Rice/Baylor , USC/Keck , or Princeton ?

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crazy eyes, check your PMs

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hey, i'm back. Uhh, crazyeyes, when i was talking about kids in baylor med not having acceptances, i was just saying that baylor med is not a school worth busting a load for, as there are more than a handful of schools one would rather go to. No one is choosing baylor of HMS, columbia, etc., unless through some significant financial incentive or because they have family locality concerns. I think you'd agree to that. If i wanted to know the history of baylor, i'm sure there is a website or something...

Tezzie, you're just so annoying. I wrote top 5 choices, not schools. You're right, LOOK at that princeton match list. Only a few schools have a comparable list, and certainly not rice. And look, only 11 kids went to baylor in 5 years. That's very few. Only 99 applied in 5 years, whereas over 400 applied to 7 or so schools, including Harvard, duke, and yale. Baylor is not a top pick for princeton kids. If it were, it would have more applicants per year. It is a good school, but most pton kids, when picking their top 5 choices, would not put baylor among them. If it were a higher choice, more than 20 people would be applying per year. I mean, more people applied and matriculated to u of mary than baylor, and that certainly is not a top 5 choice for most people.

i thought it was simple. Princeton > rice.

Harvard, yale, columbia, duke, stanford, jhu, wash u, etc. medical schools > baylor.

i guess what you're saying is that rice is just as good as pton and baylor is top choice for pton kids, and if most wanted to go there they would be unable to. I disagree with those statements.

even you, tezzie, only went to washu because you got a scholarship. who are we kidding? if you could have gone to princeton for free, you'd have gone there. you'd shouldn't be surprised; every ivy is full of kids turning down "good deals" elsewhere and they are not all idiots. sometimes you can't get a good deal on getting the best, but it does not diminish the value of "the best".

most people on sdn are full of it. Baylor med trumps the opportunities at Pton? yeah, i am sure kids come to pton dreaming of the day they get their baylor md. Anyone who is a gunner at pton is thinking of only a few top schools, and everyone else is just there to enjoy pton and become doctors regardless. UCSD over harvard? Every person who said they turned down harvard was choosing a comparable school, such as stanford.

its jealously, plain and simple. if you had the opportunity to go to princeton and turned it down to save some money, that's your life. but don't think for a second that you can get your cake and eat it too. you made a compromise and that's fine for you, but know that it is a compromise.

baylor is good, rice is good. but for the obvious gunner the OP is, pton would have prepared him for anything. he could have gone further than baylor easily if he wanted to, with the reputation and experience of pton to back it up.

i do not care to argue this any further.
 
crazy eyes said:
Lets speak actions instead of reputation... Look at the NIH funding/medical school, in other words, in the UNBIASED view of the scientific community how LEGITIMATE is the work your medical school is doing. For the response, check this link http://grants.nih.gov/grants/award/rank/medttl02.htm
as you can plainly see, Harvard is not in the top 5 and Baylor is. Im sorry but actions speak louder than words. Harvard is the inbred hole of an elitist's wet dream. Bear paw, stop pawing your "bear" (if that is your pet name for your p*nis, oops, I mean ego) and just graduate from high school before you present your thesis on professional school selection criteria! :eek:

Um, yeah, you make some pretty broad claims, and very few of them hold any water.

The most obvious fallacy is the NIH funding one. Harvard medical school is split into several "affiliated" institutions: Mass Gen., Beth Israel, etc. etc that make up the true "medical school." For overall NIH funding, Harvard med is on top by a bit.

Also, I really don't buy this "elitism breeds elitists" in the absolute form your present it. I don't think many people would. Sure, there is a contribution by that, but there is a reason that schools are stratified in general. If, at the very very least, you can recognize that status buys money and money buys talent, your argument falls apart right there. Of course, you have to investigate your NIH chart a little bit better.

