Having a hard time with this. Have no idea what speciality I want to do, but I want to keep the door open in case I want to pursue something competitive. I would like to add that I am a dual Canadian/US citizen. Have lived and studied in Canada (Greater Toronto Area) most of my life. Any advice/comments would be be rlly appreciated
Loyola Pros
Loyola Pros
- Good student culture
- interviewed in person; everyone was super nice (good vibes)
- Would love to live in/near Chicago
- have family in Wisconsin and spent a lot of my summers in and around Chicago
- (As mentioned above) Family is closer (2h drive away from aunt/cousins, 8h drive or 2h flight to home in Canada)
- Cheaper to live in Maywood IL (where school is located)/near Chicago vs Aurora, Colorado
- Home residencies (like to take their own)
- P/F curriculum
- exam every 2 weeks
- close proximity to hospital (believe its connected to the school)
- cool ass gym and pool facility
- P/F for preclinicals but has internal ranking (put into quintiles) 🙁
- Traditional curriculum (healthy human body M1 then diseased body M2?)
- Professor written exam but in NBME style
- unranked (dk if this is necessarily bad)
- Decently ranked/strong prestige
- Cool curriculum
- Basically start clerkship in 2nd year (called LICs = longitudinal integrated clerkships in IM, Peds, OBGYN, EM, Psych, Surg, FM)
- Means we take STEP1 in 3rd year (~Nov/Dec) and STEP2 shortly after that
- rlly like that we get straight into the hospital in 2nd year and hone in on what specialty we want sooner
- P/F preclinical is true P/F i think
- not rlly a pro or con but couldn’t really get a read on what student culture/general vibes were (zoom interview format made it difficult)
- P/F preclinical may be ranked
- Far away from family/support system (~4h flight)
- Seems more expensive to live in Aurora (based on some initial research) vs Chicagoland
- Not sure if I would enjoy living in Aurora? I’ve never been there. Looks beautiful and the idea of hiking mountains during free time sounds nice but idk
- have only done winter sports casually here and there, decently active person
- defo need a car in first year (apparently public transport is not good either)
- scared of the name and shame post from 4 years ago (trying to not let that bias me but i do worry ab how true the things said there are)
- more mandatory stuff to attend i think
- haven’t gotten a formal COA thing but both are gonna come out to ~$90-100k
- also haven’t heard back for scholarships or anything like that but will try to negotiate
- H/HP/P/F clinical i think
