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I am deciding between Hopkins and Stanford. I know that they are both good schools. But, I was wondering what everybody else thought were the strengths and weaknesses of the programs in comparison.
I would go to Stanford. California vs. Baltimore, no contest. I would feel very safe in Palo Alto, not so in East Baltimore. SF > Baltimore, DC, etc.
Stanford would most likely be cheaper, which is the big deal-maker.
Stanford is a true university! Everything's on one campus, and they actually have sports worth watching, if that stuff floats your boat.
Stanford med overall is smaller. The students all seem to know each other well. There are also less faculty, and consequently less research available. However, the quality of research is higher at Stanford IMO.
Stanford curriculum is the BEST!!! True P/F for all 4 years, how can you go wrong? No rankings, no AOA, AND no classes on Wednesdays. And the students still place in the top residencies. Top residency for the least stress = I'm matriculating, see you there.
One month as a graduate student at Stanford convinced me to withdraw my application to Stanford Med.
The ONE outstanding aspect of Stanford is that they really take care of housing for students....most of the grad/med/law/business students live in a couple Graduate housing units (Rains, Escondido Village,...) and it's like being a freshman all over again....except everyone is older!
But the town of Palo Alto sucks and the University itself is over-rated: the administration really doesn't give a f*ck about its students' education as long as US News tells everyone that Stanford is a great school.....
Med School barely escapes probation
April 6, 1999
By The Stanford Daily Staff
By Anitha Reddy
Contributing writer
The national agency that accredits American medical schools has
Narrowly voted not to place the School of Medicine on probation. A recent study found
the poor quality and condition of Stanford's teaching facilities unacceptable, according to
a letter the agency sent to President Casper. Accreditation by the national agency, the
Liaison Committee on Medical Education, is an eligibility requirement for institutions
seeking federal funds. Accreditation is also necessary if an institution's graduates are
to be eligible to take the United States Medical Licensing Examination, a test one must
pass to practice medicine in the U.S. The agency's letter to Casper included specific
condemnations of outdated lecture halls and teaching laboratories. The agency also had
harsh criticismfor the Medical School's library, which only has air conditioning in those
areas used by librarians, no bathrooms and a subpar computer system.
Michael Ennen, a third-year medical student, said conditions in the
library are so bad that "on any given Saturday there are just as many
Stanford medical students in the UC-San Francisco medical library as there
are in Stanford's. That many people drive up."
Administrators recognize that a problem exists at the school. At a
Recent Faculty Senate meeting, the medical school's senior associate dean for
Education and student affairs, Phyllis Gardner, deplored the "abysmal state of
our educational infrastructure ¬ library, classrooms, and information
technology." Casper has also said the medical school's teaching facilities
should be updated.
The LCME's harsh stance have been influenced by a petition signed by
99 percent of the student body calling for a greater attention to the quality
of teaching facilities. Ennen and another student, Jean Drouin, organized the petition last
fall and sent it to the LCME. In their cover letter, the students "encouraged
[the LCME] to remain steadfast in [its] requirements for Stanford's
accreditation," Ennen said.
According to Ennen, the "same [facilities] problems had been cited
in [accreditation] surveys since 1983. For 14 years the school blew them
off." Clinical Pharmacology Prof. Kenneth Melmon, head of the medical school
Faculty Senate, attempted to explain why the school did not act to improve
facilities following the LCME's earlier complaints. "I think first of all in the early
days of critique people didn't necessarily agree with the critique so they considered
it much less important than they consider it now. There were responses to it; maybe
they were whole-hearted, maybe they were half hearted, but there were responses.
There was a lot of incomplete communication on both sides," Melmon said.
While Director of Medical School Admissions Gabriel Garcia noted that
the "clinical facilities are outstanding," Medical School Dean Eugene Bauer
conceded that "other resources need to be brought to bear to upgrade our more
didactic teaching facilities." "We've been actively engaged in investigating the
various options that are available to us for dealing with these problems. The scope of
solutions that we're talking about are at a minimum of $40 million, possibly $40 to
$60 million," Bauer said.
At the recent Faculty Senate meeting in which these issues were
discussed, Melmon pointed out that Stanford, unlike other medical schools, had made
no large investment in its teaching facilities since its move to the Palo Alto campus in 1959.
A continued emphasis on building facilities for disease research rather than teaching has
created the current situation. "It is far easier to get federal funds to underwrite research
costs as opposed to teaching costs," Melmon added. "Nowhere did the LCME say anything
about the quality of the educational experience or deficiencies related to content of educational
experience," Bauer said. He stressed the opportunities for one-on-one interaction between
faculty and students working together on experiments at a premier research
institution.
"This is not a situation in which one can position research priorities versus educational priorities,"
Bauer said. Ennen, however, disagreed. "At the end of the day, that just doesn't wash. You don't go
and study in someone's research lab. As some abstract theoretical concept it's true. In day-to-day reality, research and educational space are not equivalent," he said. "Most students would say that the teachers are fantastic," Ennen continued. "But the facilities are crippling their ability to be innovative in the teaching techniques that they use. The physical space not only doesn't promote [such endeavors], it actually detracts
from them." While Ennen said that he would be the first to admit that "the decision to attend a certain
medical school is multifactorial, many prospective students had astutely honed in on the disparity between
Stanford's reputation and stature and the state of its facilities." Ennen and Garcia also differed on the effect that
an LCME decision to put the medical school on probation would have on recruitment efforts. Ennen
thought it would be "completely devastating," while Garcia thought it would have "a minor effect on those
people who were wavering between us and another school." Regardless of the hypothetical consequences of
probation, there now seems to be a galvanized consensus among both administrators and students
to overhaul teaching facilities. "This is something that clearly has to be done. This is something
that will be done. This is something that the LCME has mandated will be done," said Bauer.
