Very happy to have to make a decision among these, but also extremely confused. Any thoughts?
If you don't go to Hopkins you'll likely regret it down the road. There's really nothing like it. Their residency match list is unparalleled.
Penn is great but certainly not head and shoulders above everything else. I put them in the same category as Columbia: prestigious but sort of pissed that they're not Harvard or Hopkins, and forever trying to prove something. Yale is considerably lower on the list, more like an upper-mid tier school with a limited patient population, mediocre hospital and undesirable environment.
Just my two cents, based on having studied this stuff for the past year or two. I'll be an intern in a couple of months, and so have just completed the residency interview cycle.
I personally don't agree with most of what's been said here. We're talking medical school. Not residency or hospitals. Yes, MGH and Hopkins have better hospitals than Penn or Yale. It doesn't necessarily mean you get a better medical school experience.
But I'd venture to say that's exactly what it means. The first two years are standardized, the same across the board everywhere. Most people stay at home after the first few weeks and study on their own, since it's more efficient than listening to some old dude's jokes. The quality of the medical education has everything, in my opinion, to do with third year. And third year is working face-to-face with the residents and attendings on each respective specialty rotation.
I've rounded at Hopkins before as a pre-med. In fact, I spent 60 hours one week on the neurology floor and following residents on consults. Hopkins is great, but there are A LOT of egomaniacs on the faculty there. Frankly, I felt like medical students got more attention/better environment at other medical schools that I've worked...some of them in crappy hospitals, especially in comparison to Hopkins. Cool patients, good doctors does not necessarily equal a better educational environment for someone at the medical student level, even as an M3. These are residency havens in my mind.
If you don't go to Hopkins you'll likely regret it down the road. There's really nothing like it. Their residency match list is unparalleled.
If you don't go to Hopkins you'll likely regret it down the road. There's really nothing like it. Their residency match list is unparalleled.
Penn is great but certainly not head and shoulders above everything else. I put them in the same category as Columbia: prestigious but sort of pissed that they're not Harvard or Hopkins, and forever trying to prove something. Yale is considerably lower on the list, more like an upper-mid tier school with a limited patient population, mediocre hospital and undesirable environment.
Just my two cents, based on having studied this stuff for the past year or two. I'll be an intern in a couple of months, and so have just completed the residency interview cycle.
If you don't go to Hopkins you'll likely regret it down the road. There's really nothing like it. Their residency match list is unparalleled.
Penn is great but certainly not head and shoulders above everything else. I put them in the same category as Columbia: prestigious but sort of pissed that they're not Harvard or Hopkins, and forever trying to prove something. Yale is considerably lower on the list, more like an upper-mid tier school with a limited patient population, mediocre hospital and undesirable environment.
Just my two cents, based on having studied this stuff for the past year or two. I'll be an intern in a couple of months, and so have just completed the residency interview cycle.
If you don't go to Hopkins you'll likely regret it down the road. There's really nothing like it. Their residency match list is unparalleled.
Penn is great but certainly not head and shoulders above everything else. I put them in the same category as Columbia: prestigious but sort of pissed that they're not Harvard or Hopkins, and forever trying to prove something. Yale is considerably lower on the list, more like an upper-mid tier school with a limited patient population, mediocre hospital and undesirable environment.
Just my two cents, based on having studied this stuff for the past year or two. I'll be an intern in a couple of months, and so have just completed the residency interview cycle.
Very happy to have to make a decision among these, but also extremely confused. Any thoughts?
I've rounded at Hopkins before as a pre-med. In fact, I spent 60 hours one week on the neurology floor and following residents on consults. Hopkins is great, but there are A LOT of egomaniacs on the faculty there. Frankly, I felt like medical students got more attention/better environment at other medical schools that I've worked...some of them in crappy hospitals, especially in comparison to Hopkins. Cool patients, good doctors does not necessarily equal a better educational environment for someone at the medical student level, even as an M3. These are residency havens in my mind.
Thanks so much for the input everyone. Personally, from second look weekends I felt that the students at Penn seemed a bit better socialized and that they had the chance to spend more time doing extracurricular activities. The student activities fair at JHU was really not as grand as I might have expected. There were only a few groups, and I found it somewhat contradictory that many of the students said that they came to JHU partially because of Bloomberg being there, and yet there was only 1 or 2 groups that did anything related to public health.
With that being said, however, I am pretty sure about getting an MD/MPH, and the opportunity to get my MPH at Hopkins on one of the many full tuition scholarships that they offer to medical students is really hard to turn down.
In all, it seemed to me like there are great opportunities at JHU for research, public health, global health, etc. but you really have to seek them out for yourself. At Penn, it seemed like they were really much more supportive of the students and provided everything for you.
