MS4 Class Information – Aug. 18, 2022

Students sought for study of clerkship assessments

Want to improve clerkship assessment?! Researchers are recruiting MS3s and MS4s for a UW Institutional Review Board-approved study about how clinical clerkship assessments impact learning. The researchers hope this study will benefit medical students by improving clerkship assessments.

Participants will be offered a $50 gift card for one hour of their time.

What does participation entail?

  • A Zoom interview that will be approximately 50 minutes
  • Questions about your experiences in your clinical rotations
  • Your participation is voluntary and your interview will be de-identified
  • We will not share any identifying information with your institution or in future scientific presentations or publications
  • You will receive a $50 gift card of your choice

If you are interested, please fill out this form.

For more information: Adelaide H McClintock, MD

Assistant Professor, General Internal Medicine, UW Roosevelt Women’s Clinic

Clinic: 206-598-5500 / Pager: 206-314-0100/ Email: ahearst@uw.edu

Additional MS4 Curriculum Vitae (CV) group review sessions offered by Career Advising

When: TOMORROW: Friday, Aug. 19, plus Aug. 26, Sept. 9, and Sept. 16

Time: 11 to 11:30 a.m. AK, Noon to 12:30 p.m. PT, 1 to 1:30 p.m. MT

Register for an upcoming session

These interactive group sessions are a great way to further develop your CV so you can be prepared as you apply to residency.

You will submit your draft CV at the time of registering for the session. Career Advisors will review your CV and provide you with detailed individualized feedback after you attend the session. This is not a peer-review process. Individual CVs are not discussed during the session.

Before attending a group session, use the provided training videos, suggested CV template, and editing checklist on the Career Advising CV website.

ICYMI: Deadline is Aug. 28 for AOA Honor Medical Society fall senior election

The Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Honor Medical Society Fall ‘Senior’ election will be held in early September. AOA is a national medical honor society in which election is based on a commitment to scholarship, leadership, professionalism, and service. There are 123 chapters around the country and each year, around 3,000 students, alumni, house staff, and faculty are elected into the society. You can learn more about the organization on the national AOA website or on the UW Chapter of AOA website.

Election Action Items:

Who is eligible to be elected?

Students eligible for AOA election must be in the top 25% of their class*. In light of the research and data that showed there are racial/ethnic disparities in clinical grading in medical school, the chapter felt that it was important to acknowledge this disadvantage and adjust its’ eligibility parameters to help mitigate these biases. Therefore, in addition to the top 25% of the class, the UW Chapter has decided to also include the top 25% of all self-reported racial/ethnicity categories.

Students are considered once for junior AOA and once for senior AOA. Students who are expanding/taking a leave of absence will be considered for senior AOA during the fall of their final year in medical school. (If you are scheduled to graduate in 2024, you would be considered in next year’s fall election).

*At this stage in the process, it is not possible to confirm if a given student is in the top 25% of the class. That information will not be known until later August when it would be too late for students to be notified and have a reasonable amount of time to compile an application. 

How do students get nominations? How can I nominate my peers?

We will reach out on your behalf to clerkship directors, College mentors, and MSTP advisors. Students may nominate their MS4 peers by Sunday, August 28 at 11:45 p.m. PT. Comments that were submitted in spring will be “carried forward” for the fall election, at this time you may nominate additional peers. Good candidates include students who display scholastic achievement, demonstrate utmost professionalism in medicine, are leaders who set an example worth emulating, and who have a record of service in the medical school and community at large.

How can I submit my application in order to be considered by AOA?

To be considered for AOA, students must complete the required AOA Application by Sunday, August 28 at 11:45 p.m. PT* – NO late submissions will be accepted. (For the Fall election, the UW chapter has created an all-in-one application to make the application process easier for students to complete). Contained within the application are the grade release authorization**, the lived experiences statement, service and activities, and research and publications. You DO NOT need to update/add information to a separate service tracker survey for AOA election purposes.

*If you submitted an application during the spring application process, please submit a new application for the fall application process. We recognize that it is a bit of an inconvenience, however some questions in the application have changed, so we want to ensure that everyone is being reviewed based on the same application materials.

**AOA considers student grades/Step score information through a blinded election process. When the group reviews grades, your name is not linked to your grades.

How many people will be elected?

The AOA national constitution allows up to 20% of the graduating class to be elected into the chapter per year. During the Fall election in September, approximately 35-40 MS4 students can be elected. The current junior AOA members will elect the students that will make up the rest of the UW Chapter come this fall. The AOA election is a BLIND process; no names are revealed while the group is deciding on its members. Only after all the votes are in are the names of the elected students revealed. Elected students will be contacted by September 15.

More information about the election on the UW AOA website.

 

Have a great week!