Do not pick a school based on your, no offense meant of course, uneducated goal of pursuing a certain specialty. You will most likely change your mind several times (75-80% of students do from the last study I read). As you will find out, the perceived expectations and idealizations about a specialty are almost always different from the nitty-gritty reality. Even if you have shadowed neurosurgeons extensively, you cannot know what it is truly like until you step into their shoes and the OR come 3rd year. Maybe you will love it (I hope you do, god knows we need good neurosurgeons), but you might also hate it.
FSU has never graduated a neurosurgeon. To my knowledge, this is not due to not matching an applicant into neurosurgery, but no one has had interest in pursuing the career (although I hear a current 3rd year might, have to ask someone else than me though). As far as research goes, we have a biomedical science building with a lot of prominent neuroscience PhDs (some of which are the instructors for our 15 week neuroanatomy course), that do extensive bench and translation research in the realm of neuroscience.We also have Dr. Maitland, neurologist-opthamologist extraordinaire that pursues clinical research in all things neurology. Needless to say. you will not be limited if neuro is the sort of research you wish to pursue.
As far as UCF goes...I have mixed feelings. Fact of the matter is, they have not graduated a class yet. We don't know how their match will go, although I think we will find out in March if I'm not mistaken. Keep an eye out for that.
Just to reiterate, pick a school that you think will make you a good "doctor" not a good "neurosurgeon" or "dermatologist" or "etc", you get the point. Look at the curriculum, the administration and the location, make your decision based on that.
On reflection I realized I didn't really answer your question. School choice has very little to do with where or what you match (in). On national program director (PDs) surveys in multiple specialties, ranking of the student's school is low on the list. Under almost all of the applicants academic stats. Translation: ability and scores of the applicant are what matter to residency programs, not what school you come from. The only exception is prestigious medical schools typically have prestigious, well-known faculty working for them that can write letters and make phone calls to PD for applicants. That is really the primary advantage. As a matter of note, I don't know if I would consider UCF or FSU "prestigious" in the aforementioned sense of the word, even if they are both good schools. Just some food for thought.
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So in love with FSU COM
