bored... and it since its app time again, some folks might find the following list useful (ps - feel free to add stuff too
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- location: dont bother applying to a school if you know it somewhere you'd rather not be.. it really comes back to haunt you around interview time
- curriculum: not really a biggie for me - i think too much is made of the PBL vs. lecture vs. whatever newfangled deal med schools are selling today. but this kind of stuff matters to some folks
- tuition: a pretty important one to me - remember loan repayments can be ~$1K/month for 10 years if you take out something on the order of $100K
- tier: you want to apply to a pretty broad spectrum of schools - so make sure your list is comprised of reaches, levels and "safeties".
some others might include:
-research - if you're into some unique type of research for instance community health, epidemiology then definately look at schools which have opportunities for med students to do research in those fields. this kind of stuff isnt always immediately obvious from schools websites - SDN is a good place to find out stuff like this
. also if you're just interested in doing serious research then schools which provide a lot of support for these opportunities are clutch. stanford and yale come to mind with their 5th year free deal.
-combined degree opportunities - again if you're into that kind of stuff