I was lucky enough to interview at UTMB, TCOM, Mcgovern, Dell, Long and UHCOM. I don't have any strong feelings towards them although I like that some of them have P/F for preclinical (Dell and UTMB). My priority is getting into a good residency, preferably in Texas. My top choices are Long and McGovern. Where I get confused is UTMB vs Dell and UHCOM vs TCOM. I would really appreciate some advice.
Ranking 6 schools
- Thread starter august232
- Start date
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2021
- Messages
- 89
- Reaction score
- 154
All Texas schools match well within Texas. The advantage of better schools is that they can match better outside of Texas. You won’t find much difference in matching a good residency even at TCOM the DO within Texas.
Splitting hairs by prestige and opportunity, McGovern>Long>Dell=UTMB>TCOM=UHCOM. McGovern, Long, UTMB, and Dell are often placed in the same “tier”, so how I separated them was by how happy I’d be there. I value P/F a lot and am not going to pursue a surgical subspecialty, so it went Dell>UTMB>McGovern>Long>UHCOM>TCOM.
Another important factor for me is how exams and USMLE prep is setup. Dell has fantastic, like T20 level, Step 1 scores which show something right is going on there for sure. UTMB and McGovern have NBME style exams which make studying for Step a little easier. Long has in-house exams with material irrelevant for the USMLE and weekly quizzes.
I’d say choose the city and curriculum where you’ll be happy!
Splitting hairs by prestige and opportunity, McGovern>Long>Dell=UTMB>TCOM=UHCOM. McGovern, Long, UTMB, and Dell are often placed in the same “tier”, so how I separated them was by how happy I’d be there. I value P/F a lot and am not going to pursue a surgical subspecialty, so it went Dell>UTMB>McGovern>Long>UHCOM>TCOM.
Another important factor for me is how exams and USMLE prep is setup. Dell has fantastic, like T20 level, Step 1 scores which show something right is going on there for sure. UTMB and McGovern have NBME style exams which make studying for Step a little easier. Long has in-house exams with material irrelevant for the USMLE and weekly quizzes.
I’d say choose the city and curriculum where you’ll be happy!
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2021
- Messages
- 89
- Reaction score
- 154
The relationship of rank and P/F is important if you are looking into a competitive specialty. UTMB ranks preclinicals for AOA, which for some students makes the P/F effectively useless. Those students will be gunning to make sure they get the AOA distinction, so they won't give themselves the luxury of relaxing with a P/F curriculum. It is certainly possible for non-AOA students to match into competitive specialties; however, the top tier residencies and specialties take a large part of their class from AOA students.
AOA isn't everything, and many students aren't even interested in the competitive specialties (like ortho, ent, derm, neuro, etc.). Thus, these P/F schools will have a distinct advantage over non P/F schools because those students can spend more of their time relaxing or even finding ECs like research and community service.
