Stanford or Baylor or Mount Sinai? Help!

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Greedo

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I would love to go to any of the three and can’t decide, so please help me! I’d appreciate any thoughts about life in Houston, NYC, and Palo Alto, feedback from current or former students, or really any advice anyone has. I’ve read through a lot of the recent posts about these three schools, but I’m still on the fence so I thought I’d go ahead and post a thread. Sorry for the obnoxiousness of this!

Stanford:

Pros:

-Location. Good weather year round, a community I can ride my bike in, great hiking and camping nearby.

-Reputation. I want to work in global health and academic medicine, and I think that Stanford can help me achieve more in those respects.

-MD/MPH and other options beyond just the traditional MD. I do plan to get an MPH, so the opportunity to earn that degree from Berkeley while I’m in med school would help. Also, it seems like residency directions kind of expect for students at Stanford to take more than 4 years, so that would help because I’m thinking about doing some projects abroad that wouldn’t be finished in 4 years.

Cons:

-Slightly higher debt than at my other options (30,000-60,000 more)

-Clinical training may be lacking? I’m not sure about this.

-I like the Baylor curriculum more. Stanford doesn’t have preceptorships where you go to the clinic weekly in the preclinical years.

-Being far away from my family, although I do have close friends in the Bay Area.

-Students here seemed less focused on the patient than at Mount Sinai.

Baylor:

Pros:

-Curriculum. 1.5 preclinical years, preceptorships where you actually go to the clinic and touch patients EVERY WEEK in the first year, and more flexibility for clinical rotations. Seems perfect.

-The students there all seemed like happy and well-adjusted human beings.

Cons:

-Location. I wouldn’t be able to ride my bike much, and I hate hot summers.

-Reputation and therefore networking is a little weaker here, but the opportunity to train at Texas Medical Center might make up for that.

Mount Sinai:

Pros:

-Location. I’d love to live in NYC! And, this is the best chance in my life to live there with such cheap and easy housing. Winters would be a little hard but I could deal.

-Lowest debt out of all my options (again, by about $30,000-60,000 total).

-Students and faculty here seemed more focused on social justice and patient care than at Baylor and Stanford.

Cons:

-Like Baylor, not as strong reputation-wise as Stanford.

-Far from family and friends.

-No preceptorships where you go to the clinic weekly in the preclinical years.

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Unless you have any strong regional preference, my guess is that many people will encourage you to attend Stanford.
 
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I have heard from med school students that preceptorships are actually not as informative a learning experience as schools make them out to be (and some of them say it's a waste of time). Maybe other med students could chime in and comment about this.

Also, as for Stanford, you can decrease your debt significantly by doing research or TAing... Have you included these estimations in your debt load upon graduation?
 
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Thanks for the replies! I didn't include estimates for TAing etc in my debt calculations because those positions are supposed to be pretty competitive, but if I do go to Stanford I will definitely consider that.

I'd love to hear more feedback on preceptorships! They're one of the main reasons I'm interested in Baylor.
 
I want to work in global health and academic medicine
I do plan to get an MPH, so the opportunity to earn that degree from Berkeley while I’m in med school would help.

Considering the above 2 statements, go to Stanford and don't look back.

The only way I'd advise going to Baylor or Sinai was if either was significantly cheaper (>>100K) or you have a family (spouse/kids) that already live in New York/Texas and can't go with you to CA.

You'll have overall more opportunities for academic medicine, global health, and public health at Stanford vs Baylor/Sinai.
 
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That $30 - $60K debt difference could easily be made up by unanticipated COLA of living in New York City over four years. So really, there's no debt difference between Sinai and Stanford.

Is your problem solved?

Frankly, I didn't see anything you wrote that was so compelling about Baylor or Mount Sinai to choose either over Stanford.
 
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I PM'ed you with some comments. Go to Stanford! You won't regret.

Per comment above, it will actually be cheaper to live in NYC than Palo Alto given Sinai's highly subsidized housing options. I don't think 30-60k will matter though especially given the ample funding opportunities at Stanford to offset that difference.
 
Go to Stanford and never look back. By far the best school in the list. You wont regret this.
 
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Definitely Stanford. Not even a competition in my mind.

Edit: Also many congratulations!! :)
 
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Congratulations on your acceptances!
I'm from Texas, so I'm a bit bias in my opinion. As a Texas resident who has spent an excessive amount of time in the Texas Medical Center, I would have to say that BCM is in an invigorating location. The Texas Medical Center is the largest medical center in the world with the highest density of clinical and research facilities. As a plus, it is also one of the cheapest medical schools(For in-state student, tuition is around $6,500; and for OOS, it is around $32,000, compared to $42,000 for Mount Sinai), so I'm really not sure where you got that BCM is more expensive than Mount Sinai? I might have my facts wrong though.. BCM is also close to Rice University, University Village, and the Memorial Hermann Park, so there is a wide variety of things to keep you stimulated within a 5 mile radius. Many of my friends who decided to attend BCM love it and can't imagine going anywhere else.
If reputation is extremely important to you and money is not a big an issue, then you should probably choose Stanford. However, Mount Sinai ranks #30 and BCM ranks #28.
Regardless of which school you decide, you are going to end up at a great medical school, so congrats again ( :
 
