Medical Can I use acceptances and interests to leverage aid at UWSOM?

[Mr.Smile12]

Hi experts,

Thank you for your help with this question. I am so happy to be accepted to both Duke and UWSOM. I don't think that I will go into an especially competitive specialty, however I went to an unknown undergrad and I do feel like I want to go to a prestigious medical school; I'm first-gen, rural, and I feel like I want to reach my potential and go big.

For context, I'm accepted to 5 schools but Duke and UW are the most important to me by far. Still waiting to hear from the Kaiser Permanente SOM and the Berkeley/UCSF Joint Medical Program. I'm looking for somewhat non-traditional programs. At Duke I'm in their Primary Care Leadership Track which has an awesome longitudinal clerkship and community-based research requirement, and at UW I'm in their TRUST program which also has a longitudinal component and a great exposure to underserved rural communities.

As I think about my career, one of the things I most hope for is to be able to have a broader analytical lens for the relationship between medicine and society than I feel most MD programs train for. Specifically, I love medical anthropology - the combination of social science and the humanities that situates individual illness narratives in their broader socioeconomic, historical and political contexts. I think it's a powerful discipline, partly because well-written medical anthropology can sway its readers to advocate, in whatever way their situation allows, for an improvement in the situation of the people being studied. For example, my ideal research placement would be a long-term, ethnographic set of case studies of rural cancer patients that would highlight how their social determinants of health are tangibly felt in their illness experiences, often in negative ways.

Duke is a natural fit for this. Their 3rd year curriculum flexibility is phenomenal, and so is their reputation and resources. However, it's also incredibly far away from home and I would like to live on the West Coast long-term. Additionally, it's twice as expensive as UW. Furthermore, and this is the hardest thing, my girlfriend lives in Washington and is very tied down here.

With that, I'm trying to make UW as appealing as possible. So, my questions are basically:
1) How much can/should I communicate to UW about my other acceptances and the perks being offered to me there? Duke in particular offers great research flexibility and $10k/year for my participation in their primary care program.
2) Do you think it would be within the realm of possibility to ask the dean if they'd consider giving me some academic freedom to pursue my research interests concurrently with my medical education? I'm imagining something like taking master's level courses in anthropology alongside my first and second year curricula.

I welcome your thoughts and I thank you for your time!

First off, congratulations. Second off, I will declare my knowledge of the Duke curriculum and resources is going to be much better than Washington, so that's my bias. I went to school and worked post school there.

You sound like you already have an idea of what Duke will offer you in terms of accelerating your learning in that track. I can tell you this is probably more valuable than a scholarship even though they are giving you some funding. If making an impact and being around those who do is important to you, I would say Duke is probably the best option. Bio anthro at Duke is really strong.

Being removed from home I know is scary but plenty of people from all walks of life attend East Coast schools. Did you like the area? The Triangle is a similar vibrant place to live and cheaper than Seattle. (I just read how Raleigh seems to be a new hotspot for indie music.)

In my experience, negotiating for scholarships at the graduate school level is downright difficult to impossible. There may be awards available after you matriculate, but who knows. Can you compare student testimonials between UW and Duke students pursuing similar tracks to yours?

Sent from my SM-N960U using SDN mobile

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Hey, thank you very much for your reply! I really appreciate it. To clarify, did you get your MD there or another graduate/professional degree?

I'm also curious how you perceive the prestige difference between the two schools. Interestingly, UW is ranked higher than Duke on US News for primary care and more generally, and I believe it also receives more research funding if you combine their affiliates (eg, Fred Hutch center). That said, there is something awfully appealing about the name 'Duke.' I'm curious how much you think that should weigh in my decision-making.

I think it's fair to say that the Duke curriculum and flexibility is more up-my-alley than UW's. With UW, I'm in their rural medicine track, which frankly probably offers awesome clinical instruction because there are so many hands-on opportunities. That said, you're also stuck out in a small town for 18 weeks. That would be fine if I already had some participant observation training so that I could have a researcher's lens on that time, but the curriculum doesn't really allow for that.

Do you think it would be too ridiculous to ask UW if they'd allow me to take a little graduate anthropology coursework concurrently with my MS1 and MS2 coursework? That would be an enormously appealing thing to me, if UW gave me that added flexibility.

I got my undergraduate there, then returned for a postdoc in pediatrics research.

UW is a public institution while Duke is private so there's a size and infrastructure difference. Honestly if you're just thinking about practice in hospitals, the name brand helps but not that much. Duke and UW are pretty solid brands in medicine.

I don't know much about anthropology at UW, so you'd have to ask, but I would suspect that talking with the UW med student affairs office about whether you can do what you propose in taking graduate coursework is feasible. I don't know how that would work when it comes to tuition or scheduling with your clerkships there, whereas Duke has the research year which I'll guess you can do what you propose at least then. All you can do is see how flexible they would be.