Comparing 3 Philly schools

newdude · Jan 12, 2006

I applied to these three Philly schools and I was hoping to get some info regarding the school from you guys. So please let me know about the special attributes of each of these schools.
Thanks

JEFFERSON
positive
-large class
-highly ranked (compared to others)

negative

TEMPLE
positive

negative
-bad neighbourhood

DREXEL
positive

negative

medstylee · Jan 12, 2006

I'll add my opinions about Drexel. I don't know much about the other two schools.

JEFFERSON
positive
-large class
-highly ranked (compared to others)

negative

TEMPLE
positive

negative
-bad neighbourhood

DREXEL
positive
- choice of two interesting curriculae
- nice facilities
- great system for on-line resources
- students seem to be very happy there
- administration/faculty seem to be very receptive to student input

negative
- location (dull suburb in philly)
- main teaching hospital is removed from medical school

crazy_cavalier · Jan 12, 2006

You know it's crazy when there are FOUR medical schools in Philadelphia, whereas some states don't even have ONE. 😕 😕

tigress · Jan 12, 2006

Yeah, it is really crazy. There's a lot of history there, too (with the 4 medical schools). There are actually 5, if you count PCOM.

Anyway, my additions to the list:

JEFFERSON
positive
- large class
- highly ranked (compared to others)
- second year curriculum looks cool
- mp3 audio of lectures available online
- great hospital system in the region
- most research available of these three

negative
- large class (may limit access to some resources, according to my student interviewer)
- reputation for being competitive class, probably from not too long ago when they had letter grades
- in MY experience, students tend to be not quite as nice as I would like

TEMPLE
positive

negative
-bad neighbourhood

DREXEL
positive
- choice of two interesting curriculae -- really awesome integrated curriculum (I've seen 1.5 years of it from the inside, and it's the best I've seen at any school)
- nice facilities
- great system for on-line resources - online VIDEO lectures that evening
- students seem to be very happy there
- administration/faculty seem to be very receptive to student input
- location (for those of us who like suburbs!)
- very accommodating to students; they really just want you to learn
- diverse class
- a ton (20+) of facilities to do rotations in. so good variety

negative
- location (dull suburb in philly)
- main teaching hospital is removed from medical school
- reputation could be better
- you HAVE to have a car for clinical years, and can get sent all over the state (and into NJ) unless you have special needs like childcare
- main teaching hospital isn't really the best; some other available rotations sites are wonderful, though

JonnyG · Jan 12, 2006

crazy_cavalier said:
You know it's crazy when there are FOUR medical schools in Philadelphia, whereas some states don't even have ONE. 😕 😕

Technically there are five medical schools. PCOM, PENN, DREXEL, TEMPLE, and Jefferson. Also Drexel is in philadelphia. East Falls is not a suburb just a section.

newdude · Jan 12, 2006

i noticed that too, bigger cities then philly have less schools.

newdude · Jan 15, 2006

hey

can anyone add more info on this, ASAP.

Thnx

hwong14 · Jan 15, 2006

not much concrete to add, sorry. my impression of temple was that i would only go there for the in-state tuition. i was freaked out by their loss of accreditation two years ago. they've gotten it back after promising a bazillion dollars in upgrades and renovations, new facilities and luring new faculty in. so they're supposed to be better, but that still gave me a bad feeling. it's in a bad neighborhood, but you don't have to live in that neighborhood at all; plenty of people who go to temple are city kids, so they live all over and commute in. and once you're on campus, the security is really tight -- they know they're in a bad neighborhood and try to keep it as safe as possible. they get a lot of traumas, being a city hospital, so that could be a positive.

the only other school i have a lot of info about is drexel, but tigress has pretty much said everything i would about it. i thought the location was nice -- i lived directly across the street for two years and really enjoyed it, but was working outside the city, so enjoyed the more suburban feel (and yes, it is technically IN the city). it's close to manayunk, so you can still go out. but if i had gone to med school there, i would have moved into center city and commuted out to the school (the school operates a shuttle bus so this is fairly easy to do), just for the chance to live in a real "city-city" environment.