Another thing I'm worried about is getting back to California for residency. I'm coming from an East Coast school, and I found out the hard way that breaking into that California scene is really hard if you're not going to school there in the first place (even if you're a resident). I'm trying to figure out if Hopkins might give me the better chance for making that future transition
i do see why you might get that impression. of course there is always the "individial experience" factor, but I'm a huge believer in the action speak louder than words attitude. while yea jhu has a good hospital, some of their practices go against what i think medicine should be about. most notably, they have separate gold/marble plated areas of the hospital just for the saudi princes who are served hand and foot by the doctors. i think all people in a hospital should be treated equally. this should not depend on whether or not you pay straight cash. this is the kind of attitude that flows through the jhu system and it just seems plain arrogant/unnecessary.
Yes! I was also irked by the fact that every physician I met ordered patients who came in with X-rays or MRIs to retake them at Hopkins, because they wouldn't trust any report or scans from outside the institution. Ordering duplicates of a $8,000 scan? And we wonder why our health system is going bankrupt.
Thanks so much for the input everyone. Personally, from second look weekends I felt that the students at Penn seemed a bit better socialized and that they had the chance to spend more time doing extracurricular activities. The student activities fair at JHU was really not as grand as I might have expected. There were only a few groups, and I found it somewhat contradictory that many of the students said that they came to JHU partially because of Bloomberg being there, and yet there was only 1 or 2 groups that did anything related to public health.
With that being said, however, I am pretty sure about getting an MD/MPH, and the opportunity to get my MPH at Hopkins on one of the many full tuition scholarships that they offer to medical students is really hard to turn down.
In all, it seemed to me like there are great opportunities at JHU for research, public health, global health, etc. but you really have to seek them out for yourself. At Penn, it seemed like they were really much more supportive of the students and provided everything for you.
Another thing I'm worried about is getting back to California for residency. I'm coming from an East Coast school, and I found out the hard way that breaking into that California scene is really hard if you're not going to school there in the first place (even if you're a resident). I'm trying to figure out if Hopkins might give me the better chance for making that future transition
Penn! You get the 1.5 preclinical curriculum without having to live in Baltimore. Have you seen The Wire? Terrifying.
Thanks so much for the input everyone. Personally, from second look weekends I felt that the students at Penn seemed a bit better socialized and that they had the chance to spend more time doing extracurricular activities. The student activities fair at JHU was really not as grand as I might have expected. There were only a few groups, and I found it somewhat contradictory that many of the students said that they came to JHU partially because of Bloomberg being there, and yet there was only 1 or 2 groups that did anything related to public health.
With that being said, however, I am pretty sure about getting an MD/MPH, and the opportunity to get my MPH at Hopkins on one of the many full tuition scholarships that they offer to medical students is really hard to turn down.
In all, it seemed to me like there are great opportunities at JHU for research, public health, global health, etc. but you really have to seek them out for yourself. At Penn, it seemed like they were really much more supportive of the students and provided everything for you.
Another thing I'm worried about is getting back to California for residency. I'm coming from an East Coast school, and I found out the hard way that breaking into that California scene is really hard if you're not going to school there in the first place (even if you're a resident). I'm trying to figure out if Hopkins might give me the better chance for making that future transition
I had the same concern after going to both revisits--the difference between the two activity fairs was pretty striking, but after looking more at the information Hopkins gave us in the revisit packet, it seems that the activities there are actually much more robust than the fair made it seem. (I mean, it was an earlyish Saturday morning as opposed to Friday afternoon at Penn.) What I did notice was that there were less "get-togethery" type clubs at Hopkins--no med student yoga, that sort of thing (though there is a runners' club!). But everything else that you could want was there--definitely public health stuff, definitely free clinics, tutoring, mentorship. There's a program I really want to do, where you become a Big Brother/Big Sis to a patient in the pediatric HIV ward. At the end of the day I did not at all feel like I would have to find my own way if I wanted to make something happen--all of the faculty I met seemed really supportive of promoting student happiness/activities/interests. And my friend who's currently an M1 there kept stressing to me, 112% is a pass but so is 70%--learn what you want to learn, but Baltimore is a city where you can REALLY do some good if you have time, and that's a good reason to study less.
I chose to commit to Hopkins, and I feel really, really good about that decision (though at the time it was agonizing--I love Philly and I know I would have been happy there)--if you're still having a hard time deciding, what helped me was thinking back to how I felt when I heard the news from each school. Also, (and this is ridiculous), getting drunk helped simplify my thoughts about the decision.
On the other hand, I know what you mean - I also wish they had more get-togethery EC's at the fair (ie wine tasting club, film club), but there's no reason we can't start some when we get there!
i will definitely start a wine-tasting club with you if you're interested
I was deciding between Penn undergrad and my quirky, small liberal arts school that no one has ever heard of 4 years ago. I chose the quirky school and I think ended up being way more successful because of it: I was happy with the people I was around (faculty, students) and the environment I was in. Which place felt like this for you?