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That $30 - $60K debt difference could easily be made up by unanticipated COLA of living in New York City over four years. So really, there's no debt difference between Sinai and Stanford.
What exactly are these unanticipated expenses of living in NYC that would set you back ~$7.5-15K a year? Considering that the cheap student housing is already factored into COA and that you won't need a car (which is one money pit I can think of) in NYC?
When I considered my medical school expenses, I also considered the fact that there were plenty of residencies I could go to interview at by bus (Boston, Philly, DC... Pittsburgh) or by subway (NYC has a lot of residency programs) if I wanted to stay in NYC area, so residency interview travel would be cheap, while I'd have to drive (and have to have or rent a car with all the associated expenses) or fly from many other places like, in this case, Houston and Palo Alto, which would end up being more expensive.

To the OP: congratulations on your wonderful choices! Do you see yourself being more happy and comfortable in one of the schools than the other two? Did you get a chance to attend second looks? What did you think of the current and accepted students? I think you can't go wrong with any of your choices (though I have a preference for Stanford because it's Stanford :p and Baylor because of its wonderful curriculum and TMC), but I believe that it is important how well you fit into the school environment/how well you can get along with its students.
 
@Amygdarya , have you lived in NYC before. I have lived in NYC, Cali, and in upstate NY and I can say that per year I easily spend way more money here thatn I did in in upstate and in Cali. Especially in center Manhattan, where Sinai is, expect to pay more.
 
Seeing as Stanford has shot up in the rankings over the past few years, while Baylor fell from the top 12, it's obvious that Stanford has become a much better school and Baylor has fallen apart and is not training their students as well as they used to. I know they have the highest step 1 average in the country, but come on, only in the LOW 240s!? Maybe if their ranking didn't fall so much it would be different.
 
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What exactly are these unanticipated expenses of living in NYC that would set you back ~$7.5-15K a year? Considering that the cheap student housing is already factored into COA and that you won't need a car (which is one money pit I can think of) in NYC?

Housing is certainly a substantial part of it, but just about everything costs more in Manhattan. I've been there a couple of times to visit a relative, and I was just bleeding money doing absolutely nothing spectacular. I even noticed a bagel was three times more expensive in Manhattan than in Park Slope (in Brooklyn).

Is housing guaranteed over the summer as well? Will you get subsidized food? Do you plan to stay in most weekends? Are there living costs unrelated to housing that your school will not subsidize? Are you sure you're going to stay within your school's subsidized bubble for all four years?
 
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@Amygdarya , have you lived in NYC before. I have lived in NYC, Cali, and in upstate NY and I can say that per year I easily spend way more money here thatn I did in in upstate and in Cali. Especially in center Manhattan, where Sinai is, expect to pay more.
Actually, I have and I'll be happy to come back to NYC :)
The biggest part of COL is housing, which is indeed expensive in NYC. But the OP is going to have cheap student housing provided by Mt. SInai (I don't know how much Mt. Sinai student housing is, but Cornell's 1st year housing is $700 a month including utilities - yes, it's semi-dorm-style, but my point is, you're not paying $1500+ a month or something). Moreover, as far as I understood from OP's post, he/she already got his/her financial aid package that included COL in that location and whatever grants/scholarships the OP got. So higher COL in NYC was already accounted for and, presumably because of grants/scholarships, Mt. Sinai COA ended up to be the cheapest for OP.

You mentioned *unexpected* expenses of living in NYC - I'm asking what they are? Yes, NYC is more expensive than many other places, but this was already included in OP's financial aid package. What are the "unexpected" expenses of living in NYC you're talking about?
 
Housing is certainly a substantial part of it, but just about everything costs more in Manhattan. I've been there a couple of times to visit a relative, and I was just bleeding money doing absolutely nothing spectacular. I even noticed a bagel was three times more expensive in Manhattan than in Park Slope (in Brooklyn).
Look. First of all, visiting and living somewhere is different, and living frugally is more different yet. (And if you're living off your loans, you'll have to learn how to live frugally no matter where you go to school.) When you live somewhere, you get to know where you should go grocery shopping etc. As an incoming student, you can always ask your upperclassmen. Yes, NYC is expensive, but no, you don't have to bleed money if you know what you're doing.

Most importantly, the possible difference in cost of living is already included in COA. That minus grants/scholarships equals how much the OP will actually paying for the school, which happens to be less than the other schools, most likely because Mt. Sinai was most generous with "free money".
 
