Mayo Clinic MN vs. UVA vs. UVM

[pinecone41]

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Been spinning my wheels for a while now...any insight is much appreciated! Right now, I'm fluctuating between preferring Mayo or UVA, mostly depending on whether I'm feeling more concerned about research connections and opportunities (favors Mayo), or about student culture and community support (favors UVA).

For context, I'm first in my family in medicine, URM from a small town, and went to a "prestigious" undergrad that helped open a lot of doors for me I might not have had otherwise. My family focuses a lot on the ranking/prestige of institutions, largely because they view "prestigious" institutions as my "ticket" to upwards mobility, and I admit that has rubbed off on me somewhat, but I'm not sure how much smaller differences in rankings really matter for med school. I only mention this because I have a lot of family pressure to just pick the "best ranked" school right now.

My biggest "wants" in a med school are: I can do ample student research, I have access to mentoring and career support, my school has good residency matches, I feel I belong in the area/community.

Thank you all!

Mayo Clinic (Rochester MN)
Pros

• Rankings: Highest ranked program / excellently ranked and respected hospital
• Research: highest emphasis on student research, only curriculum with explicit research time built-in
• Flexibility: Mayo doesn't have vacations (which is a Con below), but their "Selective" system means I'd have a week after every block in preclinicals to use for either vacation or a short 20-hour mini-class of my choosing. Mayo also has the most flexibility in terms of doing away rotations for clerkships or electives.
• Mentoring: Mayo has a very robust faculty mentoring system for students, and with the small class size too it would be easy for me to get personalized mentors.
• Living: pretty affordable cost of living + the fact Rochester is basically a city built around Mayo, there's lots of housing aimed at students.
• Cost: Mayo gave me the most generous aid, and I'm paying for school/cost of living 100% on my own, and will need hefty loans regardless of where I go, so it'd be nice to minimize my loans.

Cons

• Farthest away: the only school that's a guaranteed plane flight away from my family and S/O (we're OK with long-distance, but long-distance by plane is a little harder than by car). I would like to end up in the Northeast long-term so I don't love the idea of going far for school in general.
• Location (The Midwest): my two biggest hobbies are hiking spring/summer/fall, and then downhill skiing in the winter, and while there's walking trails and allegedly a few little ski hills, it'll be nothing close to the Northern Appalachians and the mountains of New England I've spent my life around. I know med school isn't full of free time, but I don't love the idea of essentially having to fly somewhere for some elevation change. Rochester MN is surrounded by almost entirely farm fields for over an hour in any direction.
• Student culture: on my in-person tour as well as virtual calls, I got the impression students see themselves more as individual employees of the hospital than as members of a student body. There's not really much of a larger University to feel a part of (+ only ~50 students at MN), and the campus doesn't have a lot of student-specific buildings either. Also, it seems a higher percent of students here are married/have kids/are in their 30s - I am NOT judging anyone in these demographics and would be totally happy to study with and befriend students of all backgrounds, but I'm early 20s and it would be a different atmosphere if many of my peer students are at a different stage of personal life than I am.
• Vacation: no explicit vacation in the Mayo curriculum, just "Selective" weeks that you can use either for a class or for a vacation (I worry about possible pressure to skip vacations to take more classes and "get ahead")

University of Virginia
Pros

• Student culture: by far, UVA has spent the most effort to market their happy students; in my interview and second look they would use phrases like "the chill elite school" or "the school with the happy students", and the students I've spoken to really seem to live up to that description. They have been the most enthusiastic about their school, and they seem to have the most robust/active student wellness groups too.
• Early and longitudinal clinic exposure: I really like UVA's Patient-Student Partnership that pairs each student with a specific patient for all 4 years.
• Dual-degree potential: Based on what I learned in my interviews, UVA has the most robust and manageable dual-degree options, which is something I'm a bit interested in. This is also a pro b/c UVA will have the most post-college young-adults to connect with socially and professionally due to having many large graduate programs.
• Reputation: Might be a balance between Mayo's high prestige and UVM's more middle-ground prestige? It's had a lot of up and down movement on the rankings charts in recent times.

