am i fooling myself??

[Nasrudin]

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There's a big difference between writing about your experiences and flat out telling people its not worth it for them to be a physician. Worth is a personal value.

Any congratulations on all your fabulous success. Hope the movie deal works out. See you on the battlefield. Don't get too comfortable. I'm coming for your job.

 

[gdawg102]

See, that's the point people don't understand. Sure, I'll do all right later on but it will be 18 years, total, before I "catch up" of which I have already done six of the worst. You can't just put those six years in a little box and say, "Okay, these don't count." It has been six years of poverty and things haven't even got as bad as they possibly can because I still have two years and none of my expenses are likely to decrease in that time.

That's the attitude about residency training that I find so repulsive and why they shouldn't let people with no work experience go to medical school. Nobody cold possibly deny that residents are underpaid, at least considering that they pay mid-levels fresh out of their training twice what we make and they work half as many hours and have a tenth of the responsibility. The fact that we'll "make it big" eventually should have nothing to do with our pay now. I started at a certain salary as an engineer but it didn't double or triple after a certain arbitrary period of hazing and overwork.

Things just don't work like that. An engineering firm that paid it's junior engineers a fifth of what they paid their senior guys while paying their draftsmen three times what the junior engineers could hope to make except after working for four years would have a hard time finding employees in the free market. Nobody would work for those wages unless he were an indentured servant which we are, in many ways, as residents.

I guarantee if you offered any rational person the choice between a decent job now or a better job eigtheen years in the future they'd probably pick the decent job now. Most pre-meds have never worked and aren't trained for anything so they don't see the opportunity cost.

Besides, anybody in almost any professional career who put as much time into it as we put into residency would probably do very well, and no matter how hard he worked he would still sleep every night.

Perhaps you and your colleagues should consider stealing hospital supplies...

 

[8744]

....am currently having some serious doubts, and was hoping for some input since you all are in med school....

....However, I'm still scared that some of their exaggerations may actually be true and that maybe I'm not cut out for the profession on some levels....

...So I thought getting a glimpse into some other ppl's experiences(maybe at how you all arrived at a decision if you were in my shoes and maybe if you've ended up sacrificing a lot more than you thought you would) would give me a much better idea of what to expect and ultimately bring me to a decision...

...Anyways, thanks in advance as I'd really appreciate any of your comments/advice....

I've parsed the OP's initial post very carefully and nowhere did it say, "Please blow scented smoke up my ass."

 

[8744]

There's a big difference between writing about your experiences and flat out telling people its not worth it for them to be a physician. Worth is a personal value.

Any congratulations on all your fabulous success. Hope the movie deal works out. See you on the battlefield. Don't get too comfortable. I'm coming for your job.

If you said this to 90 percent of residents, they'd say, "Here, take the mother****er."

 

[Nasrudin]

In closing, because i need for my feet to be hitting more pavement and for my mouth to be doing less bs'ing....

Does anybody remember their favorite teacher. The one who put in long days grading papers into the night for a small salary. But who always could give enough to give a kid who needed a lift a little extra nudge. I remember one in particular. She's likely gone now. But she'll live in my memory forever.
Anybody ever had entitled, crabby, sarcastic bastard of a doctor. I have. After herniating a disc lifting patients in the same hospital as this doctor I had to go to them week after week in excruciating pain to ask for an mri to prove something was wrong with me while this doctor acted like I was some schmuck looking for a government check.

So yeah. I look at almost half the doctors I see and flat out know I could do a better job than they're doing. Not because I am arrogant but because its obvious they just don't give a **** anymore. You and your patients deserve your 100% effort. And if it touches a nerve that a premed thinks he could do a better job than you....good, it should bother you. If it doesn't your doing everybody a disservice.

I think a great doctor is a rare thing. Many of them are just taking up space and collecting a check. We should all give ourselves the chance to great at something. We should put ourselves in the right environment to bring out the best in us.

