You should have quit earlier.
Jeff has the #2 optho residency and one of the best ortho residencies in the country... Do you know what Rothman is? The place is an ortho publishing behemoth. Jeff's spine fellowship is the most productive of ALL the programs in the US.
So basically, if you're interested in ortho or optho, which are two incredibly competitive programs, you have access to some of the best residencies in the country.
Yeah... but none of that filters into the life of a med student, right?
In sum, it might not matter from your end, but talk to any of the attendings I work for that conduct residency and fellowship interviews over here and all else equal, I can tell you they would pick Jeff alums over the other two for the ortho residency and fellowship here. This to the point that they were shocked that I was still pursuing Einstein even though I got into Jeff. I got asked, "Why the heck would you do that," multiple times when they asked me if I was going to go to Jeff and I told them I was still wl'ed at AE.
And this is at the pointy end of the stick for places to do residency/fellowship so... yeah.
Obviously my knowledge is biased since I work in Ortho/Spine/Ortho Onc, but the attendings were probably twice as happy as I was when I got in. And I was pretty freaking psyched.
Jeff as a school focuses on training the best physicians it can possibly train. Their resources are directed to reflect this focus and clearly that affects them in the research ranking so to speak. But research funding totals don't necessarily coincide with the quality of the research, just that more people are getting funding.
Jeff punches far above the weight class the rankings would imply.
Jeff Alum: a few comments.
I'm non-surgical, but got to do electives at both Wills Eye and Rothman and those were some awesome months. The Onco clinic at Wills is insane with patients coming from all over the world, and though they don't let the students anywhere near the VIP cases, there's something cool about the fact that some of the top athletes in the world are getting their ortho work done in the OR next to you.
Someone mentioned Drexel being about 300 students, Jeff is around 270 at the moment if I remember correctly and when I was there I think we were the larger school. It did make the place seem rather impersonal at times and I did often feel like a number when I had an issue to talk to the Dean's office about. and FWIW, the "Dean of Students" or whatever the title is was one of the rudest people I've ever met in my medical training... and I'm far from the only person with such a bad experience.
You really can't use research rankings to judge the schools. Jefferson has a lot of clinical research, but quite a bit less basic science, mainly because there's (essentially) no larger research university to include in research totals. For example I did undergrad research in basic science at a top 10 med school. We were covered under the "[top 10 university] school of medicine" for our lab, but it was essentially just basic biology that would be at "department of biology" anywhere else. Jeff obviously can't do things like that. As for the primary care side of things, Jefferson's Family Med may be the best program on the east coast.
I don't think the gap between the quality of Jeff and Temple is all that large. Jeff is a swanky hospital system compared to Temple, but Temple has a totally different patient population and has a reputation for more "hands on" learning from their students. If you're looking to work with the under-served, Jefferson really isn't the school to give you that exposure.
Pretty much all medical schools in philly except Penn send their students outside the city for rotations, and for what it's worth, some of the farther out rotations have really good reputations. Reading Hospital always had great reviews (visited by all 4 non-penn schools), as did York. Some of the Pittsburgh places got high marks, though we weren't rotating there when I was a student. Virtually everyone at Jeff has to go to Delaware for peds.
Center City > North Philly > random suburb outside of Philly
As for this, most of the Temple students I knew lived in the same neighborhoods as Jeff students. Temple is an easy ride up the BSL. Same with Drexel students in the second two years.
Drexel's hospital system is a bit of a mess, but at least they have a main hospital, which gives them a leg up on PCOM.
Penn > Jefferson >= Temple > Drexel >PCOM.
