Okay, I'll chime in too.
I'm a 5th year on the 5-year plan at Stanford, so I don't remember all the details of the preclinical stuff, but I'll give you my overall impression of the school.
First, I absolutely love it here. Stanford is a very special place with tons of opportunities in almost any area you could possibly be interested in, and people (students/faculty/housestaff/administration) actually look out for you. It's difficult to describe a typical experience at Stanford med because one of the things that attracts people here is the fact that they can individualize their education and pursue their personal interests. I took advantage of the 5-year plan and during that time I did research through the Med Scholars program, I TA'd some classes on the undergrad campus, I took Spanish on the undergrad campus, I was a freshman advisor, etc. etc. The great thing was that my life was not defined by my medical school coursework. Yes, I took all the med school classes and learned a ton from them, but I got to pursue all my other interests while I was taking classes. That does change a bit when you hit clinics (of course), but I've still been able to do clinical research and go to Stanford basketball and football games while I've been doing clinical rotations!
During the 1st year, about half the students live on campus. Then, after that the vast majority live off campus. Typically people live in Mountain View or Redwood City, both about 10-15 minutes from the medical school. The housing prices are not as expensive as you might think, and they've actually come down a huge amount compared to 4 years ago (particularly because Silicon Valley was hit hard by the recession). Financial aid takes into account the higher cost of living here. I've actually been making money off of my financial aid because there's no way I can actually spend as much money as they calculate my yearly budget should be!
The P/F system works great -- remember, it's even pass/fail during the clinical years, which is very unusual. We do get written evaluations by our attendings, and the positive parts of the evaluations go in our Dean's letter for residency applications. The P/F system was originally designed to encourage students to pursue other interests. The administration wants to maintain an active and diverse student body, and by de-emphasizing grades students feel like they have more flexibility to try out more things. That's not to say that students slack in class -- they still work hard and try to do well. It's just a very cooperative environment to do so.
The students are very laid back and chill -- It's really a west-coast mentality. But that's not to say that they are not academically-oriented. What I'm trying to say is that people do work hard, but they are not in each other's faces about it, and they know how to have fun and have a life while in med school.
The other thing I like about the school is the clinical training. I think our clinical training is excellent -- we have a huge variety in hospitals and patient populations. We see the indigent patients from San Jose at the county hospital down there, and we also see the highly rare and unusual cases that were flown in from say Reno to Stanford Hospital. Being able to rotate through a well-known academic hospital in addition to a VA hospital, an HMO hospital, and a county hospital is kind of like having the best of all worlds to get a diversity of clinical experience. In addition, Stanford is going to implement a new clinical curriculum this June which should further improve our clinical training.
As far as what I don't like about the school, I already mentioned it in the other thread, and I'm too lazy to repeat myself! :wink:
Let me know if you have any other questions!
