Hopefully a 3rd/just matched 4th year will come on and answer with more authority, but in the meantime, I'll just say there is a huge focus on clinical education here starting even in the first year. I myself am heavily involved in the free clinic, and also have learned a lot of clinical skills that I didn't think we'd learn so soon. We just started pediatric exams today. From what I hear, med students are much higher on the totem pole at Stanford than other places, and students rotating through sometimes feel bad for the residents because of how much focus is put on med students. In terms of the atmosphere, I really can't comment on that, but would just like to point out that the population that Stanford serves is much larger than most urban areas because the county is so large, so I doubt it is subdued.
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On my interview day, it seemed as though many of the clinical experiences at Stanford involved non-english speaking patients and translators. Is that the case? Do you think a non-spanish speaking medical student would be benefitted in this environent as much as if he were to spend his clinical clerkship years at, say SFGH?
stanford med has a dedicated med spanish class you can take which works with the med student hours. another awesome option is to take the "full" university language classes at stanford (included in your tuition) at the main campus down the street.
you will use spanish a lot....if you don't speak it, you will at least have a basic working knowledge at the end of med school. you can always use the translator service though.
and i read you though SFGH might be a better non-spanish/foreign language hospital??
🙂 sorry to be the bearer of bad news but i spent 4 months there as a 4th year med student and you will use spanish even MORE....almost 60-70% population at times on our service was spanish speaking. essentially any med school in california you will have about 30-40%+ of your population spanish speaking only.
🙂 all the more reason to learn!
for you. One of us HAS to get in this May. 🙂
