From a PM I recently sent someone:
Howdy!
Glad to hear that you are considering Penn! I am super stoked that I decided to come here and have had a fantastic first year. Definitely feel free to PM me again in the future with any questions that may pop up through the application cycle.
I think I put up a long post in the previous year's thread about why I chose Penn, but I can definitely hit the highlights. I honestly think that Penn has completely unparalleled opportunities for whatever your interests, within or outside of medicine, may be. And as you mentioned, not only do you have access to these opportunities, but you have an extra half year to take advantage of them.
Because the "Penn Medicine" system incorporates so many hospitals and clinics, there is fantastic breadth of clinical exposure. No matter what patient demographic you are interested in working with, you can find it within the Penn system. Because of the number of research dollars awarded to the institution, there is a ton of internal funding for projects. Not only are Penn students competitive for national scholarships that all students in the US can apply for, but there is also a lot of departmental funding open to us. We have a very strong collaboration with a healthcare organization in Botswana which students opt to involve themselves in. There is also funding available for all students' international interests. One group this year created a new program that took them to Cuba for spring break - the money and administrative support is definitely there.
As far as curriculum goes, I am extremely pleased with the setup of the preclinical years. We have a good balance of lecture and small group, and small groups, for the most part, just reinforce and allow you to synthesize things you've already learned in lecture. During the clinical years we also have a lot of neat rotations incorporated into our core curriculum - we all rotate through emergency medicine, anesthesia, ophthalmology, orthopedics, and ENT... and probably other spiffy things that I can't recall at the moment. Most schools will not give you the opportunity to experience these things in your core rotations. And remember that this is in addition to the extra 6 months we have to explore electives!
Basically, everything other schools had that I liked, Penn also had. There are just so many things to do and so many ways to supplement your "standard" medical education here that you really have a lot of chances to define and refine your career trajectory. We regularly have lectures and small groups with faculty from other schools in the University so we get a wonderful perspective on a lot of issues related to medicine. Wharton professors have given lectures on medicare, medicaid, and healthcare systems. Bioethics professors (Zeke Emanuel) have talked about healthcare reform and a wide variety of issues in medical ethics. Zeke actually had a meet and greet the same day he was at the Supreme Court hearing for the defense of the PPACA. It's pretty awesome and while we get to hear about these issues from such renowned people, I'm not even sure other schools teach med students about these kinds of things.
That's about all I can come up with for now - but if you have more specific questions that I haven't answered feel free to PM me!
. Extra credit is hard to turn down though!