What the op needs to figure out is what is the right environment for them to bring the best in themselves. Check out njbmd's blog to get a sense of physician who uses their field to that end. You can't base the creation of meaning in your life from other's opinions. You have to do it for yourself. If someone like njbmd inspires you to do things for yourself you'll know it. If Panda's ominous blasts from the watchtower scare you'll know it too.

Good luck one and all.

 

[8744]

...I think a great doctor is a rare thing. Many of them are just taking up space and collecting a check...

This may have been possible, taking up space I mean, back in the good old days when doctors really couldn't do much about most things and could spend their days jaw-jacking with their patients but I think you don't understand how medicine works nowadays. Nobody can just take up space anymore. Production is now as important in medicine as in any other job and a non-productive doctor will be identified and fired quickly. You're confusing the fruity, empathy-based patient interaction stuff with the acutal business of treating patients. I know we pay lip-service to the fuzzy stuff but in the real world, it is incidental. Above a certain baseline of civility, nobody notices or cares.

 

[Nasrudin]

This may have been possible, taking up space I mean, back in the good old days when doctors really couldn't do much about most things and could spend their days jaw-jacking with their patients but I think you don't understand how medicine works nowadays. Nobody can just take up space anymore. Production is now as important in medicine as in any other job and a non-productive doctor will be identified and fired quickly. You're confusing the fruity, empathy-based patient interaction stuff with the acutal business of treating patients. I know we pay lip-service to the fuzzy stuff but in the real world, it is incidental. Above a certain baseline of civility, nobody notices or cares.

OK boss. You frame my words however you like. I don't have anymore time for this incessant talking. I just wonder why a father, and a resident has more time to spend proflagating their opinions than me. Especially one who knows so much about the nature of productivity.

 

[8744]

OK boss. You frame my words however you like. I don't have anymore time for this incessant talking. I just wonder why a father, and a resident has more time to spend proflagating their opinions than me. Especially one who knows so much about the nature of productivity.

Because I'm on a two-week vacation block. Wife shopping, kids at school. Look, I'm just telling you how it is. I gurantee that if you become the pre-med ideal of a physician the comment you will most likely hear during your residency will be, "Hey Dr. Nasrudin, are you going to make a career out of that one patient?"

 

[Noeljan]

In closing, because i need for my feet to be hitting more pavement and for my mouth to be doing less bs'ing....

Does anybody remember their favorite teacher. The one who put in long days grading papers into the night for a small salary. But who always could give enough to give a kid who needed a lift a little extra nudge. I remember one in particular. She's likely gone now. But she'll live in my memory forever.
Anybody ever had entitled, crabby, sarcastic bastard of a doctor. I have. After herniating a disc lifting patients in the same hospital as this doctor I had to go to them week after week in excruciating pain to ask for an mri to prove something was wrong with me while this doctor acted like I was some schmuck looking for a government check.

So yeah. I look at almost half the doctors I see and flat out know I could do a better job than they're doing. Not because I am arrogant but because its obvious they just don't give a **** anymore. You and your patients deserve your 100% effort. And if it touches a nerve that a premed thinks he could do a better job than you....good, it should bother you. If it doesn't your doing everybody a disservice.

I think a great doctor is a rare thing. Many of them are just taking up space and collecting a check. We should all give ourselves the chance to great at something. We should put ourselves in the right environment to bring out the best in us.

What the op needs to figure out is what is the right environment for them to bring the best in themselves. Check out njbmd's blog to get a sense of physician who uses their field to that end. You can't base the creation of meaning in your life from other's opinions. You have to do it for yourself. If someone like njbmd inspires you to do things for yourself you'll know it. If Panda's ominous blasts from the watchtower scare you'll know it too.

Good luck one and all.

I think some of your comments are ignorant. You have no idea what it is like to be a doctor yet, also, just because someone points out what/how they see something does not make them a worse doctor. Heck the biggest complainers I know are often the most productive at what they do. Also, I think it is really radical to claim you would be better at a job than 50% of physicians in the workplace. That is just, WOW, I don't even have words for it.