And I think, as much as I hate to agree with Bearclaw, the status of an institution can bring a lot - and again, at the very least it has the name recognition to attract more of the top applicants than lesser schools. If this wasn't true, why would 80% of people who got into Stanford and Harvard choose Harvard over Stanford for medical schools? And this is comparing two very good schools who differ relatively minimally. Pointing out people you know personally who are exceptions does nothing to really prove your point and only signals that you are bringing in anecdotal evidence to prove an otherwise undefendable position.

But going back to the original purpose of this thread - I think the students at Princeton are overall more academically qualified than they are at Rice. But I don't think it's big, and I think the principles Rice stands for and the type of atmosphere the institution creates more than makes up for that.
 
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kikkoman said:
The most obvious fallacy is the NIH funding one. Harvard medical school is split into several "affiliated" institutions: Mass Gen., Beth Israel, etc. etc that make up the true "medical school." For overall NIH funding, Harvard med is on top by a bit.

Yes, including affiliated hospitals Harvard has quite a bit more in research money.

According to the NSF total R&D expenditures for 2001 and the institutions' websites (for affiliated institution I used their websites)

Harvard Med School had total R&D expenditures of $372 million.
Affiliated: $350 million at Mass Gen, $240 million at Brigham & W, $150 million at Beth Israel, $100 million at Dana-Farber, $80 million at Children's

Baylor had total R&D expenditures of $381 million.
Affiliated: MD-Anderson $262 million, UT Health Sci Center $150 million

Really though, Harvard and Boston are the be-all and end-all in life science research.. with Houston in second place
 
Eugenie98 said:
Yes, including affiliated hospitals Harvard has quite a bit more in research money.

According to the NSF total R&D expenditures for 2001 and the institutions' websites (for affiliated institution I used their websites)

Harvard Med School had total R&D expenditures of $372 million.
Affiliated: $350 million at Mass Gen, $240 million at Brigham & W, $150 million at Beth Israel, $100 million at Dana-Farber, $80 million at Children's

Baylor had total R&D expenditures of $381 million.
Affiliated: MD-Anderson $262 million, UT Health Sci Center $150 million

Really though, Harvard and Boston are the be-all and end-all in life science research.. with Houston in second place

Just an addition:

Harvard's >$10 Billion endowment allows many professors there to go without a large number of grants for their research. The proceeds from the endowment are used in lieu of NIH grants - these further deflate Harvard's NIH funding numbers.

Also, according to this NIH webpage: http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/award/trends/top100fy02.htm

TOP 10 Cities By Research Dollars in FY 2002:

1 = Boston = 1,042 Million
2 = New York = 1,028 Million
3 = Philadephia = 730 Million
4 = Baltimore = 704 Million
5 = San Diego = 692 Million
6 = Seattle = 642 Million
7 = Los Angeles = 549 Million
8 = Houston = 497 Million
9 = Cambridge, MA = 481 Million
10 = San Francisco = 430 Million

As you can see, Cambridge ALONE almost equals all of Houston, and some of these numbers don't include Berkeley, Stanford, La Jolla, University City PA, Cold Spring Harbor, etc.

Yours,
 
well. it doesn't suprise me that the OP went to the program. its tough to convince kids who know they want to go to a program to go to a regular undergrad--obviously the OP wanted to go to a program, why else apply to such programs (and clearly the OP applied to at least 2). I'm not sure why some of us even tried to convince him/her that Princeton would have been a better choice.

if I could go back to sr yr in hs, I would choose harvard, not the program I'm in.
 
Hey everyone, look at my thread Rice/Baylor vs... I posted it yesterday but no one has really commented on it but I put a lot of answers to questions I've seen here.
 
JPaikman said:
Just an addition:

Harvard's >$10 Billion endowment allows many professors there to go without a large number of grants for their research. The proceeds from the endowment are used in lieu of NIH grants - these further deflate Harvard's NIH funding numbers.

