Medical students and graduates always ask us if we offer free clinical experiences or scholarships. While we would love to provide rotations that cost nothing—if we did so, there wouldn’t be rotation sites to learn at, awesome preceptors to offer instruction or a dedicated team to process documents and provide support. The items listed previously are what our 3,000 visitors and counting love most about our clinical experiences, so we must continue providing quality rotations.

Although you can’t rotate for free, there are some ways you can keep the overall cost of a clinical experience with us low. Below are a few tips on how to do so.

 

1. Search Smart

Because we want to make clinical training accessible, we try to keep costs low. We have many clinical experiences that cost between $1499 and $1999. All the clinical experiences, and their prices, live on our search platform. To view them, you’ll need to create an AMO user account. Once you have an account and navigate our search platform, you can sort experiences by price from lowest to highest or select the ‘Value’ tag to view rotations that are $1999 or less.

 

2. Shop Our Sales

Another way to save is to take advantage of sales and promotions—like our Price Drop Sales. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been lowering the cost of select clinical experiences by $300. These sales usually last a few days and run through the weekends. The experiences on sale change each time a sale goes live. We try to make sure anyone interested in our clinical experiences is aware of these great opportunities to save. We generally post about them on social media and send emails to those who have user accounts with us. Want notifications about our sales? Follow us on Instagram or Facebook. You may also choose to create an AMO user account to receive emails!

 

3. Build a Budget

If you plan on rotating with us in-person, you will have to plan and pay for housing, meals, transportation, insurance, and possibly a visa; these items are not included in the cost of your clinical experience and, because they can add up, you will want to budget for them before (or shortly after) reserving your clinical experience to ensure you can manage them. We also created budget guides to give you an idea of the costs associated with each item. You can access these items through your AMO user account by clicking ‘Documents’ and then ‘Resources.’

 

4. Plan in Advance

If you really want to save on the items listed above, you’ll have to be proactive with planning. Things like house/apartment rentals and airfare generally cost less the earlier you book them. We recommend applying and reserving a clinical experience three to six months in advance. If you want the best plan ticket deals and an array of housing to choose from, you may want to reserve your rotation a year to six months in advance to begin planning the remaining items with time to spare.

 

5. Stay with Family or Friends

Many of our past visitors find that securing housing for a month, especially in a larger U.S. city, can be almost as expensive as the clinical experience cost. For this reason, visitors who have relatives or friends in the U.S. usually try to find a rotation near them so they can stay with them. This option can be both frugal and fun!

 

6. Rotate Virtually

If you read number 3 and thought, “There is no way I can pay for all that,” but you still need clinical experience or a letter of recommendation, we have a solution—virtual clinical experiences. We offer more than 40 clinical experiences that take place entirely online, allowing you to limit the additional fees you may incur when rotating. These experiences have other perks, too, like being safe and convenient. If a four-week virtual rotation seems too long, we offer some two-week clinical experiences at reduced rates. You can click here to explore our two-week clinical experiences or, if you want to learn more about scheduling one, you can email our AMO Advisors at advisors@amopportunities.org.

 

Did you rotate with us? Are there items missing from our list?

If so, let us know in the comments. Your tip or trick could help a medical trainee like you finance their clinical experience!