don’t really experience.

NYPH – well-liked, each student is assigned a hodge podge of UES specialty outpatient clinics (ped derm, HSS rehab, MSK surg, ENT, etc) and actual primary care components like CIMA (not-so-insured internal medicine), urgent care, Ob/Gyn clinic, home visits. Students traditionally skip many of their specialty clinics without notice.

Ithaca – extremely well-liked, a true family medicine practice, but longer hours and busier. Apartment is provided, cross-country skiing. You can ask for 6wks at either, or 3wks at both.

4th year subI’s: if you’re interested in Med/ED/Surg/Ped/Neuro, then do that SubI at NYPH for your home letter of rec. Med subI is tremendously useful for surg subspecialty intern years (when you’ll spend a lot of time in ICUs and you’ll learn plenty of surg on your aways anyways).

Med at NYPH – you’ll be worked very hard, but you’ll learn a lot. Med at Queens/Houston – much more laidback and ok with you eloping for interviews whenever. ED/Surg/Neuro are relatively new and still being tweaked.

Step 1: for those who studied for the boards throughout pre-clinical years, you’ll never know more about step 1 than when you finish your preclinicals. Consensus is that many students felt burned out after 5wks, and that 5wks is enough to cram everything you need. After your clinical year, you will intuitively understand the ubiquitous step 1 vignettes, but the material will still need to come from the 5wk cram session. Remember, regardless, you’ll do great. Be sure to go on post-boards vacation/trip with classmate friends.

Step 2 ck (diagnosis and management) builds heavily on step 1 material (pathophys, anat, histo, pharm), and some students recommend taking step 2 ck soon after step 1 if you do it after pre-clinical. Of note, if you do worse on step 1 than you’d like, you can use step 2 ck to make up for it on your application (take step 2 ck >1mo before applications are due in that case, which is usually Sept 15). If you’re fine with your step 1 score, consider taking step 2 ck after Aug 15 so that it doesn’t automatically load to your application with your step 1 score. That way you can always send the step 2 ck score at a later date if it’s flattering, or withhold it if it’s not. I’m a proponent of only giving study advice if you also give your resulting score, but overall those who did far better than I in recent years recommended doing UWorld twice, first aid for context/structure, and pathoma/goljan for a clear understanding of pathophysiology – unfortunately, studying these during the preclinical years will be much more instructive than many of the lectures - please ask your upperclassmen friends for what did and didn’t work for them. Studying for step 1, and first aid in particular, will prepare you immensely for all clerkships.

Apply as early as possible (typically around Sept 15, programs are interviewing increasingly earlier and smaller fields often send all invites in 1 batch) – so try to have all letters in by early Sept. Unfortunately, some subspecialty programs send out more invites than they have interview slots, so responding ASAP is imperative for securing your spot and preferred date. Consider having your phone text you when you get any ERAS/AMCAS emails and let your clerkships know that you might have to take calls/scrub out/etc. Some fields coordinate dates, most do not, and after Nov most of the programs end up overlapping with their dates. In the rare event that you are taking a 3rd / 4th yr clerkship during interview cycle, be sure to get permission from the clerkship director for any interviews; but realistically keep in mind that programs will never see your transcript/grades updates after Sept 15th. If you do a MD/PhD or Leave of Absence Fellowship, not having a letter from your PI is a red-flag.

Of note: you can submit individual personal statements for each program. Most programs remain unaware of this and certainly take note of it.

Know your application well for interviews, everything that you include will eventually be brought up at an interview. This is especially true about your research, which you’ll often be asked to discuss. Avoid misrepresenting hobbies (applicants have been asked to play piano, etc), articles in submission, or authorship order. Dress conservatively and professionally for interviews. Common dictum is to avoid standing out one way

or the other. Let programs know if you are couples matching, they can often secure interviews for your partner. You’ll make life-long friends on the interview trail.

9:01 pm on Rank list submission day – celebrate, you’re essentially done with medical school.

Quick description of the match:It’s a marriage proposal algorithm: on your turn the program looks at your #1. If your #1 has an open spot, you get it; if not, it looks at where you and the seatwarmer are ranked on the program’s list. If you’re ranked better on their list, you kick the seatwarmer out of the spot and get it; if you’re ranked lesser on their list the seatwarmer keeps the spot and the program moves to your #2 choice to repeat the process for you. Likewise, when you tentatively fill a spot and it’s the turn of another interested applicant, the program checks where you and the other interested applicant are ranked on the program’s list to determine if you keep the spot or not – if you don’t keep the spot, the program then moves to your next choice on your list to repeat the process. The whole algorithm for all 35,000 applicants probably takes < 1minute to run, but you get to wait 3 weeks to find out! Celebrate and don’t worry about it. If you dig through the NRMP data each year you can find the average number of students that a program must rank in order to fill each spot, for each field.