Is housing guaranteed over the summer as well? Will you get subsidized food? Do you plan to stay in most weekends? Are there living costs unrelated to housing that your school will not subsidize? Are you sure you're going to stay within your school's subsidized bubble for all four years?
I can't say anything about Mt. Sinai housing, I'm not a Mt. Sinai spokesperson :p so I can't tell with any certainty if housing is guaranteed over the summer. However, it's med school, not undergrad anymore - you're not going to have any more summers except for the one between MS1 and MS2 (which is why it's 12 months COL for MS2 and MS3, not 10 months as MS1 and MS4), and I'll be extremely surprised if you couldn't stay for 2 months between MS1 and MS2 in student housing, especially if you're doing research or some other school-related stuff, as most medical students do (even if not, I don't see why this can't be arranged).
Food - you need to know where to buy it. And you'll have to think instead of buy on impulse to avoid bleeding money.
Going out - again, it's medical school, not undergrad, I don't think you should expect to be able to go out every weekend regardless of where you go to school.
Finally, and most importantly, you'll have to live frugally no matter where you go to school if you live off student loans. Maybe it's just that I'm a non-trad who've worked for years and who knows the value of money but I don't see why having to live frugally for 4 years should cause a riot.
 
^ You lived there. I just visited. I hope the COA adequately covers everything; if not, it's New York.

* My relative studied there and still lives there. Confirms living there is a grind money-wise both as a previous graduate student (non-health) and now as a working professional.
 
^ You lived there. I just visited. I hope the COA adequately covers everything; if not, it's New York.

* My relative studied there and still lives there. Confirms living there is a grind money-wise both as a previous graduate student (non-health) and now as a working professional.
I actually lived in New York as a graduate student :) so I do know that it's possible to live there on a budget, assuming you have a reasonable housing. Certainly, there are some extremely expensive food and entertainment options there, but there are affordable ones as well, you just need to know about them ;)

Normally, COA adequately covers reasonable living expenses in the area. My NYC COL was higher than COL for schools in other states, as expected. However, the NYC school in question was one of the most generous with "free money" and ended up being second cheapest for me - cheaper than my state school in a cheap COL place. True story. This is why I'm not surprised that what OP has to pay for Mt. Sinai is less than the other schools even despite the higher COL in NYC.

That said, my vote is for Stanford because of its wider reputation and research or Baylor because of its awesome curriculum and clinical training. I hate to say it but Mt. Sinai is just a bit weaker than these schools (which is not to say that it's weak, just by comparison).
 
Seeing as Stanford has shot up in the rankings over the past few years, while Baylor fell from the top 12, it's obvious that Stanford has become a much better school and Baylor has fallen apart and is not training their students as well as they used to. I know they have the highest step 1 average in the country, but come on, only in the LOW 240s!? Maybe if their ranking didn't fall so much it would be different.

I'm either missing your sarcasm or you sound like a complete idiot saying this. Baylor fell out of the top ten because they stopped reporting research funding from MD Anderson and thus fell from top 10 to like 17 to 23 (or something around there)... (research dollars are averaged over a 2 yr period for ranking purposes). the training has not changed at all....and i would argue that the CLINICAL training is equal if not better at Baylor than at Stanford since Baylor has a county hospital and students get to do so much more and have a greater diversity of patients/pathologies. btw, low 240s as an AVERAGE is pretty good.

while i have a bias to Baylor and think the program and curriculum (as mentioned by the poster) are excellent, stanford has an incredible reputation and i would find it hard to pass up that program even if baylor is cheaper.
 
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Congratulations on your acceptances!
I'm from Texas, so I'm a bit bias in my opinion. As a Texas resident who has spent an excessive amount of time in the Texas Medical Center, I would have to say that BCM is in an invigorating location. The Texas Medical Center is the largest medical center in the world with the highest density of clinical and research facilities. As a plus, it is also one of the cheapest medical schools(For in-state student, tuition is around $6,500; and for OOS, it is around $32,000, compared to $42,000 for Mount Sinai), so I'm really not sure where you got that BCM is more expensive than Mount Sinai? I might have my facts wrong though.. BCM is also close to Rice University, University Village, and the Memorial Hermann Park, so there is a wide variety of things to keep you stimulated within a 5 mile radius. Many of my friends who decided to attend BCM love it and can't imagine going anywhere else.
If reputation is extremely important to you and money is not a big an issue, then you should probably choose Stanford. However, Mount Sinai ranks #30 and BCM ranks #28.
Regardless of which school you decide, you are going to end up at a great medical school, so congrats again ( :

what source are you using for those rankings? those don't sound right
 
I'm either missing your sarcasm or you sound like a complete idiot saying this. Baylor fell out of the top ten because they stopped reporting research funding from MD Anderson and thus fell from top 10 to like 17 to 23 (or something around there)... (research dollars are averaged over a 2 yr period for ranking purposes). the training has not changed at all....and i would argue that the CLINICAL training is equal if not better at Baylor than at Stanford since Baylor has a county hospital and students get to do so much more and have a greater diversity of patients/pathologies. btw, low 240s as an AVERAGE is pretty good.

while i have a bias to Baylor and think the program and curriculum (as mentioned by the poster) are excellent, stanford has an incredible reputation and i would find it hard to pass up that program even if baylor is cheaper.

It was absolutely sarcasm lol.
 
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OP here, thanks for all the comments!

Just wanted to clarify a couple things.

Like some people said above, the cost of living for Mount Sinai is relatively low, despite the fact that the school is in NYC. This is due to the fact that students are guaranteed housing that is pretty cheap, and that's one of the advantages of Mount Sinai because when else in my life will I have the chance for such great housing in NYC? Also, out of all of my options, Mount Sinai was the most generous in regards to need-based aid (2x more generous than the next highest).

