Dartmouth (Geisel) vs. UC Riverside

[gainz_10]

Hello everyone. I just wanted to start by saying that I'm grateful to have gotten multiple acceptances and have narrowed it down to these two schools. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Overall, I'm looking for a school that will provide the most opportunities for career growth. I haven't fully committed to a specific specialty. I'm interested in a sports medicine fellowship (ortho, PMR, emergency, family, internal) or possibly psychiatry. Given that, I'm pretty spread out in the spectrum of specialties. I'm leaning towards a career in community medicine over academia.

Dartmouth Geisel:

• Pros:
  • Research: more established school with research
  • Match: competitive match lists
  • Mentors: possible mentors in the area (labs I'm interested in; sports medicine docs)
  • Curriculum: seems fair
  • Class size: small class size
• Cons:
  • Area: no friends nearby / far from home / not used to the snow
  • Cost: estimated cost of attendance is $71k (23%) more than UCR for the 4yrs (although the gap is a bit larger than that considering my current aid offers from both schools)

UCR:

• Pros:
  • Research: possible research opportunities (although less than Geisel)
  • Area: grew up in the area/support group near (used to the weather)
  • Curriculum: seems fair
  • Class size: small class size
  • Cost: lower cost of attendance
• Cons:
  • Match: match lists not posted but don't seem as competitive as Geisel? (although they do match a lot in Cali which is current goal)
  • Mentors: no mentors I know of (yet)

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[deleted1065184]

Definitely UCR. Match lists are very difficult to interpret because they're largely due to student preference and performance. Prestige unfortunately does matter a little bit in academia, but you don't even wanna do academic medicine. And if you did, you wouldn't be at a disadvantage by going to UCR. Ultimately, you want to match in California, and going to med school in California will help a lot with that. Most importantly, it's much cheaper.

 

[Banco]

Match lists are hard to interpret - based on preference, location, you ultimately don't know how high/low those programs are ranked by the people applying. But if California is your goal, UCR seems to be the overall better choice.

I'm sure you'll find research you're interested in as a medical student, that's pretty easy.