Best programs at each med school??

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rms435

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How do I find which schools are known for specific programs? I'm interested in family practice with an urban population focus, as well as pediatrics, ob/gyn, and emergency. I know you can look up each department on the schools' websites, but these don't give you a very good indication of how well-known the school is for each program. Maybe the MSAR has a section dedicated to this? (I don't have one with me.) Thanks!
 
You could try aamc.org and look for schools by program, I think they also have some tabled data, but I'm not sure. 🙂
 
unfortunately, that kind of info isn't really isn't in the MSAR.
 
peds, ob, em with an urban focus? sounds like just about any medical school in an urban area will suit you. That should narrow it down to about 115 schools. good luck.
 
What difference does it make how well known a school is? You have to rotate through those areas in any school you attend. As the previous poster said, just pick a school in an urban area.
 
What difference does it make how well known a school is? You have to rotate through those areas in any school you attend. As the previous poster said, just pick a school in an urban area.

Worried about match? Shiny school = shiny match?
 
Wayne State has an excellent OB/GYN program (the NIH Perinatology Research Branch is there) and I read somewhere that its Gyn program is ranked #1 by the NIH. It's Urban, and the Emergency room probably doesn't get more interesting (its in Detroit) and its ranked 4 by the NIH. I could give ya links, this may be a couple years old.
 
How do I find which schools are known for specific programs? I'm interested in family practice with an urban population focus, as well as pediatrics, ob/gyn, and emergency. I know you can look up each department on the schools' websites, but these don't give you a very good indication of how well-known the school is for each program. Maybe the MSAR has a section dedicated to this? (I don't have one with me.) Thanks!

This matters more at the residency level than the med school level. The programs you seem most interested in are not particularly competitive so doing well at any allo school will put you in very good shape. In general, learning which programs are strong is something you do later in med school, once you have picked a specialty, and you sit down with a mentor or two and find out which schools they have heard are good versus malignant. It is very much a word of mouth kind of thing -- there really isn't a good ranking system for this. And programs change from year to year, as big name docs get poached from school to school, or retire, etc. What was a great department 4 years ago often changes with changes in personnel, so it doesn't really pay to speculate as to what will be the place to be 4+ years from now.

Also bear in mind that your opinion of specialty is very likely to change once you see more. I know many people who showed up to med school set on a particular specialty, and then they saw it during rotations and hated it, or fell in love with something else. So you probably want a school that is pretty well rounded anyhow, since most change their mind. I personally wouldn't pick a med school based on this kind of concern. Find someplace you will like to be for 4 years and do well there.
 
Yeah, that's very true - I'm not going into school thinking that I will definitely specialize in any one thing. I guess more than anything I am trying to figure out how to best get to know a school. The websites are either way too detailed or too generic and I'd like to be able to have a genuine answer for why I want to go to a specific school. For now, I've just narrowed it down to certain cities I want to live in. How are other people answering the "why do you want to go here" questions?
 
somewhere to start now might be doing a quick search of the residency forums on sdn, you could take a look at their threads and see what people say about various programs. however, as everyone else said, its probably not very useful to you right now and isn't really a factor that should be used in determining where to apply
 
If you really need a list, I've been glancing at the US News Hospital Rankings by specialty. Obviously take this with a grain of salt since just because US News has them ranked highly in your particular field of interest doesn't mean that you'll necessarily have good clinical experiences. Odds are the really complicated cases, which are why people will travel outside their area to that facility, will be handled by a team of attendings and possibly fellows so you wouldn't get anything extra that you wouldn't get anywhere else. As others state above, this is more important for your training than anything else.
 
This matters more at the residency level than the med school level. The programs you seem most interested in are not particularly competitive so doing well at any allo school will put you in very good shape. In general, learning which programs are strong is something you do later in med school, once you have picked a specialty, and you sit down with a mentor or two and find out which schools they have heard are good versus malignant. It is very much a word of mouth kind of thing -- there really isn't a good ranking system for this. And programs change from year to year, as big name docs get poached from school to school, or retire, etc. What was a great department 4 years ago often changes with changes in personnel, so it doesn't really pay to speculate as to what will be the place to be 4+ years from now.

Also bear in mind that your opinion of specialty is very likely to change once you see more. I know many people who showed up to med school set on a particular specialty, and then they saw it during rotations and hated it, or fell in love with something else. So you probably want a school that is pretty well rounded anyhow, since most change their mind. I personally wouldn't pick a med school based on this kind of concern. Find someplace you will like to be for 4 years and do well there.
I was going to more or less say this very same thing. People change their minds a lot and you don't know what you like until you start getting some clinical experiences. The Cleveland Clinic is really well-known for cardio stuff, which I wasn't interested in at all. I thought I might want to do one of the IM specialties, but I never thought about interventional cardio or cardiac surgery before I got here. But now this summer I'm spending time in the OR seeing coronary artery bypass grafts and thinking, hmm, cardiac stuff is pretty interesting after all. Who knew? 😳
 
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