Also, someone said that Baylor has a county hospital and Stanford does not, but Stanford does have a county hospital, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. I'm not sure what proportion of their training students get to do there, but the affiliation does exist.
 
I'm a MS-3 at Mount Sinai.

To clarify some misinformation that's here - basically for housing, it's $560 to just over $700 per month depending on what size apartment you live in Aron Hall. My room is $671 and it's a great room in a duplex apartment on the 14th (top floor) with an internal staircase AND a balcony that faces Central Park (ok - granted there's not many apartments that have this). Housing is guaranteed for four years - basically once you have the room you keep it unless you want to move out or move to a different room in the building. There is a summer between MS-1 and MS-2 and you're responsible for the rent then. You can't just "move out" since you won't be there that summer. A lot of us sublet and there's plenty of people looking for Sinai housing during the summer (the only caveat is that whoever you sublet to needs to be doing official business with Sinai so I guess we can't profit off our apartment by renting to a random stranger on Craigslist). As people noted, this is a fantastic deal and quite amazing. I lived in NYC one summer before med school and I was renting a studio that's slightly bigger than my current bathroom and bedroom put together in Alphabet City for $1200. Similarly sized apartments just next to Sinai go for $1000-1300. We are getting a fantastic deal and if you want to spend your mid-20s in NYC, Sinai housing has you taken care of.

I've lived in San Francisco before and I must say that San Francisco/Bay Area is just as expensive as NYC. One of my friends is starting residency at Stanford and he's renting a 1BR for $1300 in Palo Alto and that's not that different from how much it would cost at NYC. Theoretically restaurant prices, groceries...etc are more expensive in NYC but honestly the Bay Area is not that cheap either. When I lived in San Francisco, restaurant/grocery pricing was quite similar to NYC. But just as any city, you can find niches where it's cheaper if you really want to save money. For example, you can get a great meal for under $10 in East Harlem which Mount Sinai is conveniently close to - but people just never seem to go there. I buy my groceries all the way out near Elmhurst (using our school's free shuttle) or Flushing, and Chinese supermarkets there are dirt cheap (they seem to also be the same pricing everywhere...big bags of veggies for $1 lol).

Importantly one thing that no one seems to have mentioned is the cost of a car. You do not need a car in New York, and you easily save thousands of dollars during the year on maintenance, gas, possibly parking, and obviously the price of the car. My SO got a car for her 3rd year rotations in the Bay Area, and the resulting increase in spending on the car (and even the unintentional parking tickets...) adds up. For the same price of that, you can ride the subway till you drop in NYC. I personally believe that to compare COL between Bay Area (SF/Palo Alto...San Jose is cheaper) and NYC is almost splitting hairs, even if you factor in car. Both places are expensive likely due to the fact that they are popular places to live. Baylor would be much cheaper (my SO is also from Texas), so if one is really that concerned about cost then maybe one should attend Baylor instead. I personally think trying to compare Stanford and MS based on COL is almost a moot point.

That said, however, I think Stanford vs. Mount Sinai is certainly a difficult choice. From my own observation, I would have loved Stanford's connections to other graduate programs, and the smaller program size. I believe that the really small class size at Stanford probably provide a lot of individual attention. You would likely also benefit from world-class research opportunities with mentors who are affiliated with a large research university. However, I think Sinai has several strengths that Stanford also does not have. For example, if you want a well-balanced picture of urban medicine, I honestly don't believe you can get better than what we have at Sinai. As I'm sure you know, we nestle both the most affluent and also the most impoverished neighborhoods of Manhattan. We rotate at a county hospital that is located in the "most diverse zip code in the US" (Elmhurst). Now having gone through 3rd year, I certainly confirm the fact that this year I've seen a patient rotation as diverse as New York City itself. With the addition of the Continuum Hospitals (St. Luke's-Roosevelt (another level 1 trauma center), Beth Israel, Mount Sinai Brooklyn), we're making inroads to even more communities (a large Chinese community for example at Beth Israel and Orthodox/Russian at Brooklyn). This is simply something that most medical schools in the country, and certainly not Palo Alto, can even compete with. I'm actually really excited about future classes at Sinai because of this, and because we really only had Sinai, Elmhurst, the Bronx VA, and our two community hospitals in New Jersey during our clinical rotations (I never went to the hospitals in Jersey because you'd have to stay there, but if you like community medicine that's the place to go).