pallcare · Jan 16, 2006

I'm from eastern PA and I can tell you that Temple has a VERY strong reputation. It's known for producing excellent clinicians. I've heard this from several neighbors and family friends who are doctors. I personally didn't like the campus, and it doesnt have any prominent faculty in the field i'm interested in. but it is known as a very good "teaching school"

DNM503 · Jan 16, 2006

pallcare said:
I'm from eastern PA and I can tell you that Temple has a VERY strong reputation. It's known for producing excellent clinicians. I've heard this from several neighbors and family friends who are doctors. I personally didn't like the campus, and it doesnt have any prominent faculty in the field i'm interested in. but it is known as a very good "teaching school"

I was actually impressed with Temple when I visited. I'll admit, though, that I had just applied there because I am in-state, so it probably didn't take much to raise my opinion of the school since I didn't really have one. The clinical training you get there seems awesome, and they have a public hospital with a widely underserved patient population, so you get to see a lot of stuff and help people who have nowhere else to go. Their curriculum seems like a good mixture of lecture and clinical-relationship of what you are learning as well. On the negative side, the admissions people that work there SUCK. They send you confusing passwords, etc., and won't help you when you call. If you can put up with that, then I'd choose Temple out of the 3 that were mentioned. I went to my interviews at Temple and Penn, and declined interviews at Jefferson and Drexel if that says anything. I will say, though, that Jefferson has a GREAT location...my hotel was near it when I interviewed at Temple. I've heard really bad things about the student body though.

tigress · Jan 19, 2006

bump

I'm actually interested in what other people have to say specifically about Drexel vs. Jefferson.

orthoapp · Jan 19, 2006

I am a fourth year med student in the NY-NJ-PA area. I have met some students from both Drexel and Jefferson and have some anecdotal experience with them. They both have a good reputation but in MY experience the Drexel students were nicer and happier. Drexel students tend to be very happy with their first two years and understand that their clinical years can be spread out and rough but feel that the clinical education they get makes up for the amount of work put in. Jefferson students tend to be a little more hardcore and competitive and from my experience I have noticed that the Jefferson system as a whole seems to have a chip on their shoulder to UPenn. Jefferson's location, though, is great and the hospital is nice. That's just based on my own experiences, for all i know i can be totally wrong.

tigress · Jan 19, 2006

orthoapp said:
I am a fourth year med student in the NY-NJ-PA area. I have met some students from both Drexel and Jefferson and have some anecdotal experience with them. They both have a good reputation but in MY experience the Drexel students were nicer and happier. Drexel students tend to be very happy with their first two years and understand that their clinical years can be spread out and rough but feel that the clinical education they get makes up for the amount of work put in. Jefferson students tend to be a little more hardcore and competitive and from my experience I have noticed that the Jefferson system as a whole seems to have a chip on their shoulder to UPenn. Jefferson's location, though, is great and the hospital is nice. That's just based on my own experiences, for all i know i can be totally wrong.

Wow, you just rewrote my exact impressions. It's good to see somebody else feels the same way. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Jefferson is awesome, but they do seem to have an inferiority complex because of Penn. I guess Drexel escapes that by not being a "ranked" school, so it's not as much in comparison. (btw, I know people who are very happy at Jeff, and I totally don't mean to bad-mouth the school; I'm just trying to find where I fit in best)

RayhanS1282 · Jan 19, 2006

Also, just wanted to throw my 2 cents in, Drexel seems to be very committed about educating students and puts education above research, most of their faculty are full time academic professors and does very little research.

And also, Temple seems to have some really nasty admissions people.

mellow yellow · Jan 19, 2006

As a current 4th year med student at Drexel applying for residency, I can say that the school truly is fantastic. The pre-clinical teaching is primarily geared toward preparation for Step 1 and to prepare students for the clinical years. This is in contrast to some research oriented schools who have prominent researchers as their lecturers who will often spend the majority of their lecture discussing some esoteric protein that has remote clinical relevance and certainly no relevance to Step 1 or impending clinical rotations. What this means, is that you can literally use just your classnotes for Step 1 and do exceedingly well! You will not find any deficiencies in your education come time for Step 1 (meaning that your school didn't cover certain topics well enough).

