For over 30 years (since 1992), the IHCAI Institute has facilitated clinical rotations in the US for hundreds of medical students from Costa Rica and other countries. It began with Tulane School of Medicine and Karolinska Institutet, and soon added Boston University School of Medicine and King’s College London Medical School. Progressively, since 1997, the IHCAI Institute has strengthened its ties with Harvard Medical School (HMS) as an affiliated center through the “Scholarly Enrichment Program.” This agreement remains in effect today, and the coordinating unit is called the “Scholarly Engagement Program,” which coordinates a variety of academic and training options for senior HMS students, both in-person in Costa Rica and online.
This strong bond of reciprocal opportunities between IHCAI and HMS has facilitated all Clerkship opportunities in the US for IHCAI Institute students over the past 20 years. In 2022, with the COVID-19 crisis, all opportunities in the US were postponed, and HMS used the downtime to digitize its registration processes and channel all visiting student rotations through the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities™ (VSLO®) program of the Association of American Medical Colleges© (AAMC) as a new registration method. The program’s reopening after COVID-19 will be effective from January 2025 through an exclusive tripartite agreement between HMS, IHCAI, and VSLO.
Clerkship hospital sites and other details
Why is this program considered a scholarship?
Since the program’s inception, selected students have been exempt from tuition fees. In the case of HMS, this fee amounts to approximately $7,000 per month (as of 2024). Since our students rotate through 2 subjects for a total of 8 weeks, receiving 2 grades, the total estimated benefit per student is approximately $14,000, which would constitute the scholarship.
More information is provided upon request. Please get in touch with us at: info@ihcai.org