Also, according to this NIH webpage: http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/award/trends/top100fy02.htm

TOP 10 Cities By Research Dollars in FY 2002:

1 = Boston = 1,042 Million
2 = New York = 1,028 Million
3 = Philadephia = 730 Million
4 = Baltimore = 704 Million
5 = San Diego = 692 Million
6 = Seattle = 642 Million
7 = Los Angeles = 549 Million
8 = Houston = 497 Million
9 = Cambridge, MA = 481 Million
10 = San Francisco = 430 Million

As you can see, Cambridge ALONE almost equals all of Houston, and some of these numbers don't include Berkeley, Stanford, La Jolla, University City PA, Cold Spring Harbor, etc.

I would expect as much since Boston/Cambrdige/Worcester has twice as many medical schools

Boston/Cambridge/Worcester has Harvard, UMass, Boston U, and Tufts Medical School, whereas Houston has Baylor and UT @ Houston Medical Schools.
 
Eugenie98 said:
I would expect as much since Boston/Cambrdige/Worcester has twice as many medical schools

Boston/Cambridge/Worcester has Harvard, UMass, Boston U, and Tufts Medical School, whereas Houston has Baylor and UT @ Houston Medical Schools.

umm, you missed the point. the city within boston named "cambridge" = all of houston. i thought jpaikman's post was actually pretty amazing.
 
Hi Eugene,

Congrats on all your acceptances. IMO, it doesn't really matter where you go right now -- you're good enough to get into med school later on if you go to Princeton anyway. You might want to consider the cities; coming from a western state, I liked western (sprawling) cities in CA or Texas more than the east-coast cities like Boston. Most of my friends think I'm crazy to like sprawl, but it's just what I'm used to. Best of luck on your decision!
 
Eugenie98 said:
I would expect as much since Boston/Cambrdige/Worcester has twice as many medical schools

Boston/Cambridge/Worcester has Harvard, UMass, Boston U, and Tufts Medical School, whereas Houston has Baylor and UT @ Houston Medical Schools.

Besides missing the point, these cities also include non-medical school affiliated NIH grants. MIT, Harvard College, UC-Berkeley, Salk, Joslin, etc. etc. are also included on these lists.

Boston trumps all by far, followed by the New York City area.
 
I am someone who is VERY familiar with the Rice/Baylor program because I graduated from Rice and knew many people were who were in it.

First to address Rice as an undergrad:

I grew up in the New York area and Rice does NOT have the same rep as Princeton or even some of the lower-tier Ivy's up here. BUT WHO CARES. Every med school and residency interview I've been on they all knew Rice. At Rice I was able to distinguish myself due to the small environment. I excelled there. I can't say how I would have done elsewhere but I know I took advantage of opportunities that my friends at Stanford, etc had access to only after the grad students!

Moreover, Rice is a FUN school. We have probably the most liberal alcohol policy which makes it a bit more fun to be in college. The social structure is not stifling like the fraternity scene. All the parties are open to anyone. And people are genuinely down to earth. You can do well from Rice. And you can pay a fraction of the cost. but I don't view money as a reason to pick a school since I think education is a good investment.

Rice Baylor is the best 8 year program as far as rep for udnergrand and med schooll. The opportunityis great. You can seriously pursue whatever you want as an undergrad major and even blow off the pre-med stuff. I wouldn't do that because you are going to get killed when you get to Baylor but you can. You can do research at Baylor and you will be assisted in finding a mentor. And even being part of Rice Baylor will allow you to make connections for future jobs and fellowships.

Now to address Baylor as a med school.

I didn't go to Baylor but about 1/4 of Baylor is from Rice so again I am very familiar with it. Baylor is an extremely well known medical school/center. Ben Taub General Hospital has some of the best clinical training in the world. You see and do a lot there. Residents pretty much run that hospital. Plus, the Texas med center affords certain opportunities such that it doesn't matter where you go to school. You can work at MD Anderson, etc. I think that opportunity is priceless. Again, I agree, Baylor is not as well known up North as harvard, penn, etc. to your mom and dad. But your opportunities will be equivalent!

