MSU CHM vs Wayne State University SOM

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soon2bmd

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Need some help. I've been accepted to both schools, and I am trying to decide which to matriculate to. I've basically reviewed both on a number of different criteria. Although they are different in many different areas, the differences seem to have advantages and disadvantages that cancel each other out. Its really hard for me to make a clear cut choice, and I was just wondering if maybe some students could offer some sound advice, what do you think, what might you consider, what might you do? If you know some insider knowledge, feel free to share. I greatly appreciate this

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Hi, welcome to SDN.

I had the same choice your making. I was also accepted at both Michigan State CHM and Wayne State University. I liked both schools upon visiting, yet I chose Michigan State for a number of reasons. Yet, this was a hard decision.

1- Location: Wayne State is in the middle of Detroit where housing is expensive, and lets face it crime is high. The city is pretty dirty and the roads can be terror.
Michigan State is in East Lansing is a good area relatively safe from crime. The rents for single bedroom apts tend to run around the $500 range.

2- Communication with schools: I have found that Michigan State quickly returns any communication I have with the school, via email or telephone. Their staff has been extremely friendly and welcoming. Wayne State is very slow to answer emails and phone messages. I found their office staff to be relatively neutral, showing little emotion.

3- Education Quality: Both schools offer a good education. Michigan State if more clinically oriented and directed towards primary care. Wayne State offers the experience of being within several of Detroits busiest hospitals. I feel Wayne takes a slight edge in this category, yet for me, I've worked in the ER for 2 years and have had a lot of clinical experiences.

4- Class size: I feel that Wayne State with a class of 256 is a bit too large and attention can not be given to individual students. It is also true that MSU combines lectures of CHM and COM the first year, which makes the lecture the size of about 200 anyway.

5- 3rd and 4th year: At Wayne, you stay in Detroit and do rotations. At MSU, you are placed in satellite campuses in either Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Flint, Saginaw, or Marquette. This requires a move after 2 years.

6- Family: This was a consideration for me. Lansing is just an hour drive from home for me while Wayne is 3 hrs. I felt that a much needed break at home from studies would be easier if I went to MSU instead of Wayne.

Just my opinions...good luck

John AKA Mossjoh
 
Josh,

What school did you go to for undergrad? I'm just curious, I live in Holland.
 
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sorry john, I called you josh, i've been up for like 20 hours so bear with me
 
Being a very recent grad of CHM and having my best friend who will be graduating from Wayne State this Thursday, I'd say that both schools are very good. He thinks Wayne State does a better job than MSU of U of M at preparing their students clinically and of course I think MSU does a better job. I'm sure the students at U of M think that their school does the best job. In the end, you're going to get very good training wherever you go.

Some things my friend at Wayne and I tend to agree on is that the financial aid department at MSU is vastly superior and more responsive than Wayne's, although it has been getting better at Wayne State. The administration does seem to be more responsive at MSU (I mean we do only have about 100 people a year) and when you go to the communities, each community has their own dean and support staff, so basically you're more or less pampered by that staff because once in the communities there's only about 15-25 students/year, so it's even smaller. The whole class size things during the first two years doesn't really matter much either. Probably only about 75% of the class will attend lectures after the first few weeks of school anyway, so plenty of open seats at either school. MSU also has a real nice student facility (which I never got to use as it was built just as I was entering my clinical years) which I'm very impressed with and good computer labs.

We get every major holiday off at MSU, even during our clinical rotations (no matter what rotation you're on, even surgery and IM). This doesn't seem to be the case at Wayne where you aren't gauranteed those days off. Trust me, it's nice to know that you won't be working on Christmas, at least not until you're getting PAID to be in the hospital. Call sucks at both places although it's gotten better at MSU with the surgery call being reduced by a little so we're not doing q3's in surgery anymore. This is a bit community specific as well. Some of our communities don't have enough call rooms so some call is home-call (what this means is that you'll just be up all night, no bed for you to try and get some rest).

I'm rambling, but I'm a little tired so bear with me....the first years tend to "suck" a bit more at WSU (according to my friend), but he says the clinical years are incredible. Board scores are too individualistic to even compare, no matter what school you go to. There's people who score in the top 1% at both MSU and WSU, and also people who fail it. Match results are good at both places and neither school is considered to be a top 20 powerhouse like the other state school (UofM), but I'm going into the residency that I wanted, and got my 3rd choice while most of my classmates got their 1st choice in residency. I heard WSU match was excellent as well.

I didn't move for my clinical years so it wasn't bad for me, but moving can be a pain so that's certainly a negative for MSU. Also (well at least for now) you get your meals paid for at every community except Grand Rapids as a student (although, you never know when this will end, but it's so nice to not worry about paying for food during the 3rd and 4th years) and of course parking is pretty cheap at MSU (when you're on campus) and you don't pay for parking during the clinical years here.

Negatives about MSU, certainly for me the primary care focus didn't help me much (I decided on radiology), but luckily MSU is fortunate enough to have some incredible radiologists on campus (I lucked out on that one). We're P/F during years 1 and 2 and H/P/F during the 3rd year. The only problem is that the H grade won't appear on your transcripts (COM apparently doesn't give honors and both colleges have to agree to it in order to have this placed on the University's transcripts...this is the excuse they told us when a lot of the class complained about it). This can be a problem trying to get into competitive residencies, because although the Honor grades will be on the Dean's letter, this isn't released till November 1 and I had a half dozen interview offers before that date and they offered me an interview without knowing I honored all those clerkships. This is no big deal for primary care residencies though.

