Case Western vs. Colorado

[kkmmkkmm]

I am really struggling to choose between Case Western and Colorado. There is a $5k price difference, so I am not concerned with the cost comparison.

Case Western
Pros:
-I really like the curricular structure (lots of free time, group work instead of lectures, exams occur every few months/weeks)
-People were friendlier during Second Look and current students seemed stress-free
-Phenomenal match lists - I could potentially see myself interested in a competitive specialty
-Opportunities at the Cleveland Clinic

Cons:
-Weather is extremely important to me
-Not too much to do in Cleveland

Colorado
Pros:
-Living in Denver and all the outdoor activities that come with it
-Closer to California, where I hope to match
-Earlier clinical exposure (rotations begin after 1 year preclinical so more time to build a residency app after hopefully picking a specialty)

Cons:
-LIC model - I don't love the idea of studying for 1 shelf exam at a time while rotating through every specialty
-Your LIC could be located far away and you'll have to drive there everyday for a year
-Quizzes every Friday (but the rest of the day off)
-Possibly worse match lists???

Please let me know if there are any factors I am missing or any other info I should take into consideration

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[thefirerisen]

Easy pick of Colorado here. You can do any specialty you want through Colorado that you would be able to do at CWRU. Enjoy your next four years in Denver!

 

[BarrBodyGuy]

a bit biased bc im going to CU, but for LICs you rank your sites, there are 3 major sites walking distance inside the campus that take the majority of students, yes there are a few that do Denver Health LICs (20ish mins away) but they sometimes were ppl who wanted to do it there anyway.

Quizzes on Fridays are super low stakes, 50% needed to pass, and it helps ya stay on top of content and leaves the weekend open, they leave basically every weekend for you to relax. Exams are on Fridays as well.

The match list for Case Western is one of the best in my opinion, while Colorado will not hold you back from doing any competitive specialty as they have home programs for most if not all, CWRU has a DIRTY match list. So consider the weight of that, CWRU matches ppl basically into whatever they want to Cleveland Clinic. and remember CU is a state school, so a lot of people will definitely go the PCP, generalist route based on the nature of the school.

If the weather isn't too bad, id highly consider CWRU. But CU does have nice connections to Cali. Look first at how CWRU does in Cali matches

 

[kkmmkkmm]

a bit biased bc im going to CU, but for LICs you rank your sites, there are 3 major sites walking distance inside the campus that take the majority of students, yes there are a few that do Denver Health LICs (20ish mins away) but they sometimes were ppl who wanted to do it there anyway.

Quizzes on Fridays are super low stakes, 50% needed to pass, and it helps ya stay on top of content and leaves the weekend open, they leave basically every weekend for you to relax. Exams are on Fridays as well.

The match list for Case Western is one of the best in my opinion, while Colorado will not hold you back from doing any competitive specialty as they have home programs for most if not all, CWRU has a DIRTY match list. So consider the weight of that, CWRU matches ppl basically into whatever they want to Cleveland Clinic. and remember CU is a state school, so a lot of people will definitely go the PCP, generalist route based on the nature of the school.

If the weather isn't too bad, id highly consider CWRU. But CU does have nice connections to Cali. Look first at how CWRU does in Cali matches

This is incredibly helpful thank you so much for the thoughtful response!!!

 

[kkmmkkmm]

Bumping this post because I am still extremely conflicted and would appreciate any other perspectives or opinions!