Interesting responses. By "interesting" of course I mean Medgirl2008 is either adorably insecure or is under the impression that "UIC" stands for "Harvard Medical School", and that bestows upon her omniscience and superiority. Which is also cute.
Anyway, obviously both schools have plusses and minuses and you should choose one based on your needs, no one needs to tell you that. RFU is a good school, not a research powerhouse or of particularly stellar reputation lately, but good opportunities DO exist. Most students do seem to be active during the year and over the summer, many do research either in-house, at a neighboring institution or hospital, or back in CA (many Californians here), and some just relax and do light shadowing or something. And because there are so many californians here desperate to get back to CA for the summer, that means the summer research fellowships aren't difficult to get here. They come with a decent-sized grant, and you do your own project over the 8 weeks in the summer and present findings in the fall at a research poster presentation fair. Because of the reputation issue (on probation from the LCME a year or so ago), a lot of students probably find it easy to take shots at RFU. The thing is, you can't really pick a school based on reputation. Do you have any idea what the reputation was of the school that physician you shadowed and respect so much was like when he attended? No, not really. You're not deciding between Dartmouth and RFU, it's UIC and RFU. While obviously it's not a GOOD indication about the school, the probation's gone and the school's in a good place. The common knowledge around here is that the probation was largely due to financial reasons. Tuition was pretty high and they didn't get much (still don't, relatively but it's getting better) grant money. Student indebtedness was so high probably mostly due to the AP program, which is basically another year of private school tuition dollars added to the total bill (5 years instead of 4). They cut that program (or at least cut it back) to curtail that and probably also because of silly premeds who think it's an "easy in" to medical school. The reality is that there are plenty of combined degree M.S./M.D. programs, and the only difference is that at CMS there is no forgiveness for unprofessional behavior or low grades if you plan to transition from the AP year to the M.D. program. It is also a myth that it's an "easy in" for people. It's been time-tested that AP students do well, usually better than the regular M.D. students in their education (grades, boards, residency) since they are subject to rigorous filtering. That's not to say RFU is better or worse for having gotten rid of it, I'm just addressing common attitudes from people. As for your specific concern about exposure to clinical setting in the first year...well they do have Introduction to Clinical Medicine as a year-long course where clinical skills are taught on standardized patients, etc., and facilitate shadowing, various school volunteer work in a clinical role, and 2nd years certainly get out in the clinics. It's there if you want it.
As for the more positive things you hear about - you constantly hear RFU students talk about residency matches and board scores. I mean, it's true, they do very well in both. I won't belabor that. Another thing are the facilities (which Medgirl doesn't seem to like based on her vast experience of what medical campuses are like) which are spacious and new, lots of new lab space, even the old facilities are pretty good. RFU doesn't have any undergraduate programs, so it's only health professional students (MD, DPM, PA, PT, etc.) on campus. It's not a large scale university like UIC, it's a small private campus. You're surrounded by a small cohort of like-minded professional students ("professional" doesn't apply to everyone, obviously, but whatever. you can surround yourself with whoever you want). Another thing is that we do have some really great faculty. I would say for every core curriculum class, there's at least two or three lecturers who are fantastic and blow you away. Those are the ones that everyone loves and make the learning process engaging. Every school has good and bad profs. So does RFU, but I'm pretty proud of the good ones here.
So I guess the best thing I can offer is to talk to as many people as possible who are ACTUALLY STUDENTS and have them tell you about THEIR school. If someone's defining THEIR school by how much they think it's better than X School of Medicine, obviously they feel like they have to stratify themselves against someone to make themselves look good.
Personally, I couldn't be happier. People are also happy at UIC.
plus, i dont want this thread to turn ugly!