You mentioned something about preceptorship earlier, but now having done 3rd year I would say that you don't need a structured program if you really want to "get ahead" clinically or see some clinical correlation to what you're learning in class. We have a structured program here called the Longitudinal Clinical Experience from first year, which is this program that pairs two students to a patient with chronic medical conditions and you accompany them to all of their appointments and help them navigate/troubleshoot issues that might come up. It's intended to be a learning experience that exposes students to the realities of 21st-century American medicine through the eyes of a real patient, but as you can imagine, the success of this program falls on a wide spectrum simply depending on the kind of preceptor or patient that you are assigned to. For example, some of my classmates established deep relationships with their patients and learned a lot from the appointments they attended and their assigned preceptors, but my own patient never really warmed up to me and it became more and more cumbersome to schedule appointments with her since after awhile it got pretty repetitive and there wasn't much to talk about. What I found more valuable was actually the experience I got at our student-run clinic to East Harlem, where I was a part of since first year. I started by following around senior medical students while they saw patients, but I learned so much from the upperclassmen who were so willing to teach, and then from the attendings who precepted at the clinic. Now, I have my own panel of patients that I see chronically - I'm essentially serving as their primary care provider. Along the way, I've also dabbled in the various administrative committees of the clinic - our clinic has grown to be a sprawling organization involving probably 100+ medical students in the medical school, and everything is student governed - from booking appointments, to enrolling new patients, to securing insurance/specialty referrals, to acquiring medications for the clinic. Pretty much the MDs just precept our clinic to make sure that we aren't being dangerous (a good idea!) but I'm honestly surprised at the level of autonomy and student governance in our clinic. I never found this level of complexity and autonomy at my SO's student-run clinic at a very reputable med school on the west coast.

If you're not into that, simply ask a upperclassman to suggest clinical preceptors who would be interested to work with you during 1st/2nd year when you have a lot of time. A lot of 1st/2nd years go on liver transplant experiences (this is a cool thing to do 1st/2nd year I guess, when you have a lot of time), and similar things can easily be arranged with an attending on any service. In med school, you take a lot of initiative for the kind of path you want to pursue, and I personally believe the availability of structured programs factor very low on my list of priorities if I could choose again. Structured programs don't always work the way they advertise, and even if they do, it doesn't guarantee magical success that you won't be able to get otherwise. I also think the same thing about average Step I scores now looking back as a 3rd year. I used to care so much about average board scores as an applicant but now having seen everything, I realize that the only score that matters is not that of your school, but your own. Perhaps it was because my score deviated by a standard deviation from Sinai's average (236 I believe in case you're curious), but I had such incorrect assumptions since I initially based my expectations on my school's average score. You can do a lot worse, or a lot better - don't let those kind of things dictate where you want to go.

Either way, I'm not advocating a specific school. You can come to Sinai or not. These are all really good schools. I would encourage you, bottom line, to choose a 1) P/F school, no internal rankings, 2) a school where you feel comfortable with the people, and 3) somewhere you want to be for the next 4 years, and more importantly your mid-20s (assuming you are reasonably recently out of college). In the long run, these things are way more important, and you only get your mid-20s once in your life. Academically the schools at the top are very close to each other, and I think your ability to blaze your own path will make up the small differences that are present. Arguably your med school will be known well by PDs when you apply to residency. Sure - there will be regional difference and maybe with a bigger name like Stanford you could do a bit better in academic research, but are all medicine residents at Stanford going to MGH? Are there no students at Sinai going to MGH? You create your own path - I'm not saying the school name is inconsequential, but I honestly believe now that what you choose to do in med school and how well you perform compare to your peers matter way more.
 
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OP here, thanks for all the comments!

Just wanted to clarify a couple things.

Like some people said above, the cost of living for Mount Sinai is relatively low, despite the fact that the school is in NYC. This is due to the fact that students are guaranteed housing that is pretty cheap, and that's one of the advantages of Mount Sinai because when else in my life will I have the chance for such great housing in NYC? Also, out of all of my options, Mount Sinai was the most generous in regards to need-based aid (2x more generous than the next highest).

Also, someone said that Baylor has a county hospital and Stanford does not, but Stanford does have a county hospital, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. I'm not sure what proportion of their training students get to do there, but the affiliation does exist.

Exactly. Santa Clara Valley MC is the 2nd busiest hospital in CA right after LAC/USC.

However, AFAIK most rotations are done at Stanford hospital.
 
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OP here, thanks for all the comments!

Also, someone said that Baylor has a county hospital and Stanford does not, but Stanford does have a county hospital, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. I'm not sure what proportion of their training students get to do there, but the affiliation does exist.

i dont think stanford med students really rotate there and from current stanford residents, i've heard it's rather low volume. at least 40-50% of your rotations at Baylor are at the county hospital and it's high volume.
 
i dont think stanford med students really rotate there and from current stanford residents, i've heard it's rather low volume. at least 40-50% of your rotations at Baylor are at the county hospital and it's high volume.

This is not true. You can rotate there as much or as little as you want. When you sign up for clerkships at Stanford, you get to choose which site to do it at. Some students choose to do most of their rotations at Valley, others prefer Stanford or the VA or Kaiser. It really is up to you. The volume is actually quite high at Valley, and has recently gotten even busier given changes enacted by the affordable care act and other regional hospitals. Your team will frequently reach its cap in the morning. Also, IMO, the diversity is outstanding, both ethnically and socioeconomically. There's never a day where I don't have to get a patient interpreter.
 
This is not true. You can rotate there as much or as little as you want. When you sign up for clerkships at Stanford, you get to choose which site to do it at. Some students choose to do most of their rotations at Valley, others prefer Stanford or the VA or Kaiser. It really is up to you. The volume is actually quite high at Valley, and has recently gotten even busier given changes enacted by the affordable care act and other regional hospitals. Your team will frequently reach its cap in the morning. Also, IMO, the diversity is outstanding, both ethnically and socioeconomically. There's never a day where I don't have to get a patient interpreter.

