Exam/OSCE Travel

If you are required to travel to a site away from your required clerkship location in order to take an exam, you will be either reimbursed for driving to the exam site, or the School will purchase airfare for you, whichever is appropriate.

You must contact the office of Academic Affairs at least 4 weeks in advance to arrange for airfare ticketing. You are responsible for any increase in price due to late scheduling. You can purchase tickets on your own, but it’s better to let us buy your airfare! If you purchase your own flights, you assume the responsibility for providing receipts that meet the UW Central Travel Office’s documentation requirements. These requirements are not necessarily intuitive or obvious, and there is a chance that you will not be reimbursed if the Central Travel Office (which is independent of the School of Medicine) rejects your receipts!

It is up to you to know where and when an end-of-clerkship exam is being held. If you make a mistake purchasing airfare, the School cannot pay for any change fees! Contact the appropriate Clinical Clerkship Coordinator before you make travel plans.

If you request a change in your scheduled exam site, the reimbursement of travel costs to that alternate site may not be approved by Academic Affairs (even if the site change was approved by the Student Testing Services) if there is no didactic reason for the change in site or if the change was made purely for personal reasons, especially if travel to the alternate site is more expensive than to the original site.

If it is necessary to stay in a hotel at the end of the travel day or at the end of the exam day (or both days), the School will reimburse you up to $80/night for a hotel room. You must make your own lodging arrangements for this (except for students traveling to Seattle for OSCEs, who if they choose can stay at the Graduate Hotel, within walking distance of the UW; contact gowwami@uw.edu to arrange staying at the Graduate Hotel).

If you stay in a hotel for exam travel as described above, please submit a reimbursement request through our online form.