Well, there are two things off the top of my head that don't really come through when looking at the school website. First of all, your fellow students. Tufts has done a great job of selecting a class that meshes well together. I have yet to meet someone who is a total a**hole or is awkwardly social incompetent. It may not sound so important now, but the ability to literally walk up to anyone in your class and have them be smart, interesting, and articulate is great. This is especially true considering that there are lots of times you will be working together in class, or in a patient setting.
The second thing is that the curriculum is organized in a way that makes a lot of sense, and really helps when it comes to studying. For example, we just had an exam where on Genetics, biochem, and cell bio. In each class we discussed the same set of diseases, but approached it from a different perspective (i.e what gene mutations are occurring vs how does that mutation affect transcription/translation vs what does a in correct protein do to the cell). Since we kept working with the same example disorders we had less stuff to memorize overall, but also gained a more in depth understanding. I know other schools offer integrated curriculums as well, but at the very least I can say that Tufts has executed it well. As a comparison, a friend in his first year at BU is currently doing biochem and anatomy at the same time. While both obviously important, he mentioned that there was little real connections be drawn between the two, and that since they require very different forms of studying it was sometimes difficult to switch from one to the other. I'm not hating on BU, it thinks it's a great school, but it serves as a nice contrast between the organization of the course of study.
please don't reject me like Boston did..