Cons

• Weather: I actually like the cold and snow a fair bit, so I might miss the winters.
• Research: UVA does offer a research summer program, and substantial 4th-year elective time, but outside of those sections, research would have to be self-added around the existing curriculum instead of built-in.
• Residency match: UVA sends a lot of people to VA or bordering states, which could certainly be just a product of where UVA students want to go, but it makes me slightly nervous about the difficulty of matching into a Northeast residency.
• Larger surrounding area: I've toured Charlottesville and it's great, but I have some reservations about the broader VA area and communities in terms of the local attitudes towards URM (some URMs on the calls were saying they try to stay in Charlottesville more often than not to spend less time with locals.

University of Vermont (Larner)
Pros

• Longitudinal: Somewhat similar to UVA, there's a longitudinal pairing with a local PCP for the preclinical years.
• Closest by: UVM is closest to family and my S/O (a decent drive, but nothing terrible) so I would be able to retain my current support system while I get acclimated to school and be more able to visit / be visited.
• Location: I'm a mountain-lover to the core, and will probably end up living near the VT/NH/NY mountains someday, so I know I would love the surrounding area and all it has to offer during free time.
• I do already know a couple students here who are very happy to be there (+ would also mean I have a little bit more support system present to start out).

Cons

• Ranking: UVM is my lowest-ranked school, and similarly it seems their students are a little less likely to have competitive matches for residency.
• Academic culture: In some ways this isn't a con, but when I visited I got the sense that a lot of students don't necessarily prioritize their education as much as other schools. Yes, in a P/F system, you only need enough to pass, but personally I want to learn the material as well as I can rather than learning only enough to pass, so I am not sure I align with the trending academic culture here as much.
• Research opportunities: UVM is the least research-focused school in the mix, and doesn't have any protected time in the curriculum for pursuing research.
• Cost of living: OK OK, I know Burlington VT is still very cheap compared to cities (I live in Boston, I get it) but it's the priciest of my 3 options. School also has the highest average debt.
• Advising: this is not something UVM advertises as its strongest suit.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

UVA—best compromise

 

[ujsc]

Go with UVA. It is obviously seen as your personal preference and it is a fine school.

PS: You mention looking for vacation time in medical school. Good luck with that!

 

[orangestar9]

UVA is great. Known for a lot of great research, great curriculum, matches well to competitive places (Hopkins programs, Harvard programs, even CA Stanford and UC programs every year). You won't miss out on much in the prestige+research by going there (Mayo is better, but not ridiculously so).

Congrats on your successes!!

 

[pinecone41]

Go with UVA. It is obviously seen as your personal preference and it is a fine school.

PS: You mention looking for vacation time in medical school. Good luck with that!

Hahaha, fair point about the vacation time - I more meant "any time that isn't in-session class/clerkship" rather than a large college-style vacation break. UVA and UVM both have scheduled vacation weeks around major holidays, between major curriculum sections, etc. Mayo is unique (among my schools, at least) in that there's no true vacation weeks anywhere in the 4 years - instead they have weeks scattered through where you usually take a 1-week mini-class, but sometimes are allowed to take the week off.

 

[Arsartium]

Hahaha, fair point about the vacation time - I more meant "any time that isn't in-session class/clerkship" rather than a large college-style vacation break. UVA and UVM both have scheduled vacation weeks around major holidays, between major curriculum sections, etc. Mayo is unique (among my schools, at least) in that there's no true vacation weeks anywhere in the 4 years - instead they have weeks scattered through where you usually take a 1-week mini-class, but sometimes are allowed to take the week off.

Congrats @pinecone41 . Great choices all around! I would agree that based on your post UVA seems like a good fit. As someone who has lived in quite a few parts of America, "local attitudes towards URMs" is pretty much a concern anywhere you go in the U.S. The only difference is how subtle people are with conveying those attitudes. Certain parts of East Boston and Jackson, Mississippi can be remarkably similar.

To clarify for Mayo, characterizing 1 week selectives as "mini-classes" might be a little restrictive. Between research time and selectives, there is nearly a year of unstructured time across 4 years that you can do with as you please. People vary in their approach to selectives. Mayo treats you like an adult. If you want to take vacation do it. If you want to do more research and shadow in the OR do that (although operative volume is pretty low during Thanksgiving, Spring Break, and late December/early Jan so just take the rest). If you want to do a reading selective on a beach in Maui do that. Frankly, any advantage in clinical exposure gained through selectives in your preclinical years is essentially moot after your first clerkship .