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

Because I'm on a two-week vacation block. Wife shopping, kids at school. Look, I'm just telling you how it is. I gurantee that if you become the pre-med ideal of a physician the comment you will most likely hear during your residency will be, "Hey Dr. Nasrudin, are you going to make a career out of that one patient?"

I don't mean to take this on a tangent (OK, yeah, I do) but IMHO, this is/should be near the top of what is wrong with medicine nowadays. No, I don't mean the touchy-feely empathy stuff, but just good, old fashioned customer service and respect. I have never been to a doctor's "appointment" where the doctor has been on time. Please name one other profession where it is acceptable (more like routine) for a professional to be late to an appointment with a customer. If it takes spending a few more minutes with a patient to answer their questions, so be it. This is why patients are pissed and want to sue when something goes wrong, because the average doctor acts like an arrogant a$$.

This rant was not specifically directed at you, Panda, nor am I questioning what you are saying (indeed, I have personally seen ER docs talk about "moving the meat," as one example, but I know that this is true in all specialties) but I think that if doctors wise up and realize that people appreciate good customer service, things might not be so bad re: negative patient-doctor interactions (i.e. malpractice suits.)

 

[Nasrudin]

Because I'm on a two-week vacation block. Wife shopping, kids at school. Look, I'm just telling you how it is. I gurantee that if you become the pre-med ideal of a physician the comment you will most likely hear during your residency will be, "Hey Dr. Nasrudin, are you going to make a career out of that one patient?"

I did 2 years as an assistant in the ED. I understand you're always working against the clock. I've also seen in a staff of 10-15 doctors, 3-4 phenomenal doctors who could always bring out the best in others whatever the circumstance. I'm not an idiot. Although you're right, my personality traits are better suited to something with lower patient flow.

Panda....go to the beach. I've got to study.

 

[Nasrudin]

I think some of your comments are ignorant. You have no idea what it is like to be a doctor yet, also, just because someone points out what/how they see something does not make them a worse doctor. Heck the biggest complainers I know are often the most productive at what they do. Also, I think it is really radical to claim you would be better at a job than 50% of physicians in the workplace. That is just, WOW, I don't even have words for it.

Good. Let in marinate in your dome. I'm glad to stir things up for you. It's more fun than joining all the would be fan clubs of med students who think they know it all.

Believe it or not I'm not the type to call for the centerfield wall if I can't hit it there. It's nothing random. While most of my colleagues are sleeping I study furiously. And I won't quit. Not even after I think I might as good as some of the physicians who have inspired me. And on and on. til my legs give out. Deal with it. I am not an idol-worshiper.

 

[LoneCoyote]

To the OP:

If you are a hard worker and have made it through the prereqs, the MCAT, etc, there is no doubt you can make it through medical school. Whether or not you really want to do this is a tougher question.

My advice is to try to get as much exposure as you can to medicine. Realize the typical "volunteer" clinical experiences most people have do not do a very good job in showing you what this path is really like. I had a pretty good idea that medical school was going to be full of a lot of BS coming in and I think that has actually made it easier to deal with some of it. Some of my most unhappy classmates (yes, some of them are older, non-trads) have been the ones who came in thinking medicine would be infinitely better than the career they were escaping. So I don't think it hurts to read critiques of the system or to have conversations with others about why they may regret doing this.

One good thing is that "medicine" is a lot broader than primary care and the ED, which is where most premeds get their clinical exposure. So the chances are there will be a niche for you in some specialty, even if it is not one of the traditional 3rd year core rotations.

It is easy to say that people who start to question this path were not right for it to begin with, but I think it is far more complex that that. I can identify few people at my school who came into this for the "wrong reasons," and almost all will question this decision at one point or another due to the way we are trained. Realize that you will not really know what medicine is truly like until your 3rd year and beyond. And now being nearly done with my core clerkships, I feel like I have barely begun to scratch the surface. Residency is an entirely different game.

The bottom line: for many people I have encountered, especially non-trads, in the end it does not matter what others say or what your logical mind tells you about the hours/yrs of training/delayed gratification/workload/etc, you may just have to do it or you will always wonder.

