Harvard vs. Yale

[akidder]

hi,

i'm kind of new to this chat room thing, but am facing a bit of a dilemna, so thought i'd give it a try. by monday, i have to decide between harvard and yale medical school. 1i know both are great places, but from my many friends who go to harvard or have worked as residents in the harvard hospitals, i have some concerns regarding the quality of the clinical training. it's my impression that in the 3rd and 4th years, students don't get much responsibility and in general, feel more like a drag on the team than a help. moreover, i'm concerned that there might not be a paticularly high level of committment among residents and attendings to teaching. i don't know yale as well, but my visits there and my talks with students have given me the impression that the clinical years are better there -- more chances to assume responsibility for patient care and a greater commitment among the house staff and attendings to teaching. but i hate new haven and love boston and frankly, as a bit of an older student (i'm 25) i'm a little worried about spending the rest of my twenties in a small, college town. my interest is really in community medicine, and it seems like there's ample opportunity for that in both places. i know a lot of this depends on what kind of a student you are and the luck of the draw with which residents you get -- it may that it's really a wash between the two places.

if anyone has any thoughts, i'd be very grateful.

thanks,

alice

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[ken37]

You are a kidder.

 

[jlee9531]

regardless, i am sure the clinical years at harvard are not noticeably different to yale's to the point where you would turn down a school like harvard and at the same time a city where most people would love to reside in.

do you really want to live in a place for 4 years that you hate, just to have an allegedly smaller advantage at yale's clinicals?

you like boston, harvard is obviously a good school with good hospitals. and your focus on community medicine there will not be any worse than it will be at yale.

 

[periodic]

Hey Alice,

I'll bite, since I faced this dilemna myself and had many of the same concerns.

I've spoken to a multitude of folks (Yale faculty, Harvard faculty, current and former students at both places, a family friend who went to Yale med and and is in internal medicine residency at Brigham, another family friend who is a UPenn med grad, did a fellowship at Yale, an engineering degree at Stanford, and residency at Beth Israel).

No one said the clinical training at Yale would be better. At the most, people said the clinical education overall would be similar at these schools and any other "top tier" research school. My two family friends, however, said Harvard would be better clinically (this was based on the idea that residents would be doing most of our teaching, and they are of a higher caliber at Harvard).

However, my sense remains that you are probably right to some degree - Yale students probably get more responsibility and oversight in the clinical years. At the very least, they seem more satisfied (there were a few veiled concerns aired at a student panel during the Harvard revisit about the clinical experience 3rd year - people seemed to imply you couldn't do as much as you wanted). If you look at the (admittedly very small sample) of surveys on Harvard and Yale on the AMSA website (http://www.amsa.org/premed/medsurvey/) - you can see that the one Harvard student who responded about clinical years, presumably because she was the only one who responded who had experienced them yet, rated it lower than Yale students rated their clinical experience.

So, I believe Harvard probably has better "quality" faculty and housestaff, while Yale's are probably a little more committed to teaching (it's also a much smaller medical community, and more unified). However, I do believe there are excellent people focused on supporting students at Harvard and its hospitals, but on the whole, it's very easy to see how Yale is better perceived overall on this front by students.

Overall, I came to the conclusion that, while important, you're not going to be learning as much during the clinical years as you think at either place, and the difference can't be that significant at all, as people go to all types of residencies from either place. Internship and residency are where you really get your clinical grounding. Harvard faces some additional difficulties from the fact that their hospitals are not as tied to the medical school as other places. However, they've started addressing clinical training seriously (as all medical schools need to, but that's another story).

They've founded an Academy to support and encourage teaching as a professional activity, even to the extent of compensating for it (Stanford is looking at something similar). There is a pilot program called the integrated 3rd year clerkship being run this coming year with 8 students - basically, all the 3rd year clerkships for these students will be integrated at Cambridge Hospital (a more community-based hospital than tertiary care centers like MGH and Brigham) - the reason for this pilot is to find ways to better provide clinical education in an era of increasingly outpatient-based care and teach across specialties, not just within specialties. I think it sounds awesome and hope it is successful and continues. Even if it doesn't, though, these are issues the institution is looking at seriously and creatively, which impresses me.

In the end, I think it depends on what you're interested in. I think Yale has a primary care program which could be right up your alley (if by community medicine, you mean something like that). Harvard and Yale's match lists show that people from either do great in the match, so again, there can't be too much of a significant difference between either place.

I gave decent weight to the advice of my family friend who went to Yale undergrad (like me), Yale med, and is now in internal med residency at Brigham, as he had no stake in answering my question, and I trust him. He loved Yale med, but thought Harvard might be better in the end, especially since I have already spent 4 years in New Haven. But that's just me, even though I really enjoyed New Haven.

Ok, that's a lot I've written. I'd be happy to share more if you have questions.

 

[periodic]

bump - I didn't want my marathon reponse to be ignored (and jlee's much better and to the point post), since akidder seems to have missed our replies!