How to search for electives for your USMLE journey

Top tips to search for electives for USMLE Residency preparation- from my personal experience
 

1. Start early- If you are planning to go for electives in your internship year, start searching for the electives in your third year. It’s better to start searching as soon as you can.
2. Excel Sheet – In your final year you should be ready with an excel sheet which should columns according to you but should atleast have the university name, date when they start accepting elective applications from IMGs, last date to apply, link to the elective page, email sent or not (by you) , if they replied to your email or not, application fees, tution fees, location etc. This excel sheet is really going to save your time in future (trust me on that) otherwise you will have to start searching from zero whenever you plan to search and if you have an excel sheet you will definitely add something new to the sheet whenever you search for them. Update this excel sheet whenever you send an email or receive any email from the university. This excel sheet should be your own, dont rely on anyone to make it for you or give you a copy of their sheet.
3. Smart search – It includes searching for the already available excel sheets or lists online. You can find a lot of such sheets in the docs section of various Facebook pages, a list was provided by USMLESaarthi. Read all these sheets and make a sheet of your own.
4. Elsevier and research papers – If you are really interested in rotating under a specific faculty member, you can look up for their research papers online and you can find their e-mail ids through research websites/ elsevier etc. Once you get their email, keep emailing them, show them why you want to rotate with them and lastly ask them to recommend you for an elective position under them. This also works if you have seniors at a particular university, you can always reach out to them and ask for their guidance on how to get electives. Staying in touch with universities is very important as this keeps you updated.
5. Update regularly– Keep checking the elective links you had put in your excel sheet every month and update the list accordingly. Also send repeat emails to the universities if you don’t hear from them. Email should be sent once a month, you should give them time to reply as well. This way you will be updated as well as remain in touch with the university. Also be ready with the immunization requirements and other requirements of various universities beforehand because this also takes a lot of time and having this ready keeps you ahead of others.

These are the five tips that  really work!

Dr. Nikita Garg
Lady Hardinge Medical College, India.

​Dr. Garg is a Campus Ambassador for USMLESarthi.

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