•••quote:•••Originally posted by rajneel1:
•so nothing incredibly terrible about stanford? so i can pick it over Hopkins and none will think i'm stupid?•••••Hey Rajneel,
I'm a 5th year med student (on the 5-year plan) at Stanford, and my obviously biased opinion is that it is certainly not stupid to pick Stanford over Hopkins. The question is do you want to be miserable during med school, or do you want to enjoy life? :wink: (this is pretty tongue-in-cheek all you JHU fans!)
A lot of choosing med schools is based on personal preference, and I can't really tell you what your preference should be. Back in the day, I chose Stanford med over some other "more prestigious" East Coast med schools because of many personal reasons -- I thought the students were happier, I liked the idea that you don't have to drop your life and outside interests to be a med student, I love the area (I went to college in CA), and I was excited about the opportunities that would be available to me at Stanford. Now that I'm close to graduating, I'm happy that all of my initial impressions about Stanford were true, and I certainly do not feel like I'm at a disadvantage in my residency applications when compared to other "top ten" east coast schools. For example, in my class this year there are about 7 people going into ophtho (a huge number, and the specialty is highly competitive). The match was recently announced for that specialty, and everyone applying from Stanford got their 1st choice, which is practically unheard of for such a competitive specialty!
My point is that you will do well coming from Stanford or from Hopkins -- the question is how do you feel about the intangibles/your personal preferences?
Here are some of my thoughts about potential negatives about the school, since that is what you originally asked about. First, the question about Palo Alto sucking always comes up. Yes, Palo Alto does suck, and no, med students do not actually hang out in Palo Alto. Most people have this idea that since the med school is technically in Palo Alto, that we are limited to that small city for our social activities. In fact, there are at least 3 better cities that people hang out at which are all 10-15 minutes away from the med school (that is where everyone lives anyway -- no one actually lives in Palo Alto). In addition, the city of San Francisco is an easy 30 minute drive away, and the city of San Jose is about 20 minutes away. Granted, downtown San Jose doesn't have the mystique that SF does, but the city is undergoing a revival, and their downtown area is a hidden pearl.
I'd say the biggest complaint people have about Stanford is the facilities. There are plans to build a new medical school, but the new building will probably not be completed until you would be close to graduating. In the meantime, they are trying to do some patchwork fixes. For example, they are going to tear up the current student lounge and redesign a new one this summer. They also have the beautiful new anatomy labs, which were just built a couple of years ago. Those are just the fixes I know about.
Another thing about Stanford that you should know about is that if you have your heart set on primary care, it is probably not the best place to train. The school is very subspecialty-oriented, and very research oriented (although you could say the same thing about Hopkins). You do get an excellent mix of clinical training, because you actually do rotations at 5 different hospitals, only 2 of which are tertiary care centers (Stanford Hospital and Packard Children's). But even though you do get primary care training, primary care is not nearly as well supported as it is at most state medical schools.
I hope that helps! You can PM me if you have any other questions.
