Choosing a med school

[annie813]

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I think I want to do pedi cardiology (but I know I can change my mind during med school). How should I take this into consideration in choosing a med school. I'm accepted at (almost) all medical schools in Texas. I know Baylor has several pedi cardiology fellowships. Would med school at Baylor set me up for a pedi residency and pedi cardiology fellowship at Baylor?

What factors are used to evaluate applicants for fellowships and what do I need to do to make myself competitive?

 

[TexasRose]

I think I want to do pedi cardiology (but I know I can change my mind during med school). How should I take this into consideration in choosing a med school. I'm accepted at (almost) all medical schools in Texas. I know Baylor has several pedi cardiology fellowships. Would med school at Baylor set me up for a pedi residency and pedi cardiology fellowship at Baylor?

What factors are used to evaluate applicants for fellowships and what do I need to do to make myself competitive?

My understanding is that most of what goes into your fellowship application has to do with your residency. So, where you go to med school doesn't have a direct bearing on fellowship, per se.

Ped cards is a more competitive fellowship than many of the other peds subspecialties. So, I think that your plan should be something like; go to a medical school that you like and see yourself being happy in, do well in said medical school, apply for solid peds residencies that give you good exposure to subspecialties and do well in your residency. That should set you up to be a competitive applicant as well as anything else. I don't believe that chosing say UTSW over Baylor is going to make a lick of difference in your career possibilities.

However, if you pick a school where you are unhappy or where you have zero family support or somesuch, you may find yourself at a disadvantage if it means poorer performance overall.

Having been accepted to almost all TX med schools pretty much tells me you can't go wrong. Where do you want to spend the next 4 years? 🙂

 

[oldbearprofessor]

I think I want to do pedi cardiology (but I know I can change my mind during med school). How should I take this into consideration in choosing a med school. I'm accepted at (almost) all medical schools in Texas. I know Baylor has several pedi cardiology fellowships. Would med school at Baylor set me up for a pedi residency and pedi cardiology fellowship at Baylor?

What factors are used to evaluate applicants for fellowships and what do I need to do to make myself competitive?

The bio of each 2nd and 3rd fellow is contained here:

http://www.bcm.edu/pediatrics/index.cfm?Realm=99992426&This_Template=Fellows

A quick look says that 3/15 of the current 2nd and 3rd year fellows went to Baylor COM for medical school and residency. Looked at another way, only 1-2 of 170 or so graduating Baylor medical students each year do pediatric cardiology.

Draw your own conclusions (ie take TexasRose's sage advice 🙂).

 

[Old_Mil]

I think I want to do pedi cardiology (but I know I can change my mind during med school). How should I take this into consideration in choosing a med school. I'm accepted at (almost) all medical schools in Texas. I know Baylor has several pedi cardiology fellowships. Would med school at Baylor set me up for a pedi residency and pedi cardiology fellowship at Baylor?

What factors are used to evaluate applicants for fellowships and what do I need to do to make myself competitive?

Annie,

There are a great many things you should be looking at when you select a medical school, but your intended specialty isn't one of them. For starters, the large majority of medical students don't graduate and go into the same specialty that they stated they were interested in when they were first years.

Also, there is a huge difference in the curricula of the various medical schools. Some have problem based learning. Some offer anatomy in one semester, others have it last most of the first year. Some have a dress code. Some require class attendance, others do not. Some offer microbiology first year, some in the second. Michigan State, for instance, offers professionally dissected cadavers, other schools make you chop up your own. Some schools offer pop quizzes, other schools don't even make you take tests the first two yeas (Yale).

Find a medical school that fits your personality, your tastes, and your study habits - and is located in a place you'd like to live for four years.

Everything else will work itself out.

 

[Marigold]

I agree with all said above! Go where you'll be HAPPY....as you start med school, you'll find that your personal happiness/sanity becomes sooo very important, and being a happy med student translates into better learning and thus better grades/scores. There are multiple excellent opportunities in TX for med school...just figure out where is the best fit for you!

 

[ricciolina]

Completely agree with most of the above, however, I would add this:

I've definitely derived personal and professional benefits from being at a school affiliated with a strong pediatric residency and tertiary children's hospital (although I plan to go elsewhere for residency) and with an excellent program in my intended subspecialty (pediatric hematology/oncology). I took these factors into account when I decided where to apply and of those things that were important to me in choosing a school four years ago, this is one of the few that has really panned out. Curricula are often not as innovative and brilliant in practice as they are on paper; your classmates may not be as warm, welcoming, and seemingly well-balanced as the older students you meet during your interviews; relationships that kept you in one geographic area can quickly change.

That isn't to say these things aren't all still really important - they are and I would take them all into consideration again! But my med school experience was profoundly shaped by my interest in pediatrics and pediatric hem/onc, and the access to those fields that my med school provided. I was able to spend more than a third of my third year on pediatric rotations, including half of the surgery, neurology, and psychiatry clerkships. In my first year, at my request, I was paired with a mentor in peds hem/onc, with whom I've attended rounds and clinics throughout my med school career. She also allowed me to take charge of a research project in her lab, which led to a publication and poster presentation. Although I'm only halfway through the interview process, the depth of my experience in peds hem/onc and the "maturity" of my career interests has been remarked upon repeatedly (and positively!). Plus I'm frequently assigned to interviewers in the hem/onc department, who usually know my advisor and the other attendings that I've worked with.

That's a very long way to say: Don't discount the benefits of attending a med school with opportunities in your subspecialty interest. They do exist.