Although being in the middle of cornfields has its disadvantages it also means that it is the main ambulatory clinic and hospital for people living within a 50-mile radius...which means lots of bread and butter, salt-of-the-earth type patients and definitely a great place to do neuro and gastro. If you had your mind set on trauma surgery or wanted to hone your scut work skills, then it would be a bad choice. But I doubt there is any center in the world with more volume and more variety in either of those fields than at Mayo. Those are two of the biggest departments (there are more staff neurologists and gastroenterologists at the Mayo Clnic (about 80 in each department) then there are practicing in the entire city of San Diego, CA).