Rush vs University of Alabama-Birmingham

[The_Color_Olive]

Hey everyone! Hoping to choose between these two schools and would really appreciate any advice.

Rush
Pros:

• Love Chicago
• rotations at Rush, which (for what it's worth) is ranked as a T20 hospital, as well as Stroger, which has an incredibly diverse patient population and is a level 1 trauma center (interested in EM/trauma surgery/gas)
• Really appreciate the community service-focused mission, which was the core of my application
• Solid match-list, especially to strong midwest programs (Northwestern, Chicago, Cleveland Clinic, etc)
• True P/F pre-clinical (ie. no pre-clinical honors/distinction)

Cons:

• Ranked by class percentile, 80% of the final ranking based on performance during your M3 year
• US News ranking in the upper 50s/low 60s (not sure how much this matters)
• Relatively small NIH funding (~50 million). Potential difficulty finding labs/publishing?
• Close to nonexistent global health program (my dream is to work with MSF)

Neutral

• Flipped classroom-honestly don't mind the idea, the few Rush students I talked to seemed to really enjoy it

University of Alabama at Birmingham
Pros:

• Higher Rank (~T30)
• Massive emphasis on research (funding ~300 million)
• Strong global health program with opportunities to pursue MD/MPH

Cons:

• Expensive. Offered no financial aid as an OOS student so total cost comes out to 66k a year. This would be around 60K more expensive over 4 years than Rush.
• Spoke to a number of students who were non-white/non-conservative (like me) and they shared experiences of casual racism/alienation from class (and sometimes patients)
• Majority match into the South (85% of matriculants are IS), which I'd like to avoid as much as possible (I grew up in the South and have no intention of living there long term)
• H/P/F pre-clinical, which sounds a little stressful
• Didn't feel a sense of community/passion at UAB, especially compared to Rush
• Birmingham is okay (I've been there many times) but I love big cities

This basically boils down to whether or not the increase in perceived ranking/prestige of UAB is worth an extra 60K compared to Rush, which I think I'd be much happier attending. My dream is to be a surgeon/anesthesiologist/emergency physician working with a humanitarian aid organization. Residency-wise, my dream is to match in the west coast (family is from California). Please let me know what you think!

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[ThatSerb]

Rush's class ranking basically negates the "true" pass/fail, doesn't it?

 

[The_Color_Olive]

From what I understand, it's "true P/F" in the sense that there is no pre-clinical honors and the final ranking is 80% based on clinical performance, not pre-clinical grades. I think the majority of medical schools report students by quartile to residencies, but Rush's formula heavily de-emphasizes performance in the first 2 years.

 

[Banco]

You clearly like Rush and Chicago more. It’s a very good school. And it’s cheaper. Go there.

Sometimes it’s not all about ranking and research funding. Frankly I don’t see how you’ll close any doors by picking Rush over UAB.

 

[vitafusion]

Rush

 

[deleted1094730]

University of Alabama at Birmingham

@Mike303 are you waitlisted at Rush by any chance? It seems like you are going around multiple Rush threads and convincing people to choose the option other than Rush for every thread. If that is the case, then its really not a good thing to do when people are trying to make their decisions that would affect their medical career

 

[jollypop38]

Rush by far. Better location, amazing hospital and great opportunities. Same doors will be open to you with both schools and Rush is a solid school

 

[Putkernerinthehall]

Don't subject yourself to the racism of the South. Go to Rush and don't look back. Better location, great / huge hospital and lots of opportunities. Some things are more important than rank / research dollars as noted above. And it's cheaper!

 

[HalcyonHistory]

@Mike303 are you waitlisted at Rush by any chance? It seems like you are going around multiple Rush threads and convincing people to choose the option other than Rush for every thread. If that is the case, then its really not a good thing to do when people are trying to make their decisions that would affect their medical career

Thank you for bringing this up. If it’s true that’s really disappointing to hear, that’s a really ugly (and unfortunate) side of SDN.

@Mike303 are you waitlisted at Rush by any chance? It seems like you are going around multiple Rush threads and convincing people to choose the option other than Rush for every thread. If that is the case, then its really not a good thing to do when people are trying to make their decisions that would affect their medical career

 

[Lee]

@Mike303 are you waitlisted at Rush by any chance? It seems like you are going around multiple Rush threads and convincing people to choose the option other than Rush for every thread. If that is the case, then its really not a good thing to do when people are trying to make their decisions that would affect their medical career

Thank you for noting the abuse by this member. Their posts were reviewed. Their account and all posts have been deleted.

 

[Lee]

Thank you for bringing this up. If it’s true that’s really disappointing to hear, that’s a really ugly (and unfortunate) side of SDN.

To keep it in perspective, this was one person behaving badly on the Internet. To keep our community healthy, it's important to report individuals that are misbehaving so that we can take appropriate action.

Unlike troll farms like Twitter and other sites, we remove individuals that behave in this manner. As part of our nonprofit mission, we also have many highly qualified and verified experts available to answer questions.