Michael Ennen, a third-year medical student, said conditions in the
library are so bad that "on any given Saturday there are just as many
Stanford medical students in the UC-San Francisco medical library as there
are in Stanford's. That many people drive up."
And 8 years later.... Stanford emerged as the best west coast med school.
Way to go and find something from 1999.
Is it the "best" because US News told you it was the "best"? How do you know it's the "best"?
It's true Stanford Med does tend to attract very smart students....the kind that would secure impressive residencies no matter where they went to school.
As for my relationship with Stanford Med,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvCmwNdfTWg
HOLY FU<K
Now thats a lot of icing.
Stanford students still go up to the UCSF library to study, but probably b/c they are en route to enjoying themselves in the city later that night.
what i know now, is what i wish i knew then...i should've joined sdn a long time ago...then again, i should've made up my mind about medicine a long time ago too.
Students at Stanford actually seemed way more stressed than the Hopkins students did to me.
And residencies seem to absolutely hate it when schools are P/F with no ranking for 4 years and no AOA.
And yet, throughout four years of tracking match lists, Stanford always seems to have the best top-to-bottom list.
One month as a graduate student at Stanford convinced me to withdraw my application to Stanford Med.
If the USnews and world reports didn't rank on NIH funding stanford training would be the butt end of a joke.
Students at Stanford actually seemed way more stressed than the Hopkins students did to me.
And residencies seem to absolutely hate it when schools are P/F with no ranking for 4 years and no AOA.
Can you elaborate on "ridiculous/annoying group of people" though?
I can elaborate on "ridiculous/annoying group of people": that's a bunch of crap. I was at Stanford for years, and I know many of the people who are MS1-4's now, and I like all of them. Not one of them is ridiculous or annoying, and they are all quite different people. I always think it's absurd when people say "people at XX med school are jerks!" ...come on, that's such a silly and broad generalization. Also, "better name" is maybe the most subjective statement on earth. You will not get a bad medical education at Stanford, and this talk of "barely accredited" and "annoying people" is just pure bunkum. So the med school buildings are slightly older than other things on the campus. Guess what? You can go study in your choice of 20+ beautiful libraries anywhere else on the campus, which, by the way, looks like a cross between an arboretum and an architectural utopia. Anybody who tells you Stanford is not amazing is huffing glue. Perfect? No. Is UCSF or Hopkins better? Depends what you want. Awesome? Yes, definitely.
I rest my case
Wow, a personal attack. You are definitely "resting your case."
Wow, a personal attack. You are definitely "resting your case."
Anybody who tells you Stanford is not amazing is huffing glue.
I was merely pointing out that people who want to spend 4 years with people like you should apply to stanford. You must be tired and cranky from all the call you guys don't take.
I was merely pointing out that people who want to spend 4 years with people like you should apply to stanford. You must be tired and cranky from all the call you guys don't take.
My comment was directed to everybody in this thread who was thrashing Stanford. It was not directed at you personally, and you are being disingenuous by suggesting that it was. It is also clear that I was not literally saying that you huff glue. The expression is purposefully absurd because I wanted to use it to attack a position, not a person. You, however, pointed to my exact words and then made a (negative) personal judgment of the type of person I must be to have typed them. And then, in this very post that I'm responding to, you did the same thing again.
Do you really think that you are an accurate judge of "people like me" based on one post that I made on an internet forum? 90% of what I wrote was about Stanford, yet the entirety of your last two posts was about about me. You also know nothing about our schedules, so making a snide aside about your being in med school and taking call does nothing to make you look cooler or more hardcore.
Just giving my perspective.
To everyone else: Notice also that stanford students are very defensive.
Also, Stanford pays tuition credit for traveling for international experience. Does anyone know if it is easy to get funding from Hopkins?
Tyger - Hopkins gives $3,000 for research with any Hopkins-affiliated researcher in the summer after the first year. Given that there are people with Hopkins affiliations worldwide, this could be useful towards an international experience. The same page lists some small additional funding available for international travel. Keep in mind that this money is received on top of any other funding - including departmental funding, payment by your PI, and scholarships.
About the Hopkins vs Stanford debate:
Both are highly regarded institutions, and my gut instinct is to say, "You visited both schools - what did you think?" You're asking a really interesting but broad question, so you're getting similarly broad answers, bordering on a flamewar.
Some things are virtually impossible to answer objectively. For example, does Hopkins have better clinical training than Stanford? Nobody has spent a full two years doing clinical training at both places, so nobody is eminently qualified to answer that. Sure, some people have done their clinical training at one and then residency at the other, but they're seeing a cross section of students that may or may not correspond with the majority of med students at either institution (and I haven't even seen anyone with such credentials posting in this thread).
My suggestion is to find specific questions that would help you make your decision and ask those. Being aware of which ones are essentially unanswerable will make the process more fruitful. This is not to say that you won't get some good discussion out of this thread, but the ad hominems have already begun - no fault of yours.
Hey, if residency directors want to enter the fray and let us know what they think, more power to them.While I don't know this for sure, I would imagine that residency directors have a pretty good sense of how the clinical training in each institution compare. I understand the sentiment though - it's difficult to quantify this information especially without bias from things like perceived school ranking, quality of the education, rigor of admissions, etc.
Stanford. Christina Yang is an ex-graduate.
But if youre looking for a more direct and traditional path to an MD, Hopkins might be better--not that you cant do amazingly diverse things at Hop, I just didnt find the same interdisciplinary excitement when researching the school.
What say the current students at said institutions?
If you consider the cagefighter in the class of 2009 "direct and traditional", then I'd have to agree with you.
Cagefighter? What is this 'cagefighter' of which you speak?
Hopkins has a former Ultimate Fighter in the class of 2009. Seriously, he is jacked.