I'm a recent grad from UTMB and not a tourist like the rest of y'all crackheads.
On the record, Galveston SUCKS. It's dirty, it's boring. So don't go there to party. Don't go there to study. Don't go to the beach and leave your stinking trash everywhere. Don't try to move in and drive up the rent. Don't park in my parking spot. Don't come to our Walmart and have sex in the aisles. Don't even come to our 1 movie theater and talk on the phone the whole. damn. time. There are more interesting, more glamorous places to be. New York. Miami. San Francisco. LA. Hell, the C-A-R-I-B-B-E-A-N med schools have better beaches than we do.
Off the record, UTMB was by far, hands down, the best 4 years of my life. Better than high school. Better than 4 years of college. Better than New York City. Academically, you have a pre-clinical curriculum that allows you to actually study and be normal, maybe even do research or volunteer work. UTMB for the last 4 years have done really well on the Boards (avg 224-226) as a CLASS which is impressive for a class of 200 students. And, that includes kids who grew up poor or never had educational opportunities like the rest of us. Our dean paid for our QBank (board prep) which was a boon considering how expensive it was. We do just fine in the Match. There's plenty of patients and plenty of pathology for med students to experience and faculty with the exception of a few are dedicated to teaching. You can tell who the UTMB residents who didn't go to UTMB for med school. They tend to be the miserable @ss wipes who lack etiquette and respect towards other residents, students, and nurses. But after a couple of years, even they too learn how to say "Thank you" from time to time. UTMB is a great place to train with plenty to see and do. Since it's the oldest and one of the largest med schools in Texas and possibly the country, it's not surprising that there's alumni all over the place. It's not uncommon to look at faculty rosters and see a UTMB grad. It's also not uncommon to meet docs out in the private practice world who say, "yea, we all trained at UTMB". Austin's our satellite training site where you can do some or all of your rotations. If you've never lived in Austin before, I would highly recommend doing at least 1 rotation there.
Outside the classroom, you'll make the best friends you've ever met your entire life, maybe even marry each other. We all live on the island: 5-10-15 minutes from each other. We study together, travel together, eat together, watch TV together, party together. Hell, we even sleep together after a couple of drinks. We have one of the best gyms I've ever seen with every imaginable equipment, aerobics, spinning classes. There's awesome pickup basketball games, racquetball, and volleyball. We have a FIELD where there's soccer, football, ultimate frisbee, softball year-round. What, like, 8 tennis courts, pretty nice pool, hot tub. In between exams, we hang out at each others houses, cook for each other, throw parties, grill in the backyard, lay out on the beach. There's always someone from Houston so it's not hard to go into the city for the weekend and crash at someone's place for the night. Our curriculum is set up so that there's a winter break in 1st and 2nd year and a fall break in the 2nd year. We did a class cruise during one of those breaks. We get 2 months during summer of 1st year for vacation/electives, 1 month during 3rd year, and 2 months during 4th year. So if you go through med school straight without taking time off, you literally can graduate 5 months early if you want to. That's pretty awesome and unique to our school I think.
What makes med school "med school" is the hours you put into your work, your study habits, your drive, your sense of responsibility, your curiosity.
What makes med school the best experience of your life is the people you had the privilege to go through all that with, to have given up your 20's with, all with a smile on your face knowing that your future is going to be alright, that maybe it really *was* worth it.
Yea, there's probably only a handful of restaurants and bars worth going to. But Galveston's the type of town where the bartenders and waitresses will know you by name eventually. The bouncers won't charge you cover eventually. Hell, the cops will even ESCORT your DRUNK @ss home rather than haul it to jail. Everything is ridiculously cheap in there that you can save up your cash and BLOW it on that vacation, that night out, that date, that weekly poker tournament at your class president's house. Yea, so who cares if there's only a handful of places to go at night. Chances are you're gonna be around your best friends anyways that you're not even gonna care.
Maybe it's Galvatraz, maybe the locals don't have minty fresh breath. Maybe UTMB has a way of self-selecting some of the coolest, most interesting, normal people and a way of keeping all the Freaks and Geeks out. But my advice is to know thyself and go somewhere you belong. Probably the best decision I ever made was ranking that skank hole number 1. I'm glad I didn't pick a med school on the basis that the trees are pretty or whatever. You don't have to take my word for it, but if you ask around, you'll find that I'm definitely not in the minority.