This whole merger thing won't effect any of the students. You are so peripheral to the operation of a med center. Let the adminstration fight the fight. Baylor will make it through this just fine.

Finally to address Houston as a city..

Trust me, I thought Houston sucked when I got down from NYC. But then I went back to NYC and I realized: I like having a car, I like having a loft apartment and paying $1000, and the nightlife in Houston is pretentious enough for me. I love to see all these med students who want to go to school in NYC and don't leave the library for 4 years. But that's me. Certainly NYC is a great place to live and party, but it requires a lot of money and patience. Something we all won't have for many many years.
Houston has a great mix of professionals and it is up and coming.

Weather, yeah the weather is hot and muggy from end of May to middle of September. But how does that affect you college kids? You are in 60 degree weather while your friends up North are freezing. Trust me I was freezing a lot!

I know few (i.e. more than one) who went to Rice/Baylor and decided to try to apply out and were accepted to other med schools in the top 10 (Yale, Columbia). Though that is not encouraged the program director is a great guy and lets you follow your heart. He knows that if you go through all the trouble to take the MCAT and do well you are a motivated person.

Anyways sorry for all the typos and grammer mistakes. I just took USMLE step 2 today and I am tired. I'd be happy to answer anymore questions and Eugina you can PM me and i can give you some more advice via e-mail.
 
Hey Eugene

Not even sure if you're following this thread any more (the advice is gone, and you've already chosen). But I've been following this thread since you first posted, and impatiently waiting for SDN to activate my account so I could respond.

I think you made the right decision, because from what you said, YOU liked Rice more than Princeton when you visited. And that's all that really matters. If you'd liked Princeton more, I'd have said you should go there. I feel like I'm in a somewhat unique position to give you advice, as I went to Columbia and now will be going to Baylor for med school, and one of my good family friends will be a 2nd year at Baylor next year, and graduate from Princeton.

Guaranteed acceptance to one of the top-tier of medical schools in the country is definitely something to seize upon, especially if it comes with acceptance to one of the best undergraduate colleges in the country, if you are even 50/50 certain that you want to do medicine. I chose not to attend Rice because of the "backyard complex" - having such a great school in your backyard, you don't realize how good it really is. I didn't until I went to Columbia and started meeting people IN THE NORTH who were raving about Rice and wondering why I didn't want to go there. I loved my time at Columbia, and I wouldn't trade it for the world - and rarely are you going to meet the person who is going to tell you to pick another school of equivalent caliber over their own alma mater. :D Most people are in love with their schools (and, as you've learned, some are obsessed with them) - and in 4 years, you will be to.

First off, I think Rice and Princeton are very similar. Both are very undergraduate-focused, something I envied at a school like Columbia, where the undergraduate college is but one of many schools at the university, and probably not their top priority, at least not always. So you're going to be getting a lot of personal attention at Rice. For location, I'd definitely give the edge to Rice, because the Rice Village and Houston overall are great. Believe me, coming from New York, it'll be less of a shock to go from New York (largest city) to Houston (4th largest). But the main point is that you could not have made a wrong choice either way - they're both EXCELLENT schools, and you're well on your way to an excellent future coming from either. Until the recent news of Princeton's new grade deflationary policy, I was actually pushing my younger cousin to apply to Princeton, Columbia and Rice next year - and thought Princeton might be the best place for him (he needs to get out of Texas, and he will be eaten alive by New York, coming out of his small East Texas town).