Best of luck with your decision.

 

[8744]

...Although you're right, my personality traits are better suited to something with lower patient flow.

Panda....go to the beach. I've got to study.

That specialty does not exist. Everybody moves the meat. We actually spend more time with our patients in Emergency Medicine than most of the specialties that flog patient interaction as a selling point.

(I'm in Michigan. The Great Lakes just thawed last week.)

 

[spicedmanna]

That specialty does not exist. Everybody moves the meat. We actually spend more time with our patients in Emergency Medicine than most of the specialties that flog patient interaction as a selling point.

(I'm in Michigan. The Great Lakes just thawed last week.)

Agree. Spending more time with a patient doesn't necessarily equate to better care. I'm a proponent of the quality of the interaction and how present the doctor is with the patient during whatever time the interaction occurs.

 

[RobHan]

His blog is really valuable to anyone who's interested in medicine. Anyone who wants to switch into medicine should know what's gonna be in store for them during med school/residency. It seems panda didn't know that well enough before he started med school. I just hope panda can keep doing what he is doing 🙂

I think Panda actually can provide more insight than others, because he does have more insight. He already went through applying, then medical school, then internship, etc. you get the point. Obviously his eyes will be more open than someone who has not yet been in those shoes. I am not saying it's totally right or wrong, but it is what it is.
Now, can't we all just get along🙂 🙂 😍

 

[8744]

His blog is really valuable to anyone who's interested in medicine. Anyone who wants to switch into medicine should know what's gonna be in store for them during med school/residency. It seems panda didn't know that well enough before he started med school. I just hope panda can keep doing what he is doing 🙂

Hey, nobody really knows what it will be like. And we knew even less way back in the late nineties when I started applying because, as some of you probably remember, the internet wasn't nearly as pervasive as it is now.

I would guess that if you went back to SDN in 1999 there would be a fraction of the amount of information on residency that we have today. What did you have back then, "House of God?" "Patch Adams?" What you have today is an unprecedented level of access to the truth on the ground as seen through the eyes of fairly normal people

I have never seen so much bitching about free advice.

It's free. I'd love to charge money for my blog but I'd probably drop to eight readers a day.

 

[deleted87716]

We actually spend more time with our patients in Emergency Medicine than most of the specialties that flog patient interaction as a selling point.

Keeping somebody in the ED for eight hours doesn't really qualify as "spending time with them." 😉

 

[8744]

Keeping somebody in the ED for eight hours doesn't really qualify as "spending time with them." 😉

Well look, in Family Medicine clinic a typical patient encounter lasted about 15-20 minutes. In the ED, the initial assement may take 10-15 minutes but as most patients sit there for from four to 12 hours and part of our responsibility is to reassess and keep an eye on the six or seven patients we are following at any one time, we do stop by and see how they are doing. If things are a little slow we may even chat for a few minutes or bring additional family members up to speed as they arrive.

I swear, I feel like I get to know many of my patients and their families a lot better in the ED than I did in FM clinic. And I have been approached quite a few times out in town by families of my ED patients who say something to the effect of, "Dr. Bear, you may not remember me but you took care of my mother in the Emergency Room last month and I just wanted to thank you etc. etc."

And Lansing is not a small town, either.

Of course, if you follow the same patient for 20 years you will probably get to know them extremely well which is an advantage to primary care.

 

[njbmd]

Hey guys, I'm a nontrad(have already taken post-bacc classes and MCAT) that's thinking about applying to med school this yr, am currently having some serious doubts, and was hoping for some input since you all are in med school. Please bear with me:

It def. doesn't help being extremely indecisive either..i'm going nuts! 😱 Maybe my last resort will be to find one of those super-reliable online personality tests that can undoubtedly tell me if this is/isn't the right thing for me 😛 Anyways, thanks in advance as I'd really appreciate any of your comments/advice.

Try to remember for a second or two, when you started your engineering program. Did you question your "fitness" for being an electrical engineer? Maybe you did or maybe your didn't but the bottom line is that you made whatever adjustments needed, finished your degree and pressed onward.