Is this really true? Like say if I wanted to do over half of my rotations at Valley, I could do that? And it would maybe even be cost-effective to move to San Jose?
 
This is not true. You can rotate there as much or as little as you want. When you sign up for clerkships at Stanford, you get to choose which site to do it at. Some students choose to do most of their rotations at Valley, others prefer Stanford or the VA or Kaiser. It really is up to you. The volume is actually quite high at Valley, and has recently gotten even busier given changes enacted by the affordable care act and other regional hospitals. Your team will frequently reach its cap in the morning. Also, IMO, the diversity is outstanding, both ethnically and socioeconomically. There's never a day where I don't have to get a patient interpreter.
ive never been. just going off my residency interview there, other current students, and current medicine residents (who came from baylor and have compared them head to head for me and my rank list). take that fwiw

santa clara valley isn't even close in terms of patient diversity or pathology to the county hospital we have in houston
 
santa clara valley isn't even close in terms of patient diversity or pathology to the county hospital we have in houston

I think it's pretty presumptuous to make a statement like that about a hospital you haven't worked at. Valley is great. It's the second largest county hospital in California (behind LA County which is affiliated with USC) with a lot of crazy pathology from diseases of neglect. It also benefits from having many of it's own residency programs, so the faculty there are good at teaching---it's part of their job. I'm sure the county hospital in Houston is great too.

Pushing that aside, this should all be of little consequence for the OP in making a decision about attending medical school. If you want to nit-pick training quality...wait for residency applications when it actually matters. You're going to be shifting around ever 2-4 weeks as a 3rd year medical student to various clinical sites, rounding teams, disciplines, attendings, residents, nurses. There are so many confounding and subjective factors that go into the quality of your experience as a clinical student it's silly to think you can predict a better experience. The reality is (1) you will likely both HATE and LOVE many parts of your third year of medical school regardless of where you go, and (2) you will graduate from ANY medical school in the United States with a quality clinical education that will have prepared you with the basics of clinical medicine so you're ready to tackle the challenges of residency for whatever specific field you choice. I think the clinical training at Stanford is excellent (we're a very med-student focused school). But, honestly, I don't think you should use that as a litmus test for choosing a medical school.
 
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I'm a MS-3 at Mount Sinai.

To clarify some misinformation that's here - basically for housing, it's $560 to just over $700 per month depending on what size apartment you live in Aron Hall. My room is $671 and it's a great room in a duplex apartment on the 14th (top floor) with an internal staircase AND a balcony that faces Central Park (ok - granted there's not many apartments that have this). Housing is guaranteed for four years - basically once you have the room you keep it unless you want to move out or move to a different room in the building. There is a summer between MS-1 and MS-2 and you're responsible for the rent then. You can't just "move out" since you won't be there that summer. A lot of us sublet and there's plenty of people looking for Sinai housing during the summer (the only caveat is that whoever you sublet to needs to be doing official business with Sinai so I guess we can't profit off our apartment by renting to a random stranger on Craigslist). As people noted, this is a fantastic deal and quite amazing. I lived in NYC one summer before med school and I was renting a studio that's slightly bigger than my current bathroom and bedroom put together in Alphabet City for $1200. Similarly sized apartments just next to Sinai go for $1000-1300. We are getting a fantastic deal and if you want to spend your mid-20s in NYC, Sinai housing has you taken care of.

I've lived in San Francisco before and I must say that San Francisco/Bay Area is just as expensive as NYC. One of my friends is starting residency at Stanford and he's renting a 1BR for $1300 in Palo Alto and that's not that different from how much it would cost at NYC. Theoretically restaurant prices, groceries...etc are more expensive in NYC but honestly the Bay Area is not that cheap either. When I lived in San Francisco, restaurant/grocery pricing was quite similar to NYC. But just as any city, you can find niches where it's cheaper if you really want to save money. For example, you can get a great meal for under $10 in East Harlem which Mount Sinai is conveniently close to - but people just never seem to go there. I buy my groceries all the way out near Elmhurst (using our school's free shuttle) or Flushing, and Chinese supermarkets there are dirt cheap (they seem to also be the same pricing everywhere...big bags of veggies for $1 lol).

Importantly one thing that no one seems to have mentioned is the cost of a car. You do not need a car in New York, and you easily save thousands of dollars during the year on maintenance, gas, possibly parking, and obviously the price of the car. My SO got a car for her 3rd year rotations in the Bay Area, and the resulting increase in spending on the car (and even the unintentional parking tickets...) adds up. For the same price of that, you can ride the subway till you drop in NYC. I personally believe that to compare COL between Bay Area (SF/Palo Alto...San Jose is cheaper) and NYC is almost splitting hairs, even if you factor in car. Both places are expensive likely due to the fact that they are popular places to live. Baylor would be much cheaper (my SO is also from Texas), so if one is really that concerned about cost then maybe one should attend Baylor instead. I personally think trying to compare Stanford and MS based on COL is almost a moot point.

