although I already graduated from my residency at BU and am happily enjoying my fellowship, there is so much nonsense in the above posts, that just need a clarification....
I have not much to say about Tufts, I did not interview there, do not know any residents there, and so I am not in the position to comment, except my dear princess of blood...if you want to compare fellowship placements as a surrogate marker for reputation of a program....and quite frankly that is a somewhat questionable approach, as the reasons to choose a respective fellowship are many and comparisons between different fellowships diificult, as it to a degree requires a indepth knowledge about the respective quality of a given subspecialty at a given hospital, and that does not always follow the lines of the overall reputation of the medical school....
for example, choice of location may matter, not everyone wants to stay in boston....competitveness of subspeciality matters...it is somewhat a difference between matching at the brigham or MGH for cards vs endo ( please no posts about me trashing endo here....just an example) ...lastly some fellowships are actually exceptional at some not top tier institution...for example the top program for Pulm/CC is actually University of Colorado....and certainly not MGH/brigham.....so all these things need to be factored in, if indeed you want to compare the lists....however, if you do so, compare apples to apples...the TUFTS list is an aggregate of 6 YEARS...BU provides you with the list per year....and there is certainly a year by year fluctuation, based on quality of residents, there respective choices and god knows what....
but FYI: last years graduation residents, those short trackin, graduation after 3 years and the chiefs matched for GI and Cards at the following places out of the top of my head
Cards: cleveland Clinic, Columbia, texas hear, BI, BU, darthmouth, U Mass....etc
GI: MGH, Johns Hopkins, darthmouth, BU, U wash etc.....
this is just one year of residents....
now to the overall atmosphere at BU: I have found this to be the most collegiale place imaginable...residents were very supportive of each other, faculty was wonderful, down to earth, relaxed...this nonsense about malignancy is based on what again, some rumor?,personal experience?, i doubt that....when I read these postings, i wondered what place I had spent 5 years at .....
the call schedule was demanding, work load is high..no doubts you work in this program, and this is its strengh..you see a lot and you have an enourmous amount of autonomy...so if you seize these opportunities you can learn a lot...this is why BMC has the reputation even at the elite places to train excellent clinicians....being right now at one of those ivy league towers with an absolut top residency, having been at the VA, which we share with the Brigham and BI, with an insight into 2 other excellent residencies, I can only paraphrase osler: I much rather go to sea with someone, who has been to the sea before, albeit maybe without a map, but with someone who knows everything there is to know about boats and sailing, yet hasn't done it...
in the end, this is a personal choice of learning style, do you want to have a more protective environment where you get only a limited amount of autonomy, but get spoonfed, or do you learn by doing it yourself....my personal impression is, that the first provides a hiding shelter for many, whos clinical accumen then is totally underdeveloped...
the new call schedule, from what I hear may have provided improvements, although I blieve this derives mainly from the addition of a renal service and a re-organisation of the health care services.....
the comments regarding faculty and research are so completly off:
ALL attendings I worked with were either sub-specialty attendings on general medicine wards or longstanding medical teachers, some of which have been at this places from the days of old Boston City Hospital, which not that long ago was the prime medical training center in the states....
community docs only cover the health care/net pts, this is indeed at times frustrating, but to my knowledge almost any program has this issue of rpivate attendings in some form ot the other... the academic qulaity of those sub-specialist is excellent...to tie in a question from someone else: for example the Pulm/CC dep at BU is by NIH funding a top3 institution, which obviously refects itself in the quality of attendings and research opportunites as well as in the quality of fellowship and fellows, which are all from the top institutions...this is even more true for the cards program, which incls the framingham study, half of the boards of aossciate editors of circulation and a former president of the AHA....of course that department has suffered somewhat with Loscalso going cross town, however
its fellows are almost excluselvly from brigham, MGH and from BU.....
lastly your comments about the former PD: Battinelli was the president of assoc of IM PD, former pres of ABIM, an excellent teacher and administrator, but most importantly a extremly well known and well connected person. every place I interviewed, and I assure you, those were the top5 places in my respective supspecialty, put a lot of weight into his words and judgement...that is really what you want from your PD...he would go to bat for you...and him deciding to leave for a much better paid leadership position in a health system was a huge loss to BU...
oh and before I forget it: BU taking care of the poor preceeds the invention of the free care pool by about 70 years or so..as you most surely are aware of, as you have invested yourself into this matter...it goes back to good old Mr Evans who I believe sometime in 1907 or so provided a huge chunck of money to the department of medicine to take care of those poor...and the department still lives of that money....the history of Boston City Hospital which is now part of BMC as a separate story speaks for itself and all of this has an impact on the atmosphere and the sense of pride as well as the learning experience at BU
it's a great place and if you know what you will be up to, you will enjoy it greatly...if you then invest yourself into becoming a physician you can learn and experience tremedously, and there are only few places where you would get a training like this.....
if however, you are more into quatiary medicine, much rather want to hear about the newest stuff around the bloc, can't wait until you do this in your fellowship, and think this is more important then learning the basics, then you should not come to BU, as it has its shortcomings...it does not have allo BMT, no cardiac or pulm transplant and thus you will miss out on these pts, how much you really learn from those at that early stage of your training, I doubt sincerely....
