Post from an Investment professional
------------------------------------
Foreword
---------
I am an investment professional and my wife just entered the arena.
She will be taking her board exams next year.
So, let me say a few things with out bias.
A story from Year 2000-2001
---------------------------
When the economy was booming and stock market was touching skies, in financial forums, I had seen similar posts, heavily biased 1 side or the other. Any logical person knew that the biased posts were not completely true and no one really could have rated a stock or company better than other with strong reasons. Inspite of all this, a few weak, non-skeptical and trust-in-all kind of people took the advice from forums directly and invested a lot.
It turns out that the posts were aimed at mis-directing various forum members and thus raising the price of stocks of various companies artifically. The people who mis-directed forum members eventually made a lot of money, by selling those artifically priced stocks. Trust-in-all kind of investors lost a lot of money.
Thoughts
---------
If I were one of you, I would take real good advice from people external to the forums and from those people whom I know and who I trust and who do not have bias.
What is the gurantee that a person in UCSF waiting list is not posting bad information about UCSF so that other students join USC and thus he/she gets in to UCSF? I rather not be dragged in to controversy but I would urge you to be careful and make a decision with your own evaluation.
Also, note that individual evaluation would result in different results for different people based on where they live, where they like to live, where their spouses work or where they potentially can find spouses, quality of education and a lot of other factors.
Debunk of a few myths
---------------------
1. Cost of living in San Francisco vs that in LA.
I have lived in both places and if you share an apartment, it can be same in both places. You can choose an apartment that costs you the same. Historically there was rental control in LA which caused lower living costs in LA but that's not true any more.
2. Traffic. This should not be a reason based on which people choose their universities but LA is bad and its a fact. Go to Traffic information websites for that info.
3. USC is cheaper. When you already spend 120K another 20K will not make a difference if your choice is UCSF, especially if you already live in San Francisco or Bay area and your husband or wife works there or other such strong reason. In fact, there are more opportunities in the Bay area as per statistics.
4. Patient pool- I laugh seeing many posts on this point. How can anyone guarantee that you get X number of patients? Even if the school receives lots of patients how can anyone guarantee that a single person gets more. It always depends on how aggressive you are and how you try to get
patients beyond the normal limit. Let's say there are more patients. But don't you want to qualify the patients and cases. Are 10 Class II or Class I preparations better than 1 root canal on a child? How can you guestimate the number of quality cases by reading or posting in the forums? Or even by visiting the schools. All that varies by human population around the school and their thoughts in a specific year. Such kind of statistical problems are addressed by statistic profession everyday. Historically it could be that USC had more patients in number but that would not mean quality cases. I would not choose USC over UCSF based on this point unless USC is my first
choice due to other reasons.
5. This 2 year program is not end of your education. In any profession education is continuos. My dentist who is a 54 year old cosmetic dentist takes 4 weeks of classes every year. Your education in these 2 years should help you re-enforce your fundamentals and give you practice in American
environment. Note that at school you guys are still under the umbrella of professors. You are still guided. Your school's program should be aimed at longetivity and enable you to learn in such a way that your career lasts long and it should not be "Primarily" focused on clinical practice, as said about USC in this forums. (Let me put a disclaimer, I don't know about USC. I got this info about USC from the posts here). Your education should give you basic skills and help you to improve all along.
Good luck to you all.