I agree - UM has the biggest name and is the most academic/research oriented place in Michigan. They have subspecialty signout and, at least from the limited impression I got from interview day, it seemed like their faculty were on the nicer, more resident-friendly side for a large academic place. I ranked them fairly high, but one red flag for me was that they seemed to be hiding their residents on my interview day - I only met the chief resident and a couple of fellows. The PD and department chair also made a big point of claiming that they were interested in having some residents that were not academic/research oriented - a claim that felt a little phony/suspect to me.
I matched at William Beaumont and have been very pleased with my training here thusfar. It is a private hospital, although we are now associated with the new Oakland University-William Beaumont medical school (the first class started this past fall in 2011). I agree that we have nice facilities - with the exception of my interview at University of Vermont, which had just moved into a shiny new building, we have the nicest, least smelly gross room (with chairs and adjustable grossing benches and everything!) and one of the best resident rooms (everyone has their own cubicle with desktop computer, scope, etc.) I've seen. We also have a very high volume of surgicals (somewhere in the 60,000-70,000 range) with good case variety and only 12 residents - so you will see a lot and get good at working efficiently. I consider the program to be very resident-friendly. We have plenty of PAs, so we aren't required to do a ton of "scut" grossing of non-educational cases, staff are very laid back (doors always open, you can pop in and show anyone cases), and we have an awesome PD who is very responsive to resident concerns.
I think there is a fairly recent post about Henry Ford and DMC in one of the other threads that you should be able to find.
I have no personal experience with St. John...I think they only take 2 residents per year, which was too small for my taste, so I didn't apply there.
Feel free to PM me if you have more specific questions or want more info. 🙂