Medicine isn't really that different from pursing any other course of study. Since none of us have been physicians before attending medical school, we DON'T know for sure, that we are "cut out" for the practice of medicine.

The good thing is that medical school and medicine has as many career options are there are people who graduate from medical school. First and second year were pretty grueling for many folks but you make the adjustments and move forward likely the same as you did in your present profession.

The bottom line is that you investigate this profession (and any other that interests you) and get as much info as you can before you invest thousands in time and tuition. If you like what you see, you will make the adjustments (or sacrifices, whatever) to practice a profession that you love.

I am a general surgeon (headed for fellowship). Even being in one of the most grueling residencies, I have found the time to do things or importance to me (flying, working out). I love what I do and find my profession quite rewarding. I would never discourage anyone from pursuing what they find rewarding (long hours or not).

My guess is that you are as "cut out" for medicine as any of us who have completed medical school. What you have to answer for yourself is are you "willing" to do medicine. If so, don't listen to naysayers but listen to yourself. In the end, it's your career.

 

[radi0headfan]

you're a radiohead fan, I'm sure whatever you choose will be cool.

 

[1Path]

Because I'm on a two-week vacation block. Wife shopping, kids at school. Look, I'm just telling you how it is.

When it comes to balancing FAMILY and medicine, Panda Bear is about as good a "reality checker" as it comes. On a more personal level, my main role model is a minority woman with an MD/PhD and a career in academia, 5 kids, AND a husband who I talk to on a regular basis about my own "path". And becasue we have so much in common personally and professionally, her advice to me is more germane. In other words, most but not all of my role models have lives that look a LOT like the one I hope to have too.👍

 

[Brickhouse]

When it comes to balancing FAMILY and medicine, Panda Bear is about as good a "reality checker" as it comes. On a more personal level, my main role model is a minority woman with an MD/PhD and a career in academia, 5 kids, AND a husband who I talk to on a regular basis about my own "path". And becasue we have so much in common personally and professionally, her advice to me is more germane. In other words, most but not all of my role models have lives that look a LOT like the one I hope to have too.👍

UCLA is so beating you this year.

 

[1Path]

UCLA is so beating you this year.

No matter how you slice it, I'm pretty sure I'll be wearing yet another NCAA championship cap for the second year in a row. The only issue is what color it will be.

 

[Brickhouse]

No matter how you slice it, I'm pretty sure I'll be wearing yet another NCAA championship cap for the second year in a row. The only issue is what color it will be.

I would hate you more if my own mother were not a gator.😡

 

[Faze2]

you're a radiohead fan, I'm sure whatever you choose will be cool.

I second this. Best band of our time in my opinion.

 

[aspirationMD]

So I'm guessing it's a damn good thing I already do waaaaaay too much work for the money I get payed (all while caring for kids and going to school full time). Looks like I shouldn't have a problem with it later on in life. I've already come to terms with getting very little, while giving everything ... all for the sake of helping others and making a difference, no matter how insignificant it may seem on the outside.

Everyday I appreciate what I do. Not the amount of money I get. Not even the respect or lack there of. I appreciate it because of the quality I am capable of putting into what ever it is I am doing. I hope that I will indefinitely feel the same about the 4 years spent in med school, residency, and when I am a practicing physician.

 

[notdeadyet]

I have never seen so much bitching about free advice.

Avoid a career in teaching. Half the downside of a career in teaching is trying to help others gain some knowledge from things you've gained through first hand experience to have any advice students disagree with dismissed for a variety of fuzzy reasons, many self-serving.

The reason your point of view is annoying Nasrudin is a lack of common ground. The experiences of a premed in college and his experience of medicine is radically different from a resident and his experience of medicine. The reason the ill will flows in one direction is that by the time you make it in to your late 20's, you've usually accepted that the world doesn't always turn the way you'd expect it to.

 

[notdeadyet]

What's educational about SDN is that you get all sorts of people having fairly in depth conversations that would probably never drink in the same bars in real life, let alone pull up stools next to one another.

