Based on your previous posts, you seem to want to go to Dartmouth but you enjoy the high-research capacity of Vandy, which is partially indicated by its US News rank. Anyone can tell you that Dartmouth falls behind Vandy in terms of medical research, but its lower rank doesn't mean anything for a med student. The school, as a medical school, is still very reputable, though Vandy is slightly more so. Dartmouth has the 7th highest Step 1 average of all schools and it's as hard to get into as schools ranked 15-20. On SDN, people seem to be infatuated with Vandy, but the reasoning behind it is a little unclear.
Vandy is great. If you get the chance, I highly recommend you go to second look, and then you will see what everyone is talking about. In fact I would recommend going to any second look weekends in general. You get a much better feel for what the school, administration, and student body are actually like than at the interview day.
Both Vandy and Dartmouth seem to have exceptionally happy students. One is in New England (rural with snow), one is in the South (country music). To some, rural quietness offers a better study environment, but others will find that living in the city has more restaurants to explore. Vandy offers great clinical training while Dartmouth give you more opportunities in other fields (top 10 business school and the Dartmouth Institute that formed the basis for Affordable Care Act).
There is a lot more to Nashville than country music but there isn't really that much more at Dartmouth/Hanover than, as you put it, rural with snow almost six months of the year. I personally wouldn't want to spend four years in an isolated area without any ethnic populations. A quick yelp search just showed me that there are almost five times as many restaurants in a one mile radius from Vanderbilt as Dartmouth.
I agree that Dartmouth has some cool opportunities with Tuck and TDI, but if you aren't specifically there for those programs, having the nearest airport not be two hours away is way more useful than being able to say that your university also has a good business school.
Dartmouth has a fairly traditional curriculum with little PBL, Vandy has a single condensed pre-clinical year, which to be honest, worries me a little because it's the first and only school like that
Incorrect: Duke also. Dartmouth-Hitchcock hospital gives you a warm feeling, Vandy hospital gives you a large urban medical center feel. The less diverse patient population in Hanover doesn't really both me, and if it does, everyone gets to go to San Francisco and Los Angeles area for rotations, which is pretty cool.
I agree that the DHMC facility is quite nice and a little cozy, but it's also not that big or busy compared to most academic medical centers. Things might have changed since I interviewed, but even if you selected a "home" rotation, you might be as far as 45 minutes away somewhere in Vermont because DHMC didn't have the case load for all the students.
Also, I believe Dartmouth has a lottery system for their rotations so going to SF, LA, etc aren't guaranteed. Being shipped around for rotations was actually not a plus for me. I wanted to be able to stay at a place where I can develop relationships with faculty and advisors and be able to be ready and prepared to go into each rotation, instead of stumbling around every few months trying to learn how to use the medical record system, who I need to impress, and where the bathroom is. It's also a pretty big logistical challenge to actually move around.
Personally, I felt that having a major medical center to do your rotations at and having the option of doing away rotations when I wanted to and where I wanted to was a much better option.
Regarding your life after medical school, which is arguably very important: though both schools will enable you go match anywhere, about half of Vandy students decide to stay in the South, while 90% of Dartmouth students either stay in the Northeast (Boston, NYC, Philly) or go to the West Coast (California, Seattle, Portland). I personally cannot see myself end up living in the South, so I would much rather have a large network of colleagues in the Northeast and West Coast.
As with any school with strong residency programs, some students do choose to rank Vanderbilt highly on their match lists. However, not counting matches to Vanderbilt, the south is a minority compared to Chicago, the mid Atlantic, and the Northeast. For example, please see 2012/2011/et al http://mapalist.com/Public/pm.aspx?mapid=253500 and https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/events/match-day/wheretheymatched2011
For all my comparisons above, I liked Dartmouth's side more. So to me, the only advantage that Vandy has over Dartmouth are: better local research and the "absolute rank" by US News. For the latter, their actual reputation for the quality of medical education is similar. The reputation of Dartmouth medical school is constantly boosted by its ties to the undergrad college and simultaneously heavily dragged down by the fact that its hospital is a smaller hospital and it cannot draw enough researchers to a rural setting. Anyone in the medical field who is impressed by Vandy's name will probably be impressed by Dartmouth's as well, otherwise they just probably won't be impressed by either. In terms of research, I only plan to do research the summer between the pre-clinical years, so the best of the best research opportunities at my local institution isn't very important to me - I plan to go to a large hospital in Boston for summer research instead.
I felt at Dartmouth that the emphasis (ie resources) was on the undergraduate experience and no so much the medical school.
I am also somewhat confused about why someone would limit themselves to only summer research before even starting medical school (unless maybe you are already involved in a particular lab and want to continue). Regardless, Vanderbilt has a much higher number of labs (ie large variety of research projects to get involved in) and funding. These connections can only help you.
If you're already leaning towards Dartmouth, then the decision has already been made. However, Vandy definitely has lots of positives as well. Both schools are fairly different from the mainstream medical school, so neither is for everyone.
I definitely agree that both schools are good and neither is a bad choice. Areas I felt Dartmouth were particularly strong in were rural medicine and healthcare policy and quality improvement.
Incredibly long post, but I hope that helped. Feel free to PM me.