The people there are great. Some of the students that were with me during my 3 and 4th years will be lifelong friends, but I'm sure Wayne is the same in that regard.

The clinical experience (ie procedures) seems to be comparable. I've never put in a chest tube and neither has my friend from Wayne (trust me, I want to, the residents just wanted that procedure too bad) but we've both done just about every other procedure (tons of intubations, art lines, central lines (femoral, IJ, subclavian), codes, peripheral IV's and I'm not worried at all about my physical exam skills or medical knowledge going into residency.

I'm in the Detroit area now and will be doing my residency at Beaumont, but I live in Farmington Hills now which is pretty nice (albiet expensive) but I couldn't imagine living in Metro Detroit and a good majority of the WSU students live in the suburbs and commute. My friend lives about 45 minutes away from the school and did that drive or longer for all 4 years. I was a 7 minute drive away from my hospital in Lansing, and when you have to be there at 4 am to pre round on your surgical patients, every precious minute of sleep matters.

You'll be trained just fine no matter where you choose though. Go with your gut. Oh, and although my friend is graduating (see, another plus for MSU, we graduate at the begining of May, they graduate at the beginning of June and remember some residencies actually start toward the middle or third week of June), if you want to talk to him, I can get his e-mail for you so you can hear about WSU straight from him.
 
I went to Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI.

See <a href="http://www.aquinas.edu" target="_blank">http://www.aquinas.edu</a>

John
 
John,

I am a junior at Aquinas College right now. I plan on graduating in December 2011. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience with the application process while at Aquinas and working with their faculty? Any advice? Were you well prepared after graduating from AQ?

Teresa
 
I am also trying to make the decision between MSU CHM and Wayne...After reading this thread and some research it seems that the main advantages for MSU are location and a more personal/helpful environment from the school and for Wayne is the clinical years. I currently work as a nurse for DMC in one of the downtown ERs and can definitely speak for Wayne's great clinical opportunities and growing reputation. However, I can also speak for preferring to live in East Lansing over Detroit. I have also heard that MSU offers more hands-on opportunities because of the multiple community campuses and student/faculty ratio. I rarely see medical students do procedures where I work because of the high numbers of both medical students and Wayne State residents.

I want to go into an ER residency, does anyone have any input on if I should choose Wayne over MSU for this reason? I saw a few ER matches on MSUs list from last year but many more on Wayne's list. I am overall leaning toward MSU, but if it will make a big difference in getting into an ER residency, I will chose Wayne.

I also applied for the rural medicine program at MSU in Marquette (for years 3 and 4), I heard that it entails a lot of hands-on experience since there are so few medical students in the program and that it offers some flexibility in clinical rotations according to interest. Any thoughts?
 
Here are additional factor to consider (some might have already been mentioned).

1. MSU-CHM conducts exams roughly every 2 weeks opposed to Wayne SOM which does them every 4-5 weeks. I believe this is a major deciding factor. 5 weeks of material is too much to be tested all at once --> stressful.
2. Detroit is not a clean city. A lot of the infrastructure is old. Parking is very annoying down there (I went to Wayne for undergrad/grad school). Detroit is not safe, especially at night time. This means that the majority of Wayne SOM student body commutes from the suburbs. Think about snowy winter days and all the delays associated with this --> time wasted. Also, it could make meeting up with classmates to study a bit more of a trouble.
3. The Detroit hospitals themselves are not anything to miss either. I've done quite a bit of work at several of the DMC hospitals and lets be honest...the environment isn't anything to miss. Again, the buildings are old. The atmosphere is very much ghetto. The food in the cafe is often not that good. Lastly, those hospitals are saturated with students --> meaning limited opportunity per student. Think about it...300 students X 2 (M3 and M4)= 600. Plus MSU-DO M3/M4 --> 200 students. That is a total of 800 med students. Now factor in the # of residents!!! Its just harder to stand out! MSUCHM has 100 students in Grand Rapids and 100 in E. Lansing which are then to be distributed amongst 6 clinical campuses where there isn't much competition amongst other students.
4. Grand Rapids is a very nice area. There is a lot of clinical opportunities there (several hospitals surrounding the medical school building). The building itself is gorgeous with very new and up-to-date equipment.
5. Lastly, I've heard this argument several time: "Wayne allows you to see more because the patients that are usually treated by those hospitals have complex/advanced cases that have gone unnoticed due to the quality of the patient". This is not true! Lets be real, who gets hospitalized and admitted for a cold? Every hospital has its share of unique/complex cases. You can learn a lot at Beaumont, De Vos, St. Mary's, Henry Ford, or the DMC hospitals --> Anywhere really since they contain ill patients. This isn't specific to the DMC/HF hospitals in Detroit.
6. Overall, I just feel that you can get the same quality of education in both schools since they both are really great institutions but the daily life would be way more stressful at Wayne SOM.

Go Spartans! :love:
 
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