I'm a senior resident at UIC. If you have any specific questions I'd be happy to help. Since you asked about the location and program strengths, what I can tell you is that we are located in the near west side of the city, the Illinois Medical District, just down the street from Rush, the West Side VA, and Cook County Hospital. We are a few blocks south of the United Center if that helps, and just west of the undergrad campus. The location is quite urban with the Loop being about 10 minutes away and some of the trendier neighborhoods like Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Wicker Park, and Bucktown a short El ride or drive away.
As far as our strengths go, if I had to narrow it down I'd say stroke, neurocritical care, and neuromuscular are the section strengths. We have strong faculty in particular in these areas and I think we get especially good training in this regard. Another strength of the program is the diversity of patients we see as the downtown state university hospital. We rotate at three hospitals-the University, the VA (within walking distance), and Christ which is a large 700+ bed level I trauma center on the south side. This provides for a good exposure to several different settings and patient populations. Finally, I think most people would find the faculty to be pretty chill overall, certainly not a malignant environment with pretty reasonable duty hours. Any further questions let me know.
