I'm at UT memphis, accept, write me, we deffinitely need to talk. I chose Memphis because of all the schools I interviewed at (Georgetown, EVMS, USUHS, Vandy, etc) I thought you got the best clinical experience in your last two years. They are affiliated with the Med, the level I trauma center for the region. And Memphis being Memphis (yeah, it has a lot of downsides, but so does Johnson City) half of them are uninsured, so as a med student it is much more hands on (I personally believe because they are less scared of being sued). The whole curriculum is skewed towards starting your clinical years earlier. For example, I'm in my last block of my first year. Exams are three weeks away (one of which is spring break), then a week of some BS alternative curriculum in which you shadow a doctor out in town (cool) and learn how to do parts of the physical exam with standardized patients and stuff. Then we start our second year for about two months before breaking for the summer. All this is to finish the basic science stuff sooner and get in the clinic. And yes, we do very very well on boards for step I.
ETSU has a pretty good program, but its pretty new. Also, its true concentration is producing doctors for the East Tennessee region. Check your map, you won't be stationed in East Tennessee no matter what branch. A very minor concern of mine would be bias against you since you are deffiniltely leaving the region. This is pretty trivial, and probably wouldn't happen, so pick where you feel most comfortable.
Yeah, Memphis is a crazy place to live. I'm deffinitely leaving, but I'm glad that I've lived here. The politics are SO screwed up it's worth being here to watch. The restaurants aren't that bad (compared to Norfolk, where I thought we had everything), the traffic isn't bad, and povery is pretty bad. However, it's a lot more metropolitan than Johnson City. You do get sushi here, you just have to go to a bunch of mediocre places before finding a good one. However it is FLAT. No mountains. I grew up in East Tennessee, and always loved that. It's not the same here. You'll be in class all the time though, or in a book, or on this website so it is relatively moot.
There actually are quite a few of us Navy HPSP people here in Memphis. Two in my class and some others in the other classes, so you will have a support system along that line, but 99% of your time is academics, so that doesn't really matter. I have found this place to be super non-competitive (if you don't want to go into orthopedic sugery, the cutters are obvious and have their own little club). People really help each other, send links out to useful sites, etc. It is pretty low key, and I deffinitely don't regret coming here.
The othere consideration I'd give is that apparantly from reading on this website, military training means you will see far less obscure pathology. Not so here. It could serve as a great foundation for you. That's what I'm counting on. You will see what I call OIM, only in Memphis, this includes driving habits, politics, etc. If you excel in completely crappy driving (merging onto the interstate into the left lane and 45 MPH with a broken windshield and smokin tailpipe) you are allowed to apply to move to Norfolk. Also, if want to see a ten year old who shot his foot while riding his bike, this is a good place to go. If you want to see diabetes due to obesity, go to any school in TN.
Also remember that St Judes is here, which presents a wonderful opportunity to see things that you might never see, it is also heart breaking.
I didn't intend for this to be a huge recruting piece for UT, so I apologize. Please PM me, we probably should keep in touch just for the HPSP side of things.