While some may state that "being shipped off" to other areas in NJ and PA is a negative, I found the opposite. It's important to have the opportunity to visit several hospital systems (public v. private, community v. academic) so that way you know what kind of a residency and career experience you anticipate pursuing. Moreover, some of our best teaching sites are outside of Philly, Allegheny Gen. Hosp. in Pittsburgh being one of the best examples. And of course, if you do well, you can pretty much do what you want for residency. I got interviews at nearly all the big dog programs in California as did many of my classmates for various specialties.

I cannot compare my med school to others in Philly or anywhere else. However, I can say from my own personal experience rotating through some of the best med schools in the country (as a 4th year visiting student) that if you're a strong student at Drexel, your attendings at all of these other top institutions will find you to be equally on par with the best students at their programs.

bgabes · Mar 21, 2006

Hi, i'm currently an upper year med student at Jeff...although I don't regret having attended med school, I can honestly say if I were to choose again I prob wouldn't attend jeff

nutmegs · Mar 21, 2006

so I can't sit here and let the temple + category go empty. that's silly.

JEFFERSON
positive
- large class
- highly ranked (compared to others)
- second year curriculum looks cool
- mp3 audio of lectures available online
- great hospital system in the region
- most research available of these three

negative
- large class (may limit access to some resources, according to my student interviewer)
- reputation for being competitive class, probably from not too long ago when they had letter grades
- in MY experience, students tend to be not quite as nice as I would like

TEMPLE
positive
-wide array of patients and disease states
-truly participate in patient care and get tons of procedures if desired
-student-friendly, accessible, responsive faculty
-established international electives (not sure if others have this in place)
-awesome clinical reputation
-friendly, cooperative, service-oriented student body

negative
-bad neighbourhood

DREXEL
positive
- choice of two interesting curriculae -- really awesome integrated curriculum (I've seen 1.5 years of it from the inside, and it's the best I've seen at any school)
- nice facilities
- great system for on-line resources - online VIDEO lectures that evening
- students seem to be very happy there
- administration/faculty seem to be very receptive to student input
- location (for those of us who like suburbs!)
- very accommodating to students; they really just want you to learn
- diverse class
- a ton (20+) of facilities to do rotations in. so good variety

negative
- location (dull suburb in philly)
- main teaching hospital is removed from medical school
- reputation could be better
- you HAVE to have a car for clinical years, and can get sent all over the state (and into NJ) unless you have special needs like childcare
- main teaching hospital isn't really the best; some other available rotations sites are wonderful, though

nutmegs · Mar 21, 2006

hwong14 said:
i was freaked out by their loss of accreditation two years ago. they've gotten it back after promising a bazillion dollars in upgrades and renovations, new facilities and luring new faculty in. so they're supposed to be better, but that still gave me a bad feeling.

sorry to hear about your misinformation. temple did not lose accreditation. they were put on probation for a period until they had plans for decreasing student debt and updating facilities. despite this probation, the reviewers complimented the actual training of the students. at the next checkup, the probation was ended. thanks for playing.

FutureDoc06 · Mar 21, 2006

A negative I found about Drexel was their grading system, if I'm remembering the correct school. They said it's pass/fail, but it's really high honors, honor, high pass, pass, fail. That's pretty much A,B,C,D,F. That was annoying to me.

Gracey103 · Mar 23, 2006

FutureDoc06 said:
A negative I found about Drexel was their grading system, if I'm remembering the correct school. They said it's pass/fail, but it's really high honors, honor, high pass, pass, fail. That's pretty much A,B,C,D,F. That was annoying to me.

Is this true? Some insight please...I'm still deciding between RFU and Drexel

keedz · Mar 23, 2006

Hey what about Penn State? Is it ok?

chauliodus · Mar 23, 2006

Just to clarify, Drexel does not have high honors, its just honor, high pass, pass and fail. I personally found that having different brackets gave me some extra motivation in studying for exams. If I had an 87 in a class, it was alot easier for me to put in a few more hours studying to try and bring it up into the high pass/honor range, whereas if it was P/F I might have just gone out. Granted, if you are motivated to study all the time for the sake of learning P/F might be good, but you still need to learn as much of the material as you can so you have a good base for later. I'm a 4th year at Drexel and I overall really liked it here and I think we have a great student body.

