Pros/cons of various medical schools

[qweturner]

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Hi,
1) How important is the medical school you attend with regards to matching you up with a residency program of your choice? Does going to a "top" medical school make it easier than if you were to attend a less renowned school? Or do your Step scores, shelves, and your LORs weigh much more than the name associated with your school?

2) In the same vein, does attending a rural vs urban medical school make it harder to land certain residencies? For example, would it be easier to match with EM if you attended an urban medical school?

At the moment, I don't have strong feelings for any particular specialty, but was just curious about the matching process.

I'm a long time lurker of these forums, and thanks to all the information available here I have been recently been accepted to my top post-bac choice. Thanks everyone for your help.

 

[NewmansOwn]

Hi,
1) How important is the medical school you attend with regards to matching you up with a residency program of your choice? Does going to a "top" medical school make it easier than if you were to attend a less renowned school? Or do your Step scores, shelves, and your LORs weigh much more than the name associated with your school?

2) In the same vein, does attending a rural vs urban medical school make it harder to land certain residencies? For example, would it be easier to match with EM if you attended an urban medical school?

At the moment, I don't have strong feelings for any particular specialty, but was just curious about the matching process.

I'm a long time lurker of these forums, and thanks to all the information available here I have been recently been accepted to my top post-bac choice. Thanks everyone for your help.

1) Your performance in medical school (especially on the boards) means a great deal more than the "name" of your institution. Regionally, certain schools probably have an edge with residency programs in that area and the really big-name schools might offer a slight edge, but the bottom line is an AOA member with a 260 Step I from a lower-tier US MD school will have nothing to fear from most graduates of big-name schools.

Part of this is also do to the fact that the quality gap in US allopathic schools is quite small. The difference between the best undergraduate institutions and the worst in the US is immense -- there are hundreds of US colleges so bad they probably shouldn't even be accredited. This isn't the case with medical schools. The highest and lowest "ranked" US allopathic medical schools probably have relatively little difference in education quality. Note that this doesn't include Caribbean schools.

2) Go wherever you're happy. Just know that in a rural area, your patient population will be very different. If you go to SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, you'll see the kinds of things you'd expect in a thriving, busy urban environment. If you go to UVA, you'll draw patients from a wide, mostly rural area and the pathology will be quite different. EM is needed in rural areas, too, as trauma is often quite frequent and quite severe in the backcountry.

 

[deleted248403]

Hate to ask the obvious but, wrong forum?

 

[NewmansOwn]

Hate to ask the obvious but, wrong forum?

Good point. Does our forum even have a moderator?

 

[deleted248403]

Dunno - haven't seem him around in awhile.

Might be worth PMing a diff mod and seeing what the deal is - ive no idea the hierachy structure of the mods here

 

[qweturner]

Thanks NewmansOwn for the info; very useful.

Sorry if this is the wrong forum; if there's something I can do to move it, please let me know.