AAMC Reporter: February 2008

AAMC to Launch New Service for Visiting Students

Editor's Note: After the February Reporter went to press, the VSAS launch date was changed from March to April 1.

This March, the AAMC will launch a pilot program for fourth-year medical school students interested in taking electives at other institutions. Known as the Visiting Student Application Service (VSAS), this Web-based tool is designed to streamline and standardize what has been a chaotic application process for students and school officials.

"There are benefits for different people participating," said Moira Edwards, associate vice president in the AAMC's Division of Medical School Services and Studies. "For students, it's a single application and a standard process. For schools flooded with paperwork, initiating an online system is a huge relief." Visiting other medical schools allows students to take classes at the institutions they are considering for residency. A more efficient application process may encourage a greater number of students to take these electives.

There are three groups involved in the VSAS system: the students themselves, home schools where students are officially enrolled, and host schools where students travel to take the electives. This year, students from any home school can use VSAS to apply to one of 10 pilot host schools. If the first year runs smoothly, all other medical schools can volunteer to sign up for VSAS at the 2008 AAMC annual meeting. VSAS will be offered to Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)-accredited U.S. medical schools.

VSAS requires students to electronically submit just one application form to all host schools they would like to attend, rather than a separate form to each host school, as was the previous protocol. Transcripts and supplemental

materials can be uploaded by home schools, and every host school will add their elective catalogs to VSAS's searchable database. The system tracks which institutions each student has applied to, and whether they were accepted.

To participate, students will pay $35 for the first school they apply to and $15 for each subsequent application. Host schools will pay an annual $500 fee to receive applications, and home schools will be charged $5 for each student who applies through VSAS. Fees for both home and host schools will be waived in the pilot year. The idea for VSAS began, Edwards said, after members of the AAMC's Group on Student Affairs committees on student records and student affairs voiced a need for a standardized application process.

"This is a constituent-driven initiative," Edwards said. "These groups came to us and said 'Could you please do something to help us handle visiting students?'" As it stands now, there is no uniform system in place, and each school is handling visiting students differently. These multiple processes have been tedious and burdensome for faculty and students alike. Without an online system, school administrators who manage the visiting students and their applications—usually registrars or academic affairs faculty—must repeatedly attach paper copies of transcripts and other documentation (i.e., verification of good standing, professional liability insurance, and similar documents) to each submitted application.

"As of now, every school has its own application, its own set of requirements, and its own way that it accepts people," said Ellen J. DiFiore, registrar and coordinator for advanced standing admissions at Boston University School of Medicine, one of the pilot schools. Paper-based applications have made it difficult for home schools to record student activity.

"Students would come in to our office with all their different applications. It was very hard to track which students had applied to what programs," said Vicki Fields, assistant dean for medical education at Oregon Heath & Science University School of Medicine, a pilot school and a member of the VSAS advisory committee. "This allows me to track where students at my school are applying, and where they have gotten in. If anyone who is having academic difficulty and shouldn't be applying, I will know and can put a stop to it."

Its electronic component, she said, "has taken the paper shuffle out of the process."

Despite these advantages, VSAS has some limitations, partly because it is a new initiative. The system is not yet equipped to accommodate schools with multiple campuses, and for the pilot year, only a school's main campus will be able to utilize VSAS.

Faculty will have to learn a new computer program, although the AAMC is offering classroom sessions and Web-based tutorials to host and home schools throughout the winter and spring.

Arguably the biggest limitation of VSAS is also its most important asset: reducing variability. While promising to ease the application process, it could take away some unique aspects of schools' processes.

"Schools, to some extent, are going to have to agree on a relatively standard process if they want to join VSAS," said W. Scott Schroth, M.D., M.P.H., senior associate dean for academic affairs at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and a VSAS advisory committee member. "Places that had special requirements or special pieces of the application may not be able to utilize them anymore."

He added, however, that the system is sufficiently versatile to appeal to most schools.

"VSAS is a comprehensive enough approach that most medical schools will be willing to make some minor compromises to get the benefits of the system."

For more information, go to www.aamc.org/vsas.

—By Elissa Fuchs

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