med students rate their schools

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This is a good idea. AMSA had something similar, but I can't find it on google search anymore.

The problem with making a list here is that maybe some folks don't want to reveal which schools they are from to reveal their opinions about it. So I can't recommend it.
 
Small business idea: HOT or NOT for medical schools. Run ads for money or change per school to look up the data.

#ApplicationBubble
 
unnumzaan said:
This may be difficult to implement because unlike restaurants, hair salons, gyms, etc., most people only ever go to one medical school. Limited perspective.
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Wrong market target. The current medical students do not pay.

medical hopefuls like me (pre-meds) pay 1$ a pop (each school) to see reviews and comments by current medical students. And, of course, to find out if they are HOT or NOT!!!
 
Syns said:
Wrong market target. The current medical students do not pay.

medical hopefuls like me (pre-meds) pay 1$ a pop (each school) to see reviews and comments by current medical students. And, of course, to find out if they are HOT or NOT!!!
Click to expand...

Didn't say anything about monetization. The value of the service is reduced by medical students not knowing anything but what they have.
 
unnumzaan said:
Didn't say anything about monetization. The value of the service is reduced by medical students not knowing anything but what they have.
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It still has value. The real value comes from knowing whether people are consistently dissatisfied with the school. If there's something off about the school (like frequent bullying), you'll know. You don't need to compare schools to know that you're miserable at the school.

You can even put a personality/values test to see what sorts of personalities are at each of the schools. You can take your own test and compare your compatibility with the test results of people at x university. That's probably better than getting sucked into that whole "I'm happy because my school's presitigious" bias.
 
I could see it with different categories like student affairs, rotation scheduling(I forget what that department was called at my school haha), different courses, etc
 
So instead of a rate my school you could see the breakdown of different areas/department....everyone has complaints, even Ivy League
 
One of my friends is a 4th year and just committed suicide yesterday. I would be interested in seeing which schools have higher dissatisfaction ratings and suicides rates.
 
MadisonMG said:
One of my friends is a 4th year and just committed suicide yesterday. I would be interested in seeing which schools have higher dissatisfaction ratings and suicides rates.
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I'm so sorry to hear about your friend. Depression and anxiety isn't uncommon among med students, but what are med schools doing about is? How are their student health services, etc? These are excellent points. I'm so sorry your friend had to lose her life to bring this to my eyes. Condolences cannot go far enough I'm afraid...
 
Well, I know for a fact the med school he was at (UCSD) had an excellent med school psych support system. They even have a big program called UCSD HEAR 'Healer Education Assessment ad Referral Program' that really goes out of their way to educate and treat med students with burnout, depression, and suicide.
 
Wow...I'm so sorry that with all their services it didn't help. And it's true, like my own therapist says, sometimes there is no one to blame, even if you want there to be. Again, regardless of the backstory, I'm glad his school provided care. It will never take away the pain of losing someone and I hope and pray that you find peace somewhere.
 
Aw thank you. It's so nice to see supportive people on here. Sometimes it can be really aggressive and defeatist. Thanks 🙂
 
MadisonMG said:
One of my friends is a 4th year and just committed suicide yesterday. I would be interested in seeing which schools have higher dissatisfaction ratings and suicides rates.
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Damn this caught me off guard. I'm so sorry to hear that. Hope you're doing well.
 
They do this for undergrad schools, so they ought to do it for med schools too. I, for one, think it would be extremely helpful. Who wants to go to a med school and be miserable all the time?
 
cloudmurder1 said:
They do this for undergrad schools, so they ought to do it for med schools too. I, for one, think it would be extremely helpful. Who wants to go to a med school and be miserable all the time?
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There is an underlying assumption here which I think is problematic: that a school in and of itself will make you miserable. Can schools have an impact on your quality of life? Sure. But I think the kind of people that are going to be miserable are likely to be miserable anywhere they end up.
 
NickNaylor said:
There is an underlying assumption here which I think is problematic: that a school in and of itself will make you miserable. Can schools have an impact on your quality of life? Sure. But I think the kind of people that are going to be miserable are likely to be miserable anywhere they end up.
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Seeing and hearing about the changes in demeanor of med students I know who are in med school, it honestly seems that the impact med school can have on one's quality of life is nontrivial, and thus it's important to choose the schools you apply to ama the school you attend wisely (which, of course, involves considering factors other than quality of life).
 
cloudmurder1 said:
Seeing and hearing about the changes in demeanor of med students I know who are in med school, it honestly seems that the impact med school can have on one's quality of life is nontrivial, and thus it's important to choose the schools you apply to ama the school you attend wisely (which, of course, involves considering factors other than quality of life).
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I completely agree, but I think to suggest that a school can make you "miserable" as a general rule is a bit of a stretch.
 
I wish this existed too. Yes, you only go to one medical school, but you can still evaluate what experiences you liked or didn't like. More importantly if you're unhappy that matters. Okay, maybe they were destined to be unhappy. Still great information. This school admits people that are "destined to be unhappy". You don't want to be surrounded by miserable people, nor do you want to become one yourself!

This would be amazing if it worked for medical schools:
http://www.studentsreview.com/PA/CMU.html
vs
http://www.studentsreview.com/TX/RU.html for ex.
 
All I can tell you is that in post-graduation surveys, when the students no longer have a"need' to protect the brand, the overwhelming majority of my students would attend our school if they had to do it all over again (> 90%). The remainder are split between going to an MD school, or not going to med school at all!
 
SouthernSurgeon said:
What's the incentive for current med students and alums to buy in?

Current students and alums are a inherently biased crowd - anything that negatively impacts the school negatively impacts them by association. So tbey are going to "protect the brand" in the overwhelming majority of cases.

You see that played out on SDN already. The only time you see someone badmouth their own school is if it's an outrageous situation or an outrageous individual.

So all you'd get for reviews are a lot of lip service positivity, with a few outlier horribly negative reviews.
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For whatever reason this doesn't seem to be the case for college reviews. In the end most people will look at USNWR for prestige, and survey sites as a metric for "do I actually want to go here".

Ex.
http://www.studentsreview.com/NJ/PU.html
http://www.studentsreview.com/MA/HU.html

Princeton's rampant grade deflation probably doesn't help. Despite Princeton repeatedly being #1 over Harvard on USNWR, it seems that people prefer Harvard.

I wouldn't be surprised if something similar were to happen with medical school reviews. Yale being rated better than WUSTL despite the prestige gap etc.
 
I like studentreviews' formatting. Rather than rely on the rating system, we can just have people read both the positive and negative reviews.

It'd be better to ask the people who are in charge of SDN if they'd be interested in starting a med school review section for their website. We can start a wiki site and have volunteers manage/censor new reviews. Med students will just send their reviews through a submission form, and volunteer contributors will help sort things out. We can also start putting together information into streamlined format. MSAR is super scarce in information, and med school websites tend to be terribly cluttered. I say ask SDN because we already have a community here. If I started my own website/wiki, barely anyone would contribute to it.



Edit:
I'm too lazy to contribute, lol.
 
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http://medical-schools.startclass.com allows user reviews and also has a pretty strong amount of free MSAR style data. I haven't checked lately to see if it's still comparing well to the new MSAR.

Just talking to current students is best, tho. If they're unhappy, they'll tell you what's wrong with their school right to your face.
 
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