But I'd say that if you were going to Eastern Podunk Molasses U - the reason people from great schools do well is not because of the institution, but because those great schools tend to attract very smart, motivated and ambitious people in high concentrations. In other words, the reason Stanford and Harvard grads go on to found and run Yahoo, eBay and Google is because there's a high concentration of brilliant people at Harvard and Stanford; Harvard and Stanford do not just magically infuse them with success. You can go to Yale and smoke pot for your 4 years there (as one of my floormates did my sophomore year), and have a 2.0, and you're not going anywhere. Conversely, you can go to EPMU and get a 4.0 and network and do the cool summer internships that will get you wherever you want to go. The only difference between EPMU and Yale is that the opportunities are a little more readily available at Yale - but I think the cream of the crop rises to the top 99.999999999999% of the time, no matter what their situation is (and the crap falls to the bottom, no matter what the name on its diploma says). I met people at all of my interviews at T15 med schools who were from universities I'd never heard of - and almost all of them wowed me with what they'd accomplished. So if they can do it, imagine what you can do coming out of one of the best universities in the country.

I don't know if I'd pick the Rice/Baylor program if I could relive the last few years of my live again. But I know I'd give it some serious thought. What the program gives you is extreme flexibility for the next 8 years of your life. You don't have to worry about taking pre-med requirements - you can major in whatever you want to (and I strongly encourage you to pursue that passion for economics - we need more economists in medicine!). You also don't have to be scared off from taking the harder classes at Rice because of any potential hits to your GPA - all you have to maintain is a 3.2. So you can take classes that are out of your comfort zone and really grow as a person (Columbia's Core helped me do this, and my favorite part about college, looking back, is the fact that I took classes that I would not normally have taken), without having to worry how your grade in that art history class is going to affect your med school applications. Wish I could have done that. Know what a 3.2 at Columbia would have gotten me? Well, uh... does EPMU have a med school? :p Seriously, you have a T14 in your back pocket - people would at least maim for a guarantee like that

And then you get to come to Baylor - someone else put it best when they called it and the TMC the Disneyland of Medicine and Surgery. My favorite post of yours was when you said you could research for the sake of doing research, and volunteer for the sake of volunteering, rather than to enhance your med school applications. I envy you in a way, because you're going to get to use these next 4 years of your life to really develop your academic interests and find ones you never knew you had. It didn't really become a factor for me until my senior year, but it will drive you nuts, every time you're thinking about doing an extracurricular, when that little voice in your head says, "Now, how can I sell this to med schools?" And, you have the option of applying out, if you decide that 4 years in Texas is enough and it's time to go to, say, California or Chicago or St. Louis. or the Southeast. Like crazy eyes, I'm a big fan of avoiding academic inbreeding and getting geographic diversity in your education. That said - Baylor and Rice are two separate, although affiliated, institutions. I think it will actually give you the chance to form some really long-term mentoring relationships, which will be helpful when you're applying for residencies.

Anyway, Eugene, I'm really happy and proud to have you in Texas next year. You sound like a neat kid and will probably accomplish great things at Rice. Ignore any negativity from others, man - because other people's approval isn't going to keep you warm during those nights before finals when you're cursing everything about college. Those are the times when it helps to actually love the place you're at.

Peace out.
 
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Hehe BaylorLion, Baylor and TMC are like the disneyland of medicine and surgery? Does that mean Harvard and Boston are the Disney World of medicine and surgery???

:rolleyes:
 
someone needs to stick a fork in this thread because it's DONE
 
Yeah, Eugene, that works... does that make New York EuroDisney?

Actually, I'm badly quoting someone else from the SDN Forums... not an exact quote. I just thought it was a cool expression, and it was my first feeling when I first saw the TMC (at an interview for UT Houston, actually). It really does feel like a playground for docs.

OK - thread, this is gonna hurt - and *there* - fork's stuck.
 
After much deliberation, I withdrew from Rice/Baylor and matriculated at Princeton.

Four years is quite a long time, and I may change my mind in those four years. A Rice education is good, but its economics department is #40 whereas Princeton's is #1.

My theory is that a Princeton undergraduate degree in economics, and an MD from a so-so medical school will be more substantive than an undergrad degree in econ from Rice and an M.D. from Baylor.

I plan to work in health policy or ophthalmology, and a Princeton degree would be more valuable for the former.
 
Eugenie98 said:
After much deliberation, I withdrew from Rice/Baylor and matriculated at Princeton.