That said, however, I think Stanford vs. Mount Sinai is certainly a difficult choice. From my own observation, I would have loved Stanford's connections to other graduate programs, and the smaller program size. I believe that the really small class size at Stanford probably provide a lot of individual attention. You would likely also benefit from world-class research opportunities with mentors who are affiliated with a large research university. However, I think Sinai has several strengths that Stanford also does not have. For example, if you want a well-balanced picture of urban medicine, I honestly don't believe you can get better than what we have at Sinai. As I'm sure you know, we nestle both the most affluent and also the most impoverished neighborhoods of Manhattan. We rotate at a county hospital that is located in the "most diverse zip code in the US" (Elmhurst). Now having gone through 3rd year, I certainly confirm the fact that this year I've seen a patient rotation as diverse as New York City itself. With the addition of the Continuum Hospitals (St. Luke's-Roosevelt (another level 1 trauma center), Beth Israel, Mount Sinai Brooklyn), we're making inroads to even more communities (a large Chinese community for example at Beth Israel and Orthodox/Russian at Brooklyn). This is simply something that most medical schools in the country, and certainly not Palo Alto, can even compete with. I'm actually really excited about future classes at Sinai because of this, and because we really only had Sinai, Elmhurst, the Bronx VA, and our two community hospitals in New Jersey during our clinical rotations (I never went to the hospitals in Jersey because you'd have to stay there, but if you like community medicine that's the place to go).

You mentioned something about preceptorship earlier, but now having done 3rd year I would say that you don't need a structured program if you really want to "get ahead" clinically or see some clinical correlation to what you're learning in class. We have a structured program here called the Longitudinal Clinical Experience from first year, which is this program that pairs two students to a patient with chronic medical conditions and you accompany them to all of their appointments and help them navigate/troubleshoot issues that might come up. It's intended to be a learning experience that exposes students to the realities of 21st-century American medicine through the eyes of a real patient, but as you can imagine, the success of this program falls on a wide spectrum simply depending on the kind of preceptor or patient that you are assigned to. For example, some of my classmates established deep relationships with their patients and learned a lot from the appointments they attended and their assigned preceptors, but my own patient never really warmed up to me and it became more and more cumbersome to schedule appointments with her since after awhile it got pretty repetitive and there wasn't much to talk about. What I found more valuable was actually the experience I got at our student-run clinic to East Harlem, where I was a part of since first year. I started by following around senior medical students while they saw patients, but I learned so much from the upperclassmen who were so willing to teach, and then from the attendings who precepted at the clinic. Now, I have my own panel of patients that I see chronically - I'm essentially serving as their primary care provider. Along the way, I've also dabbled in the various administrative committees of the clinic - our clinic has grown to be a sprawling organization involving probably 100+ medical students in the medical school, and everything is student governed - from booking appointments, to enrolling new patients, to securing insurance/specialty referrals, to acquiring medications for the clinic. Pretty much the MDs just precept our clinic to make sure that we aren't being dangerous (a good idea!) but I'm honestly surprised at the level of autonomy and student governance in our clinic. I never found this level of complexity and autonomy at my SO's student-run clinic at a very reputable med school on the west coast.

If you're not into that, simply ask a upperclassman to suggest clinical preceptors who would be interested to work with you during 1st/2nd year when you have a lot of time. A lot of 1st/2nd years go on liver transplant experiences (this is a cool thing to do 1st/2nd year I guess, when you have a lot of time), and similar things can easily be arranged with an attending on any service. In med school, you take a lot of initiative for the kind of path you want to pursue, and I personally believe the availability of structured programs factor very low on my list of priorities if I could choose again. Structured programs don't always work the way they advertise, and even if they do, it doesn't guarantee magical success that you won't be able to get otherwise. I also think the same thing about average Step I scores now looking back as a 3rd year. I used to care so much about average board scores as an applicant but now having seen everything, I realize that the only score that matters is not that of your school, but your own. Perhaps it was because my score deviated by a standard deviation from Sinai's average (236 I believe in case you're curious), but I had such incorrect assumptions since I initially based my expectations on my school's average score. You can do a lot worse, or a lot better - don't let those kind of things dictate where you want to go.

Either way, I'm not advocating a specific school. You can come to Sinai or not. These are all really good schools. I would encourage you, bottom line, to choose a 1) P/F school, no internal rankings, 2) a school where you feel comfortable with the people, and 3) somewhere you want to be for the next 4 years, and more importantly your mid-20s (assuming you are reasonably recently out of college). In the long run, these things are way more important, and you only get your mid-20s once in your life. Academically the schools at the top are very close to each other, and I think your ability to blaze your own path will make up the small differences that are present. Arguably your med school will be known well by PDs when you apply to residency. Sure - there will be regional difference and maybe with a bigger name like Stanford you could do a bit better in academic research, but are all medicine residents at Stanford going to MGH? Are there no students at Sinai going to MGH? You create your own path - I'm not saying the school name is inconsequential, but I honestly believe now that what you choose to do in med school and how well you perform compare to your peers matter way more.

As a current Stanford student who almost enrolled at Sinai, I can say this post seems pretty much spot-on.
 
