So many things. The way Washington treats its students is truly exceptional. Facilities and educational opportunities are top-notch, and student research is easier to become involved in here than at any other institution I visited. Dean Chung, Associate Dean for Medical Student Research, helps students with summer research, year-out opportunities, and dual degrees. She, like everyone else, is extremely personable and friendly. The curriculum is more traditional (2 years pre-clinical, 2 years clinical). I'm not a huge fan of PBL so that was a plus. First year is P/F and second year is currently an uncurved H/P/F scale, based solely upon a percentile. This means if every student scores above a threshold, e.g. 90%, every student is eligible to receive honors, thereby eliminating competition. There is no curve against your peers. Washington also has very generous financial aid packages. Barnes-Jewish Hosptial, St. Louis Children's Hosptial, and the Center for Advanced Medicine are all amazing places to learn. Once all the dust had settled, I thought I would be happiest spending the next few years of my life in St. Louis.
Great. A few additions:
1a) Funding for summer research here is more plentiful than other places I know of. I'm getting more than friends at Harvard, Hopkins, the NIH. Everyone gets funded, and you don't have to beg your PI for money. That gives you ultimate flexibility on where you want to work and what kind of research you want to do (basic, clinical, public health). Some choose to do projects abroad or at other institutions domestically (like me). There are very few rules/requirements. There is no research requirement, no thesis, no scholarly project, etc. You be an adult and do what you want. WashU is about flexibility.
1b) A number of students every year (10-15?) other than the MSTPs take extra time to do research. This number is not so large that you will feel pressured to take a research year just to keep up with your classmates, as is the case at some of WashU's peer schools. It is also not so small that you're forging new territory. The support is plentiful for those who want to do an extra year at WashU or elsewhere, or earn a master's of whatever, or possibly transfer into the MSTP. WashU is about flexibility.
2) The fourth year is completely elective; this is relatively uncommon among schools. There are no requirements for some arbitrary extra clerkship or sub-internship. You craft your own plan of study to explore your specialty interests. WashU is about flexibility.
3) The curriculum being traditional means it's largely lecture-based (major exceptions are a few small groups/team based learning a month, anatomy and histology labs, clinical skills small groups, practice of medicine small groups). Being lecture-based mostly means attendance is optional (except when patients are presented). You choose to learn in what manner you feel you learn best. Play lecture videos from home at your own pace or not at all. You don't get this at schools that are PBL-based and tutorial-based, you also don't get this at schools that for whatever reason don't have the technology to podcast videos that can be conveniently played at 2x speed, and you don't get this in programs that are so small (30) that they require attendance at lectures. WashU is about flexibility.
4) WashU has a lot of money that includes research funding, financial aid (merit and need-based), school-sponsored social events, and student activities. There's apparently the equivalent of 16 full-tuition scholarships (some are broken up to give to multiple people). Deans at other schools are sometimes shocked to hear how much our student affairs budget is. I run a student group here; we get about $5k a year to cover community service programs, student educational and social events, and travel to conferences for a small number of students. My friend at HMS leads the same group; they get $1k a year. My counterparts at St Louis U tells me they get $500 a year. Money gives you freedom to do the things you want to do. WashU is about flexibility.
5) WashU second year is H/HP/P/F. Among top 25 schools, only WashU, Penn, UTSW, and UNC still have non-P/F for some part of the preclinical years. This is not about flexibility. It's about inertia and status quo bias and beliefs that students need constant extrinsic motivation to learn. I have high hopes it will be changed by the end of this year. Committee meetings addressing the issue are ongoing.
6) Re: "amazing places to learn." Consider how WashU medical center (Barnes-Jewish and St Louis Children's) is the major tertiary referral center for a 300-mile radius. It's also the only non-profit hospital left in the city of St. Louis. You see the crazy interesting cases from the region, country, and world as well as the local medically indigent and the gun shot wounds. It has more beds than the Mayo Clinic, Mass General, or Hopkins. Barnes Jewish is ranked #6 on the US News honor roll of adult hospitals and Children's is ranked #6 among children's hospitals as well. There are only four medical schools that have both their affiliated adult hospital and their pediatric hospital on the USNWR honor roll and the medical school itself is ranked in the top 15 in research: WashU, Harvard, Penn, Hopkins. The only thing at WashU that is not nationally ranked is its rehabilitation hospital. For a different patient population and system, you can also rotate at the VA hospital. You're not forced to rotate at the VA, you're not randomly assigned and forced to do your clinical year at one affiliated hospital over another (e.g. BIDMC over MGH). (However, you are forced to do a primary care rotation in the community during the medicine clerkship.) Flexibility??
7) Re: "amazing places to learn." Every preclinical student gets their own study carrel (desk and cabinets). You can have your own study space with the people you want to study with. When you want to separate home and school, and the library is too quiet or impersonal, you've got flexibility; you've got the carrels. This is rare among med schools. The building where medical students have lectures, study, hang out and drink post-exams, have small groups, and do simulations, the FLTC or Farrell Learning and Teaching Center, is this magnificent six story postmodern structure connected to the hospitals and dorms by skybridges built in 2005 by the architect that designed the National Air and Space Museum.
I can comment more on this in a few weeks and months, but from what I have seen so far I love it. During Second Look I met many interesting and accomplished people, and everyone seemed to be academically driven.
With the highest selectivity of any med school (by MCAT+GPA), you're going to get academically driven students.
However, they also had a good life balance. We were shown around the Central West End and the surrounding St. Louis area by current students and the area is great for the student lifestyle. Some students enjoy outdoors, and nearby Forest Park offers an escape from the city in that respect.
On
AreaVibes, the 63108 zip code (Central West End where the med school is and almost everyone lives) has a livability rating of 75 ("extremely livable"), with amenities rating of A+. Compare with 02115 (Harvard med: 72, "very livable"); 21205 (Hopkins: 63, "somewhat livable"); 19104 (Penn: 68, "somewhat livable"). Granted, people often don't live in the bad areas at some of those schools, but that just means you have to commute and people don't live near each other, which is detrimental for social activities; or people live in crappy dorms, which makes med school more like an extension of college than a step towards the real world, right?
Also, one thing I saw at Washington I didn't see at some other schools was a wider variety of geographical backgrounds amongst its students. Many other schools I looked at were in the Northeast. Washington is in the Midwest and there I met matriculating students from California, Texas, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, and Florida, to name a few states. This could be due to the more central location of St. Louis or it could be a subjective observation. Either way, I think it's interesting and adds something unique.
The geographical distribution might be subjective, but anyone curious can check out where all WashU students are from (undergrad and hometown) at
this website. My only feeling is that the students at WashU are less coast-biased than the student bodies at schools that are on the coasts are. Most people don't choose to come to WashU for the location (even the ones that went to WashU for undergrad); they choose it because it's WashU.
From the standpoint of metrics, Washington has some of the highest scores for accepted students in the country. My question is how does this differentiate them from any of their peer institutions? Washington may value scores but this certainly does not mean it ignores other characteristics.
Just a gut feeling, but I'd say WashU students are probably less diversely-ambitious than its peer schools. Like fewer Rhodes scholars and Soros fellows or something. But whatever. Everyone's still really smart and focused. The dean of admissions is changing next year and student stereotypes may be totally different in a few years.