Having looked at both schools, here is my take on each:
GWU has a brand new hospital and this is one of their biggest selling points. I didn't get a chance to see it when I was interviewing there, but I don't think that there's a single person at GW who didn't mention it during one of their "this is why you should come here" talks. I wasn't terribly impressed with the med school facilities themselves - nice, but nothing to rave about. The strong point is that they have a big name, so you tend to get people who go there for the name recognition factor (among other things, of course). The biggest downside? Friggin expensive - I think the tuition next year will be 36-37K - that's a LOT of money in the long run. Also consider that GW has NO campus housing (even for the undergrads) and so you are competing with everyone in the university (even the undergrads) for whatever cheap apartments exist. And DC being DC, there are not many cheap apartments.
Rush accepted me (I'm currently waitlisted at GW) and I'm 100% sure I'll be going there, so I may have a bit of a bias towards it, but I'll try to be objective. As sandflea said, everyone at Rush seems to love the school. I can't really explain it, but people seem to consider everyone in the university as family - I haven't met a SINGLE person at Rush who doesn't have dozens and dozens of great things to say. The literally gush about their education - something I did not get at GW - and that was a pretty convincing factor for me. Rush doesn't quite have the national name that GW has, but it's quite well known in Chicago - if you plan to stay in Chicago after med school, this may be a factor (if you're into names). Rush is a bit cheaper than GW (about 30K), but not by much. One plus for Rush is that they give somewhere around 16K/year for living expenses versus GW's 11K/year or so, and the cities are about equally expensive. Rush does have campus apartments, but according to sandflea it's a bit pricey (around 700-800/mo). The downside to Rush? Again, the facilities are a bit dated (sporadically, though - the histology labs seem like they haven't been updated since the 70's, but the lecture halls and other rooms seemed really nice). The price. The lack of a strong national reputation.
Since I'm not terribly interested in going to a school with a big name and really want to go to a med school in Chicago, Rush is the perfect choice for me (in addition to the fact that they accepted me and GW waitlisted me
). Both schools will probably give you the same quality of education. I really think that the two are indistinguishably close in quality, even though there is a bit of a price gradient. If you are thinking about this seriously, I would consider the following:
- location
- price
- reputation
After you carefully weigh these three factors, I'm sure you will be able to make a decision.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