 

[radi0headfan]

i just wanted to say thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread, as i am now accepted to a few medical schools and pretty sure where i want to go ...i can definitely say that im happy with my decision to leave engineering for medicine, and though im probably overflowing with optimism now, im counting on myself to stay that way for a long while...here's to that happening!

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

i just wanted to say thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread, as i am now accepted to a few medical schools and pretty sure where i want to go ...i can definitely say that im happy with my decision to leave engineering for medicine, and though im probably overflowing with optimism now, im counting on myself to stay that way for a long while...here's to that happening!

Congrats on your acceptances! I was going to say that I was keeping my fingers crossed that you got into UTSW and we might be classmates, but then I saw your Baylor acceptance. Even if you got into UTSW, I would probably stick with Baylor, if I were you.

Anyways, congratulations, and thanks for the update on your situation!

 

[radi0headfan]

Congrats on your acceptances! I was going to say that I was keeping my fingers crossed that you got into UTSW and we might be classmates, but then I saw your Baylor acceptance. Even if you got into UTSW, I would probably stick with Baylor, if I were you.

Anyways, congratulations, and thanks for the update on your situation!

Thanks!!...what happened to your "jota_jota" handle?! 😀...baylor's def. my #1 choice in TX, but who knows, we may end up in the same residency 👍

i actually had a couple of questions i was hoping someone could help me out with... one of them has to do with residency placement and the other with grading systems in med school...ive asked several pre-meds and a few medical students, but many of you seem to be in the tail end of medical school or well into your residencies, so i thought you all could offer a clearer perspective since you've already experienced it...and even if you're about to start med school, a pre-med, or just know this stuff- please do put your two cents in

regarding residencies, ive heard that Baylor is somewhat obscure to west/east coast residency programs, and i was wondering how much truth there is in that...i've looked at the match list, and it seems like ppl have the opportunities to decide wherever they want go... but does going to an Ivy League or more highly ranked school, instead of Baylor, give people an upper hand?… or is the name of the school not an issue if they are in the top 10-20 anyways?... ...residency is a long way away, but the reason I ask is b/c I’m thinking of canceling some interviews I have coming up (washU, columbia, cornell)… even if I got into those schools, I feel baylor would still be a better fit for me, b/c of how close I’d be to home, the curriculum, and how affordable it is …i'm definitely confused on how much the "name" of a school matters for residencies, especially in the northeast and the west coast, where i may possibly want to end up someday...or maybe going to an Ivy would offer me opportunities that I otherwise wouldn't have?...someone please tell me how it really is b/c i've gotten the impression that TX schools may be shut out from the rest of the nation 🙁

regarding the grading systems, I’ve heard mixed things about pass/fail grading systems and the 5-tier system that Baylor has…is the P/F system really a lot less stressful?...for example, when I went to Michigan, several students went to the point of saying: “don’t to go to a school if it’s not P/F”…several kids at Harvard said that too…but when I talked to students at Baylor, the grading system never seemed to be an issue, so are the 4/5-tiered grading systems employed in med schools different from the ABCDF system that we all went through in college?...or is it as stressful as it sounds and something that ppl are just not being honest about?

i'd really appreciate any clarification on these matters...thanks guys!! 🙂

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

Without talking to the residency directors of the programs in which you are potentially interested, everything is speculation. That being said, both Baylor and UTSW are top-20 programs (Baylor is top-10,) receive LOTS of funding, and turn out LOTS of cutting-edge research, etc. The match lists of both programs are quite impressive.

I've heard that some of the other TX schools are not as well known outside of TX, and that may be true, but I don't think that you will be closing any doors for yourself by going to Baylor. If I were you, I wouldn't give that aspect of my decision any further thought.

Best of luck to you!

P.S. I never really liked jota_jota as a screen name in the first place, so when one of the screen name change threads popped up a few months ago, I had my screen name changed.