Four years is quite a long time, and I may change my mind in those four years. A Rice education is good, but its economics department is #40 whereas Princeton's is #1.

My theory is that a Princeton undergraduate degree in economics, and an MD from a so-so medical school will be more substantive than an undergrad degree in econ from Rice and an M.D. from Baylor.

I plan to work in health policy or ophthalmology, and a Princeton degree would be more valuable for the former.

congrats.

you're going to princeton, and somekevinguy is going to harvard med.

nearly everyone else on the site told both of you to go to the less prestigious option. i'm glad both of you cut the BS and went with what you wanted to do all along. people downplay prestige, but nearly every kid on this site still wants to go to the most prestigious medical school, so they are just full of it.

just do well there and baylor won't even be an afterthought. congrats once again.
 
Congrats on figuring out what's best for you, Eugene. And best of luck over the next 4 years.
 
bearpaw said:
congrats.

you're going to princeton, and somekevinguy is going to harvard med.

nearly everyone else on the site told both of you to go to the less prestigious option. i'm glad both of you cut the BS and went with what you wanted to do all along. people downplay prestige, but nearly every kid on this site still wants to go to the most prestigious medical school, so they are just full of it.

just do well there and baylor won't even be an afterthought. congrats once again.
I got the same feeling too...the same people who says "Who cares about school's prestige" sometimes turn out to be the same people who goes "Wow you got into Harvard/Hopkins/Penn/UCSF/Duke, you must bre REALLY smart!"

Hyprocrites if you ask me what they are.
 
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Just a follow up, now that it's 9 years later. I majored in geology/geophysics at Princeton and became an energy trader for a hedge fund.

I live beach-side in the Caribbean and I love what I do.

1) If I had gone to Rice via Rice/Baylor, well.. for my particular area... it probably would have not been an impediment, given that Houston has no shortage of energy trading jobs.

2) If I had wanted to work in anything that uses undergrad as a filtering function, Princeton has a tremendous edge, hands down. Almost all of those jobs are in finance/consulting/investment management.

3) If you are 100% certain you are going to medical school, the Rice/Baylor program is a no-brainer. It is a hellish process to apply to medical school and Princeton's grade deflation policies are not kind (though they are under review under the new Princeton President).
 
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Haha, I'm not surprised at all. Oh HYP.... <333
 
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Just a follow up, now that it's 9 years later. I majored in geology/geophysics at Princeton and became an energy trader for a hedge fund.

I live beach-side in the Caribbean and I love what I do.

1) If I had gone to Rice via Rice/Baylor, well.. for my particular area... it probably would have not been an impediment, given that Houston has no shortage of energy trading jobs.

2) If I had wanted to work in anything that uses undergrad as a filtering function, Princeton has a tremendous edge, hands down. Almost all of those jobs are in finance/consulting/investment management.

3) If you are 100% certain you are going to medical school, the Rice/Baylor program is a no-brainer. It is a hellish process to apply to medical school and Princeton's grade deflation policies are not kind (though they are under review under the new Princeton President).
That's awesome. Thanks for coming back to share!
 
Just a follow up, now that it's 9 years later. I majored in geology/geophysics at Princeton and became an energy trader for a hedge fund.

I live beach-side in the Caribbean and I love what I do.

1) If I had gone to Rice via Rice/Baylor, well.. for my particular area... it probably would have not been an impediment, given that Houston has no shortage of energy trading jobs.

2) If I had wanted to work in anything that uses undergrad as a filtering function, Princeton has a tremendous edge, hands down. Almost all of those jobs are in finance/consulting/investment management.

3) If you are 100% certain you are going to medical school, the Rice/Baylor program is a no-brainer. It is a hellish process to apply to medical school and Princeton's grade deflation policies are not kind (though they are under review under the new Princeton President).

awesome to hear you're doing well and enjoying it, cool update! just wondering though... what eventually caused you to forget about medicine? was it something academically or did you just find a new love with the geology major?
 
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