MWU AZCOM vs WESTERN COMPNW OR

[starstarstarxingxing]

Fortunate to have been given options!!


About me:

- California native, would ideally want to come back to California for rotations and residency

- Interested in non-primary specialties (psych/neuro)

- Nontrad and have been out of school for a bit



WESTERN COMP NW LEBANON

Pros:

1. Oregon is beautiful with lots of nature
2. Curriculum allows me to have a less stressful life (F/P/HP)

Cons:

1. Match list makes me nervous only because there are only a handful of people that match into specialties I am interested in and locations in California are mostly Army-based
2. Rotation sites are in PNW in more rural areas (Does anyone know if COMPNW students can get on COMP rotation sites?)
3. School is a singular building and there are few things to do in the city itself.

MIDWESTERN AZCOM

Pros:

1. Rotations in California
2. Competitive Match placements with more desirable locations + competitive specialties
3. Suburban - closer to a city so things are a lot more acessible
4. Airport is nearer and is closer to home

Cons:

1. expensive as hell
2. Curriculum is super intense - I will be very stressed out (quarter system, 2-3 exams a week at 7am, graded A/B/C ect)
3. 120 degrees summer in Arizona

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[m1redsox]

Don’t pay the tuition for Midwestern. There is no good reason to do that. COMP-NW will make you just as competitive to match in CA in psych or neuro. Those are among the least competitive specialties. Seems like most of your worries are with the match lists, but those are super arbitrary and I wouldn’t worry about it.

 

[starstarstarxingxing]

Don’t pay the tuition for Midwestern. There is no good reason to do that. COMP-NW will make you just as competitive to match in CA in psych or neuro. Those are among the least competitive specialties. Seems like most of your worries are with the match lists, but those are super arbitrary and I wouldn’t worry about it.

Thank you for your insight! Yes I was definitely caught up on the match lists, can you elaborate on why it's arbitrary?

 

[m1redsox]

Thank you for your insight! Yes I was definitely caught up on the match lists, can you elaborate on why it's arbitrary?

Match lists are arbitrary because they are subject to:
1) How competitive the individual applicant is for their specialty
2) Where the individual applicant wants to go

Some people would rather go unmatched than sit in CA traffic; not everyone wants to go to Harvard; some people think dermatology is nasty.

For example, the two smartest kids in my class (270+ step, AOA, all Hs on rotations) ranked family medicine and neurology at small, no-name programs over Harvard, Hopkins, Mayo, etc based on things like family connections, finances, and specific training experiences that a program offers (ie I know the neuro guy really wanted to be able to read EMGs himself without a fellowship, while at Harvard all the fellows did those, not the residents). A lot of the time, we get caught up on Harvard, Penn, and Columbia med schools' match lists without considering that we already know these applicants care most about prestige and would choose that over cost or family (obviously this is a massive overgeneralization, but you get the idea).

On the opposite side, some of the kids in my class who matched neurosurgery, plastics, derm and ortho at big name programs did so without AOA or perfect clinical grades. Some who matched preliminary positions received amazing interviews and merely fell through the cracks.

There is just way too much to consider. But for most people, neuro or psych in CA is extremely doable because those are not competitive specialties, and you will just need to use your signals and regional preferences appropriately. The name of your school will not carry much, if any, weight in that possibility (at least when debating between these two USDO programs).