Zoom-Zoom · Mar 23, 2006

keedz said:
Hey what about Penn State? Is it ok?

No. Just kidding. It's in Hershey, not Philly

rush2 · Mar 23, 2006

bgabes said:
Hi, i'm currently an upper year med student at Jeff...although I don't regret having attended med school, I can honestly say if I were to choose again I prob wouldn't attend jeff

if you don't mind sharing, what is about jeff that you don't like??

Zoom-Zoom · Mar 23, 2006

rush2 said:
if you don't mind sharing, what is about jeff that you don't like??

the fact that they waitlisted him...this year 🙄

albinomidget · Mar 25, 2006

RayhanS1282 said:
Also, just wanted to throw my 2 cents in, Drexel seems to be very committed about educating students and puts education above research, most of their faculty are full time academic professors and does very little research.

And also, Temple seems to have some really nasty admissions people.

Just to clarify this statement, only the HEAD professors for all the classes in the first two years are full-time academic professors. They do NO BENCH/WET-LAB OR CLINICAL research. However, they do research about how to improve the curriculum at Drexel. They base the success of the curriculum by many factors, including direct student feedback and by how we match. Otherwise, the head professors are purely educators.

Also, with the grading system utilized at Drexel, many other schools in the region have similar scales. As chauliodus stated, having this grading system does encourage us to study more and play less. The school doesn't pre-determine a set number of students will get honors or high pass. Grading is based entirely on performance, so the competition is minimized.

silas2642 · Mar 25, 2006

so I can't sit here and let the temple + category go empty. that's silly.

JEFFERSON
positive
- large class
- highly ranked (compared to others)
- second year curriculum looks cool
- mp3 audio of lectures available online
- great hospital system in the region
- most research available of these three

negative
- large class (may limit access to some resources, according to my student interviewer)
- reputation for being competitive class, probably from not too long ago when they had letter grades
- in MY experience, students tend to be not quite as nice as I would like

TEMPLE
positive
-wide array of patients and disease states
-truly participate in patient care and get tons of procedures if desired
-student-friendly, accessible, responsive faculty
-established international electives (not sure if others have this in place)
-awesome clinical reputation
-friendly, cooperative, service-oriented student body

negative
-bad neighbourhood: might get shot on the way to class

DREXEL
positive
- choice of two interesting curriculae -- really awesome integrated curriculum (I've seen 1.5 years of it from the inside, and it's the best I've seen at any school)
- nice facilities
- great system for on-line resources - online VIDEO lectures that evening
- students seem to be very happy there
- administration/faculty seem to be very receptive to student input
- location (for those of us who like suburbs!)
- very accommodating to students; they really just want you to learn
- diverse class
- a ton (20+) of facilities to do rotations in. so good variety

negative
- location (dull suburb in philly)
- main teaching hospital is removed from medical school
- reputation could be better
- you HAVE to have a car for clinical years, and can get sent all over the state (and into NJ) unless you have special needs like childcare
- main teaching hospital isn't really the best; some other available rotations sites are wonderful, though

bgabes · Apr 28, 2006

sorry I haven't responded yet to those who've emailed me, hopefully this will suffice in answering all questions....

as far as my experience at Jeff, last year I was going through personal issues (lost someone very close to me) and unfortunately I'd have to say I worked through these things DESPITE facutly at Jeff, not because of them (ie they didn't help situation, prob made it worse)...as far as general observations, Jeff is very conservative, at times oppressively so (i'm pretty moderate)- I'm starting to realize this much more as I branch out in my friendships and rotate through hospitals affiliated with other academic institutions; combine this with a general ignorance/indifference to society outside the hospital (ie politics; expect little cultivation of outside interests here at Jeff) and you'll become an avg-good practitioner (I say avg b/c although clinical curriculum is strong, our first two years are horribly organized; ie blatant discrepancies between lecturers, syllabi, and exams) woefully equipped to practice medicine in a time of great legal, administrative, and political influence (maybe even worse you'll be lacking the inspiration or knowledge to alter or reverse these influences)...again, I'm sure some at my school would disagree but these are my personal observations

Comparing 3 Philly schools

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