Thank you! Could you talk about what 3rd and 4th-year looks like? Additionally, do students get to choose their rotation sites and are they mostly local?
3rd year is a standard 12-month rotation schedule which includes about 1.5 months of dedicated board exam time at the very beginning (from Mid-May to July). Many students opt to take USMLE Step 1 and COMLEX but only COMLEX is required. Once you finish these exams, you begin your clinical rotations the first week of July. These rotations each last 4 weeks in duration and cover all of the main areas of medicine including family, internal, general surgery, cardiology, OB/Gyn, psychiatry, etc. Depending on how you play your cards with which rotation you complete in your required rural setting, you may be able to get 2 elective rotations instead of just 1. I am interested in anesthesiology so I was able to secure electives in interventional pain management and standard clinical anesthesiology. At the end of each rotation, you will have a "shelf" exam which covers the entire spectrum of pathology and treatment in the rotation you just completed. The only rotations without exams at the end are electives.
As far as choosing rotation sites, MWU offers 8 different rotation regions to select from, and they are granted to students through a lottery system which takes your preferences into account. The regions include Phoenix West Valley , Phoenix East Valley, Tucson, AZ, Chicago, IL, Kankakee, IL, Northern Cali, Southern Cali, and San Diego, CA. Once you are assigned a region, expect most of your rotations to be within that region, although I have heard some of the California students having to complete rotations in Phoenix and California. Elective options are pretty good IMO, but sometimes you have to set up rotations with preceptors that the school may not have connections with already.
For 4th year, the first month and a half is also dedicated for USMLE Step 2 and COMLEX (Again, only COMLEX is required). Once you finish these board examinations, you will likely do audition rotations at residency programs in your specialty of interest. These are done to get a foot in the door at programs you want to match into and to then increase your chances of being ranked highly in the match. It is advantageous to do these auditions rotations. They can also be done anywhere in the country and do not depend on where you did your 3rd-year rotations. There are only 4 required rotations you have to do which include emergency medicine, surgery sub-specialty (Ortho, anesthesia, etc.), internal medicine sub-specialty (such as rheumatology, pulmonology, neurology, etc.), and critical care/ICU. Once you have satisfied these 4 rotations, you pretty much just coast through the rest of the year and wait until match season is over and chill. 4th year of medical school is the most relaxed from what I have heard, and based on my current schedule it does appear to be that way.