It really depends on what you want to do. If you want to do EP, then I wouldn't recommend going anywhere where they don't have many EP docs, or good EP training. You need someone to write you LOR's, etc. Same goes for interventional...some places do not have a busy cath lab. After
you interviewed at these places, you should have some idea about
these things, and probably be more up to date than some of us
already in fellowship.
as far as the other person's question, I think Iowa is more basic sciencey and probably more generally academic than Henry Ford (though don't know much about the latter). However, I don't know anything about the business of the cath or EP labs at Iowa. For example, if someone wants to do interventional fellowship then it makes no sense to go some place where the cath fellow is doing 1 or 2 cases a day on the cath rotation. Believe it or not, there are plenty of big-name (or semi big name) academic places where that happens. I'm not saying Iowa is like that b/c I actually don't know. I'm just giving a for-example. You need to have some clue about what you want to do before you can accurately rank programs. Not that you can't change your mind, but at least you should know whether you are more a basic science research kind of guy, versus clinical and/or clinical research,and maybe have an idea of 1 or 2 subspecialties you want to do (or that you want to do general cards, etc.). If you really have no clue, then I guess I would rank based on programs with no gaping holes in them (i.e. generally strong, or just not really weak in any one area).
