Opinions on UPenn

10 months of surg path
AP quality v. poor compared to other top 'name' programs
Even PD said, "don't come here if you don't like adapting to change."

Overall

Like someone said...their CP is great, but a lot of interviewers hinted at the amount of politics involved in the program (mostly CP side). Oh well...

I'll end by describing an encounter with a resident:
Me: If you could do it over again, would you pick UPenn?
Resident: No (as another resident glares at her)

BUT this is just my take because obviously people still go there.

pathstudent said:

Being strong in CP is a bad thing if you ask me. The ideal program would give you 18 months off and make CP self-study.

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true. very true.

mlw03 said:

for those of us who haven't gone thru this yet, care to explain the self-study for CP comment? is it all just memorization and nothing that you learn by doing?

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From what I've heard, the CP boards tests all sorts of random stuff. At many places, CP rotations consists of much less actual service time compared to AP and residents on CP rotations spend lots of time preparing inane talks. Sure, preparing talks allows you to understand a focused topic quite well BUT the CP boards tests much much more stuff. Hence, one can venture to say that CP can be best learned (for boards purposes) by simply reading some big CP tome.

Now, this whole concept of "learning by doing" is certainly important. But the problem with this is that what you actually DO involve routine kind of cases. Unfortunately, the boards (AP and CP) don't solely test routine stuff...weird, rare, exotic topics are fair game too.

OK...as for Penn's program, this has been discussed on previous threads, one of which was started by a Penn resident. One issue that affects the workload at Penn is that recently a whole bunch of OR's opened up. That means more operations. That means increased specimen volume. Now, if the # of residents stays constant and the workload dramatically increases, you can imagine what that would do for resident lifestyle and morale during surg path rotations.