 

[radi0headfan]

Without talking to the residency directors of the programs in which you are potentially interested, everything is speculation. That being said, both Baylor and UTSW are top-20 programs (Baylor is top-10,) receive LOTS of funding, and turn out LOTS of cutting-edge research, etc. The match lists of both programs are quite impressive.

I've heard that some of the other TX schools are not as well known outside of TX, and that may be true, but I don't think that you will be closing any doors for yourself by going to Baylor. If I were you, I wouldn't give that aspect of my decision any further thought.

Best of luck to you!

P.S. I never really liked jota_jota as a screen name in the first place, so when one of the screen name change threads popped up a few months ago, I had my screen name changed.

Thanks for your reply Sol!

I guess I figured a New York residency program would give preference to a kid graduating from Columbia/Cornell over Baylor, given that they have fairly equal credentials....but on the flipside, i would think a kid coming to TX from Columbia/Cornell wouldn't really have a problem b/c everyone knows who they are...of course, this is all just my impression of how the system works and i probably dont know what im talking about...but is what i said representative at all?... or is location/name of the school (given that they are both top 10 anyways) not really a factor when getting into residency programs?

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

Thanks for your reply Sol!

I guess I figured a New York residency program would give preference to a kid graduating from Columbia/Cornell over Baylor, given that they have fairly equal credentials....but on the flipside, i would think a kid coming to TX from Columbia/Cornell wouldn't really have a problem b/c everyone knows who they are...of course, this is all just my impression of how the system works and i probably dont know what im talking about...but is what i said representative at all?... or is location/name of the school (given that they are both top 10 anyways) not really a factor when getting into residency programs?

Once again, this is all speculation, but residency directors are people, and will most certainly have biases toward and against certain schools, medical schools, states, etc, etc. Let's, for a second, assume that this bias plays a significant role in gaining a spot at that program. You can't pre-guess this bias, because you don't know where the residency director went to school, etc. Just because (s)he's the director at a NY hospital now, doesn't mean that (s)he didn't graduate from Baylor or some other school or do a residency there, or whatever.

Spend some time in the Allopathic forums and you'll see that the consensus is that your Step 1 score and your clinical evaluations/grades are the most important factors (though, just like Medical School admissions, lots of other stuff can come into play.) While I'm not denying that it's possible that selection bias can have an effect, there are things that you can do to make yourself more well known to a particular program (like doing an away rotation there) and mitigate and/or remove such biases.

P.S. Also, what I am trying to say is that Baylor is as well known as Columbia/Cornell in the Medical Community. The general populace in the NY area probably doesn't know who/what/where BCM is, but who cares -- the directors/staff that are filling residency postions surely do.

 

[montessori2md]

Yeah I agree with this in one way but in another the profession does not need more people who are only "In it for money" and "For prestige" they are the ones who become bitter and feel they are "Trapped in Hell" I think to excel one has to love what they do, look around you at the best doctors, do they look like they despise medicine?

Getting in does not make you a doctor and does not mean you should be one, it's just the door opening to opportunity.

The problem is that the high cost of attendance compels students to care about money. You can't have average negative earnings for at least 7 years and then work for love alone.

I love Panda but I'm not a member of the cult, haven't ordered my Tshirt yet.

To the OP:
1)Note my MS-0 status.
2) I actually like the sounds of med school, both the "firehose" learning part and the clinical, bottom of the totem pole scut part. I think I'm a masochist. I would have joined the marines, but my DH doesn't like the idea of me visiting Iraq. That said, I think I will whine and vent just like everybody else, repeatedly. But I'm actually looking forward to my "job" changing drastically and frequently for awhile, even if it's from bad to worse to worst quality of life. At least you get a change of scenery as you progress through the circles of hell. Anatomy sucks? Well, it's a block schedule, it will end. Surgery sucks? 12 weeks and you're out.
3) What do you really have to lose? What if you move across the country? You already quit your job, so presumably your financial life has already been downgraded. Obviously, no one likes to give up time and $$, but it's your time and $$, you could give it up and no one gets hurt but you. I think that's different from what a lot of non-trads are going through, which is dragging spouse and kids through the experience as well.