every doctor I have ever talked to says the opposite. I've worked in the hospital for 2.5 years now and all the doctors I meet say to go to the cheapest school you get into. I understand many competitive pre-meds are so focused on rankings and "prestige" and whatnot, but it seems the real world doesn't care at all.
When you get to med school, you realize that, in terms of education, where you go matters a lot less than you thought it would. For the first two years, you will teach yourself most of the information, and the information is the same no matter where you go. How you do on the boards is not a factor of where you go to school (despite what everyone on these forums will tell you), it is a factor of #1 - how hard you study, and #2 - how good of a test taker you are. When you're doing your rotations, you'll realize that what you learn on them does not have anything to do with the school that you're at, or even the hospital you're in. Sure, if you're in certain hospitals you might see some cooler stuff. But what you actually LEARN will be dependent on your attendings, your residents and your interns and how well they teach you, which varies from person to person. It is NOT related to what school you go to. I would imagine that most doctors, thinking about this retrospectively, and possibly with considerable debt, would think that cheapest is best, and maybe when you're a doctor, you'll look back and think that it didn't really matter where you went either. BUT I will tell you this: while you should take this into consideration, they are looking back on med school, which they survived, and got to where they wanted to be, and so they think it doesn't matter. It DOES matter. You will be spending the next 4 years of your life somewhere. If you don't like the location, the people, the school, etc, etc, you may not be happy for the next four years. Medical school is not fun. You don't want to make everything worse by picking a school you're not crazy about just because it's cheaper. Yes, in the long run you will get to the same place and probably won't care where you went (looking back now, was high school REALLY so bad?). But for the next 4 years of your life, you will care.
Of course, there are shades of gray, and most decisions don't come down to a school you would like and a school you wouldn't. It's usually a school that you like and a school that you like more. But be aware that, while reputation and whatnot may not matter, your happiness will.
