Scheduling fourth year electives are super important since you need to obtain letters of recommendation and have them submitted to your ERAS application and released to your programs of interest by September. 

Here are some things I would suggest: ​​

• Determine how many weeks of electives you have 

  • Most medical schools have a certain deadline for clinical rotations in order for a student to be eligible for graduation and commencement ​

    • For AUA: April 24, 2020 ​

  • *​If you find out you are going to miss the 2020 match because you won't be able to graduate on time, you should EXTEND your rotations with small breaks in between that way the gap between your last clinical rotation and residency is smaller

    • A lot of programs, regardless of specialty, will regard this as a red flag if you have a very large gap ​

• Determine when you will be taking your big exams: CCSE, Step 2 CK, Step 2 CS ​​

  • Try to plan lighter electives, if possible, near those times since you want more study time ​

• Try scheduling electives of your interested specialty before September

  • You need a minimum of two LORs for your specialty of choice ​

  • *For EM: You need at least 1 SLOE before September. The other can come in late October, early November. Some EM programs have a minimum of 2 SLOEs while others require 3.