Successful (of March 2000) was wrong about top students never going into IM. In fact, top students USUALLY go into IM, if this month's issue of the New Physician (AMSA publication) is to be believed. In it, we find that the medical school with the HIGHEST number of grads going into Internal Medicine is...(drumroll, please): JOHNS HOPKINS Last I checked, Hopkins had been the #2 rated med school in US News and World Report ever since they started ranking med schools about a decade ago. It's always ahead of Stanford, Yale, Wash U, Duke, YoMama, and the rest. Usually only Harvard beats it. At my med school the very smartest of the smart - the people who not only get good grades but are also witty, well-spoken, and knowledgeable about the world outside of medicine - go into Internal Med, in addition to the lackeys and indecisive freaks who compose a decent portion of internists. It's the smart people who have to have the fastest car, the latest cell phone, and a DVD home theater system who do ENT (a la Successful), Ortho, etc., but these types NEVER know anything about the outside world, and many of them had low MCAT scores but have done well in med school b/c of hard work. Nothing wrong with working hard, but a 25 MCAT is hardly the stuff of genius. Even the ENT/Ortho types who have high MCATs tend to be ignorant of the world. They can't hold an intelligent conversation about art, history, politics, social justice, literature, or any other topic outside of sports. Admittedly, sports talk is lots of fun, but there's more to the art of conversation. Just my two cents.
Thanks for bringing up an interesting article. The statistic you quote--that Johns Hopkins has more students entering IM than any other school--is misleading. Undoubtedly, most of these students are entering IM with a specialty fellowship in mind--GI, cards, etc. These specialties are similar to ENT/ortho in terms of lifestlye and compensation. It's just as telling that 0% of Hopkins students entered family practice, and 0% entered med/peds. So maybe those Hopkins students have been browsing the "fastest car" dealerships after all. The article can be found on AMSA's web site: <a href="http://www.amsa.org/programs/pcscore7.cfm" target="_blank">http://www.amsa.org/programs/pcscore7.cfm</a>
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Slacker: <strong>It's just as telling that 0% of Hopkins students entered family practice, and 0% entered med/peds.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's downright embarrassing that one of the top schools in the country didn't have one graduate go into family practice. Way to go Hopkins!!! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />
slacker is right, check out the other schools on the list....Rocheser, Mt. Sinai, NYU, Yale, Harvard. I'm sure that most, if not all of these people are either going into academic medicine and/or pursueing high end fellowships. When's the last time you saw any one from a top ten school open a private practice in the bronx (except for Becker)? While there are some people who do go into into primary care from good schools they are on the minority. Even then, they probably go to better practices. Example, my old pediatrician had a spot waiting for his son in his practice. Not a bad deal considering the guy owned a million dollar home and drove a jaguar.When's the last time the avg. pediatrician did that? of course at $275 a visit, he wasn't your avg. pediatrician.
