Why I choose Chicago
So I have decided to write up a synopsis on why I choose the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. I remember a year ago being clueless about what I wanted in a medical school and appreciating any insight I could get on the schools I was applying to. Being ignorant at this stage is not necessarily a negative though. As a result of my ignorance I applied all over the place. This was a blessing in disguise because some of my favorite schools post-interview were at the bottom of my list pre-interview. My first choice school pre-season(someplace I honestly thought I would attend if I was accepted no matter what) became one of my last choices post-interview. I came very close to not applying to Pritzker. It's crazy out there and there are so many awesome schools but I hope you can find a school that excites you as much as the University of Chicago excites me.
Disclaimer: I am a bright-eyed incoming student. I may be completely wrong about some things I elaborate on below but I welcome any dissenting options and/or additional information. Obviously I am biased.
Financial Aid
It is well known around these parts that UChicago has a decent amount of merit money floating around. Medical school is ridiculously expensive and even at my state school I was looking at 250k debt. As a recent college grad I had a difficult time grasping the magnitude of the debt I was considering incurring. UChicago was my cheapest option and it came to down to money equaling flexibility. I don't know what my future career is going to look like, but I wanted as much future flexibility as possible. Especially since most of my interests don't pay particularly well(public health, academics, pediatrics, etc). You will need to decide how important debt is for you and your future. As cheesy as it sounds, I think some of best advice I was given was: "Money comes and goes, but you will only be in medical school, and be this young, once"(<---my grandfather is apparently no stranger to YOLO).
You probably knew all that. A little more relevant to UChicago is what I think all that merit aid says about the school. I listened to my fair share of financial aid presentations on the interview trail and almost every school mentioned how they were concerned with student debt and rising tuition costs. After seeing many facts and figures I was blown away with how little tuition generally mattered to schools(one school told us 2% of their budget came from tuition), and yet even an extra 5k a year could make a huge difference to an individual student. What I took away was that if student debt was truly a priority every school could do more to address the issue. I think the reality is that most schools have other priorities for their money that they deem more important. UChicago being one of a handful of exceptions. From what I have heard, they allocate an impressive amount of discretionary money to aid and even decreased their class from 100-->88 a few years ago with one of the reasons being so they could provide adequate aid to everyone(there may be more to this story than I know, this is what I was told).
Pritzker's aid policies made me feel like Pritzker values it's students greatly. I like being valued, what about you?
The People
I had great experiences with all the faculty, staff, and students I met during interviews and second look. There is obviously some luck involved in this fact but it mattered anyway. Something like 60 out of the 88 first years were involved in second look and every student I met seemed genuinely happy to be at Pritzker. It is hard to describe but I felt comfortable at Chicago; I felt like it was a place where I "fit." Also where else do you have social rounds where faculty serve you beer?
Earlier in the season I thought it was odd that I was interviewed by not only a faculty member and a student but also an admissions staff member. It turned out that this was a genius move by the admission staff. The staff member who interviewed me literally became my connection to the school. A job he was well suited for since he both read my application and interviewed me. He sent me personalized emails making sure I had the information I needed to make my decision and when I showed up at second look he made sure I was aware of particular activities and information he thought I would be interested in based off my application/interview. Some schools I felt like nothing more than a cog in a large admissions machine but at Chicago I felt like a person and that felt good.
Surrounding University
Being on a university campus was a huge plus to me and the opportunity to take an elective or two outside of the school of medicine seemed awesome. I previously did research at the intersection of social science and medicine and with UChicago I couldn't really go wrong in this area.
Location
I wanted to leave California(apparently this makes me odd) so I knew it was going to be cold pretty much anywhere I went. Since I spent my life in suburbia I was looking forward to getting closer to a city and Hyde Park seemed like a happy medium. Definitely urban environment but not exactly downtown. I am living in Hyde Park the first year with the plan to move to the south loop eventually. The south side of Chicago also seemed like a great place to learn medicine since I am very much interested in underserved medicine.
Not going to lie, I also bought lollapalooza tickets way before I knew I was going to Chicago. If I decided to go elsewhere I would of had to sell them or something...and then how would I see alt j, phoenix, vampire weekend and the cure all in one day? Let's be real.
New hospital
A cruise ship has landed in Chicago and the university turned it into a hospital(google "center for care and discovery" if you are confused). It's huge, it's new, it's pretty(on the inside at least). This is probably not a great reason to choose a school but I like pretty things.
Traditional curriculum
The curriculum at Pritzker made me cringe a bit. I was a very big fan of the 1/1.5 yr curriculums I saw at other institutions. Comparatively Pritzker seems to have more classroom time and less PBL(might not be a negative for you). Luckily there are plenty of redeeming factors: lecture attendance not required, getting anatomy out of the way early, time to take electives outside the school of medicine, and a lot more health disparities and social medicine stuff incorporated into the curriculum than I could find anywhere else.
Small clinical enterprise
This is probably the biggest weakness I could identify. I honestly don't know if it is truly a weakness since I got a lot of different opinions from a lot of different people. Compared to other places I was considering, Uchicago's hospitals are small. They don't have a VA. You do get Northshore hospital though. All the fourth years I met during second look seemed very happy with their clinical experience though and had only good things to say(this was not the same everywhere, I definitely got some scary responses from 4th years, could totally be biased by who I talked to though).
Good luck, I hope to see some of you around Chicago interviewing this upcoming year!
I would definitely come here given the chance!
