i'm kidn of in the same boat, in-state vs out-of-state, and also kind of between dart and sb, and i'll go to dart if i get in because it seems that they offer a richer experience there, have more resources and dollars available for their students, and smaller class sizes. stony i think is increasing their class size by 20% or so (not sure if that's all happening at once or not) and according to students there now there they are already strapped for space and resources w/o the extra students.
as for me i did my undergrad at dart but im from long island, and my gf was at stony brook, and i interviewed at dms last week.
that being said however dhmc is great but it's not a given that youll be spending much time there for your training. ive heard that the teaching at dart in years I and II are solid and board scores are high (and this correlates to match), but that yearsIII and IV are problematic esp now that theyve dissolved the dart/brown program, so third and fourth year class sizes also effectively grew by 20 people, and dartmouth is in the middle of a "crisis" according to one student there now finding enough clerkships for everyone.
stony brooks match list was "highly impressive" this year i was told with matches in derm and radiology at top hospitals in nyc (columbia) and harvard, etc, though very few (less than 2%) to cali schools (if youre interested). in general stony brook is trying to recover and improve its image (after the ped cardiology fiasco and other shut-downs, fines, etc.), seems to be dissociating itself from the SUNY system, growing its facilities across long island... again that might fare increasingly well for opportuntities to match 4 years from now when youre in that boat
comparing the two again, in general, too, my impression has been that the quality of teaching and the quality of the physicians at dartmouth is generally higher. and students feel that they are in a position to match wherever they want in whatever field they want
also great opportunity for international medicine at dartmouth, and there are funds available just for that sort of thing for first years, whereas at stony brook the funds are limited and nobody i knew received funding from the school to volunteer overseas or do reearch or anything for that "last summer"
it's a tough call, and what it ultimately comes down to may just be money and location, since i get the impression that no med school education is going to be "drasitcallY" different from another. somebody above mentioned reserach at stony is strong but if that's what youre interested in dart is probably better, NIH funding is actually extremely high there (it's just that theyre a small institution and so have fewer faculty--you probably heard this at the interview) and profs love to have student research aids.
