Choosing a Medical School to Attend

[JohnDoe]

I'm presently deciding whether to go to Michigan or Yale. If you have insights--specific or general-- please share them. This thread could be informative even for those not choosing between these schools specifically.

Yale and Michigan are very closely ranked, but have their respective costs/benefits.

Some important factors for consideration include the following:

1)Tuition (instate v. out of state)
2)Curriculum
3)Technological and other resources
4)Prestige (state vs. ivy)
5)Quality of life (college town vs. 2nd tier city)
6)Matching Record
7)Quality of Affiliated hospital (michigan's hospital is much better than Yale's. Will this significantly affect the quality of clinical education?)
8)Other unique strengths/weaknesses
9)Fuzzy/Anecdotal stuff

Thanks very much.

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[JohnDoe]

One additional question:

Does Yale's laxity in terms of academic assessment negatively affect average board scores? If so, how much does this matter?

Thanks.

 

[fullefect1]

I am not the best poster for this post, but Yale grading system is on a pass fail basis. Am I correct? Well I would choose Yale just for this reason, but that might give you a reason to slack.

 

[JohnDoe]

Both schools are pass/fail, but I understand that most of yale's tests are optional and that grading is anonymous. Finally, informative numbers like mean grades etc. are not provided. My fear is that even a highly motivated and independent student can go horribly astray without some external checks in place.

 

[HBMD]

My opinion is to go where it is cheaper and where YOU think you'll be happier. Both are very reputable schools, and from what I've heard from physician's that I know, it doesn't really matter where you go to school. There are about 5 schools that are better than the rest, which will help you match and so forth, and there are about five schools that are worse than the rest. (You can probable figure out which schools fit into which category). From what I've been told, almost all other U.S. Medical schools are roughly equivelent. Graduate with the least debt possible!

 

[evenstar]

Originally posted by fullefect1
I am not the best poster for this post, but Yale grading system is on a pass fail basis. Am I correct? Well I would choose Yale just for this reason, but that might give you a reason to slack.

completely hearsay, but i've been told that the P/F grading during the preclinical years at yale leads to hypercompetitiveness during clinical rotations, since those *are* graded, and they become the only means of distinguishing oneself from one's classmates.

another factor to consider is where you want to do your residency. don't know if this is the case for mich/yale, but many schools/hospitals accept a lot of their own grads for residency, so if you think michigan has the better hospital and want to do residency there, it's possible that you'd have a better chance of getting accepted if you went to med school at michigan. of course, you could always do away rotations at your hospital of choice, but just a thought.

also, yale has a thesis requirement, so it's probably fairly research intensive. dunno about michigan?