Having spent the last six years at Mayo, and having tons of interaction with med students, residents, and faculty. I'm going to step in and disagree or clarify a few things here.
While some of the things MMS does might not initially seem unique compared to other top institutions, I think the way some of these things are carried out makes a difference.
1. The selectives aren't largely vacation time. There is a certain number of weeks you need to do a structured activity and they are highly regarded by students. It's a great way to get to explore a wide variety of specialty areas as well during first and second year, so you have a better idea of what you want to do earlier in the game and can make connections and set yourself up better for residency applications.
2. Teaching- there is actually a list of people wanting to teach the med students at MMS and being selected to teach is actually a pretty competitive process. The people who will be teaching you do it because they want to, not because its part of their job requirement when what they'd rather be doing is sitting in the lab doing research. One of the medical students told me that during first year they felt like they weren't getting what the needed from one of the instructors and even though he was far from terrible, the administration responded to the students concerns and he didn't teach the course again. I've heard from several students
there aren't issues like some schools where you have a PhD come in and talk in great detail about his tiny little molecule of interest at the expensive of more relevant content for medical students.
I'm an employee and not a student, but I still frequently find myself impressed by the number of faculty around here who love to teach. I had to wake a consultant up at 3 a.m. because the resident wasn't returning our pages. Instead of being pissed, he talked to the patient's provider, told us he was glad we called him and proceeded to go into a detailed account of the patients pathophysiology, how interesting it was, and answered a few questions, gave us the ok for the providers request, and then tried to track down the resident.
My team expressed an interest in learning more about some of the challenging cases we dealt with, so two of consultants (one was head of our division) took time out of their insanely busy schedules to do weekly case conferences with us.
This is more the norm, not a rare occurrence. It's a very team oriented and collegial environment. Quite a few places make that claim, but don't always live up to it. Here they do.
3. Mentoring- at some big name places there is a pretty rigid hierarchy in place and as a med student the majority of your interactions are with the interns and residents, and while you'll interact with attendings too, they aren't quite as accessible. Especially some of the big name people. At Mayo, they are very accessible and approachable. The med students get quite a bit of one on one, including early on during things like the selectives. This is where stronger LORs can come into play. The more one on one face time you have with someone and the longer they've known you, the better letter they can write. This is far better than some places where your letter is written by an attending who knows you through a few brief interactions and a lot of input from the residents.
4. Match list/Rochester. Ok so for most people, especially people from the coasts and warmer climates, Rochester is not going going to seem like the greatest place to live. The weather sucks for a good chunk of the year, its small and can be difficult to find stuff to do if you're used to living in a major city. There winds up being a lot of selection bias in people who ultimately decide to attend MMS. Rochester is not for everyone, but for some its a good fit. You have to know ts right for you.
While MMS is very diverse there is a bit of over representation by Midwesterners, because they like the Midwest, want to stick close to family, lower cost of living, good place to raise a family, etc.
Despite the number of residents who keep coming to pre-allo to explain why you can't predict things with match lists you all still insist on scrutinizing them. But the big question is not "are people matching at big name institutions outside of the Midwest". The question is "are people matching where they want to in the specialty that they want to" and no match list tells you that. Every year I've been here everybody has matched and according to the school about 95% match at one of their top three choices. According to the students, people are quite happy where they wind up and quite a few have no desire to leave Mayo for residency. So quite a few stick around, not because they couldn't go elsewhere, but because they didn't want to.
There are people who match to the big programs out east. Where you can go is largely a function of you. At any of the better schools, you are your own biggest limiting factor with respect to where you match.
5. Research. There are some people doing great basic science research here, but I would agree we're not a powerhouse institution in that area. While you'll be able to find someone to work with, your choices will be a bit limited. There are far better places to go if this is what you want to do.
Clinical/translational research is a great strength here though and they are also really expanding things like epidemiology and health outcomes research. Medical students on up can get certificates or masters degrees in clinical and translational science if they want in addition to the other options noted above,
It is a graduation requirement to publish and the school has a required 13 week research block. Most students have multiple pubs.
Mayo has a ridiculous amount of money coming in the form of donations from really loaded benefactors and a good chunk of that goes to research here. That offsets some of the need to seek NIH funding.
Don't get me wrong, this place is far from perfect and I can find plenty to gripe about. Just not the stuff discussed above.
