Hey everyone, I hope this app cycle is treating you well. I'm a current 4th year at Maryland who just wanted to impart some quick advice. Looking back on the days when I was trying to decide which school to go to, I think my biggest flaw in reasoning when sitting where you all are was my fixation on the pre-clinical curriculum. To be honest, no matter what school you go to, you're going to learn all the same stuff 1st and 2nd year.
We all take step 1 around the same time, but what differs from school to school is how your 3rd and 4th year is set up, which I think is far more important to your education as a med student. Outside of half days vs whole days and 1yr vs 18 months vs 2 years for pre clinicals, forget about all the rest like facilities, class sizes and whatever else mattered in college. It gets old quick. Things I would have liked to know before making a decision:
1) Do you get elective time 3rd year? For those of you who take a little longer making big decisions (like what specialty youll go into), an elective 3rd year outside the core rotations may buy you more time to consider a specialty outside of IM/FM/Surgery/Peds/Psych.
2) How many months of each do you have? Is it 3 months of medicine and surgery, or two of each? Two months of family med, or one?
3) How many months of sub-I's do you have? Do you do any?
4) Do the students who you interact with during your tours (usually 4th years) and lunches (either 1st and 2nd years or 4th years) feel that the atmosphere is collaborative? Did they ever feel there was a lot of competition in their class?
5) For the fourth years youll meet, do they feel prepared to begin internship?
6) How many away rotations does the school allow?
7) How much elective time do you get total?
8) Do you get months off for study time for Step 2 or for interviews? (the importance of this is understated!)
9) How do the students do in the match? ***No, I DONT mean how many people matched into Plastics/Derm/Neurosurg/Ortho at Hopkins/MGH/UCSF/Duke.*** That means nothing. I mean when students apply for residency programs, how many end up matching in one of their top 3 choices? In my opinion, a more successful match is a class who all applied to family med, psych and neuro and matched to their #1 program rather than one where everyone applies to derm, rad onc or plastics and everyone gets their #20.
10) How independent have you been on rotations? Is it just shadowing, or are you asked to do independent H&P's on your patients, make recommendations on what medications your patients should get and why, what consults should be called, etc.
These are all things that I think pre-meds applying should focus on, but dont because all you see is more classroom for 2 years, nor does any med school do a good job of stressing the importance of your clinical education. I think that's probably more of a failure on our end if anything.
Regardless, I'm overall happy with Maryland and would choose it all over again if I had to. This is only one man's opinion, but I think my clinical education has been excellent and I do feel as prepared as I'm going to get come the start of internship in late June.
I wont be here by time any of you who decide to come is here, but best of luck!