Thanks again for all these replies! You guys are being so helpful and I appreciate that you're willing to help me out even though I'm an anonymous stranger.

After learning more about both schools over the weekend (partially through SDN), I know that I prefer Stanford. The only disheartening thing is that Mount Sinai provided better financial aid, with less assumptions about how much money my family is willing/able to contribute. And, in my calculations of the difference in total debt between Sinai and Stanford, I didn't include interest, which would increase the financial gap between the two. The Stanford financial aid office has been really friendly, but they seem less generous with grants and even loans...
 
The difference between Stanford and Mt Sinai should be enough to pick Stanford over Sinai. If you prefer Stanford, go for it. I think that would be something you would really regret later down the road.
 
The Stanford financial aid office has been really friendly, but they seem less generous with grants and even loans...

Hopefully their financial aid office is more competent than their admissions office?
 
Is this really true? Like say if I wanted to do over half of my rotations at Valley, I could do that? And it would maybe even be cost-effective to move to San Jose?

Yes this is really true. All of the required core clerkships can be done at Valley (with the exception of the critical care clerkship, I believe). There are some two-month clerkships (such as IM, peds, surgery), which require a month at either Stanford and VA, and a month at either Valley or Kaiser. I think I did about 1/3 of my rotations at Valley, including my medicine sub-internship, and loved it.

I should note one of the nicer aspects of Stanford's clinical curriculum is its flexibility in scheduling. You are never locked into a schedule. There is a lottery run every week which allows you to add, drop or move rotations as you like. Of course, some core clerkships may fill up during popular months, so it may be harder to get those if they're full. But even then, you can usually email the coordinator or class list to see if anyone can switch with you. You also do not have to start your clerkships in June- it is possible to delay beginning clerkships a couple months if you are finishing up a project at the end of second year, or to take a month off in the middle of clinical years for whatever reason, and still graduate on time (and even more flexible if you're taking >4 yrs to graduate).

Personally I actually found Stanford's clinical training to be excellent whereas I felt the preclinical training was often lacking. I found some of the lectures in the preclinical years to be pretty disorganized and not taught effectively, and I often had to rely on textbooks and review books to learn the material.
 
I think it's pretty presumptuous to make a statement like that about a hospital you haven't worked at. Valley is great. It's the second largest county hospital in California (behind LA County which is affiliated with USC) with a lot of crazy pathology from diseases of neglect. It also benefits from having many of it's own residency programs, so the faculty there are good at teaching---it's part of their job. I'm sure the county hospital in Houston is great too.
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i repeat....i'm going off of what current stanford residents say that went to baylor college of medicine and have thus worked at both county hospitals. they aren't even close in terms of diversity. Ben Taub is akin to Grady and Houston is arguably (and according to most recent population studies) the most diverse city in the country (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/houston-most-diverse_n_1321089.html).

comparisons:
Ben Taub vs Santa Clara Valley:
Beds: 586 (https://www.harrishealth.org/en/services/locations/pages/ben-taub.aspx) vs 574
ER Visits: 100k-160k (https://www.harrishealth.org/en/services/locations/pages/ben-taub.aspx; http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/lists/50-hospitals-with-the-most-er-visits.html) vs 70k -90k (http://www.scvmc.org/professionals/nursing/divisions/Pages/ed.aspx)


regardless, stanford is the way i'd go in this situation
 
i repeat....i'm going off of what current stanford residents say that went to baylor college of medicine and have thus worked at both county hospitals. they aren't even close in terms of diversity. Ben Taub is akin to Grady and Houston is arguably (and according to most recent population studies) the most diverse city in the country (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/houston-most-diverse_n_1321089.html).

comparisons:
Ben Taub vs Santa Clara Valley:
Beds: 586 (https://www.harrishealth.org/en/services/locations/pages/ben-taub.aspx) vs 574
ER Visits: 100k-160k (https://www.harrishealth.org/en/services/locations/pages/ben-taub.aspx; http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/lists/50-hospitals-with-the-most-er-visits.html) vs 70k -90k (http://www.scvmc.org/professionals/nursing/divisions/Pages/ed.aspx)


regardless, stanford is the way i'd go in this situation

Please don't cite that Rice University report proclaiming Houston to be the most diverse city in the country. I gave a 5 minute cursory glance at the report and it's kind of a joke. Anyone can find enough statistics to prove any point they want to make when they're trying to find a specific answer.
 
Please don't cite that Rice University report proclaiming Houston to be the most diverse city in the country. I gave a 5 minute cursory glance at the report and it's kind of a joke. Anyone can find enough statistics to prove any point they want to make when they're trying to find a specific answer.
yah i'll keep citing it. thanks for your fifth post
 
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Please don't cite that Rice University report proclaiming Houston to be the most diverse city in the country. I gave a 5 minute cursory glance at the report and it's kind of a joke. Anyone can find enough statistics to prove any point they want to make when they're trying to find a specific answer.
Yes, and we'll take the breadth of the number of posts you have as credibility....oh wait, nvm.
 
yah i'll keep citing it. thanks for your fifth post

A study that lists the 20 most diverse cities in the U.S. and Houston is nowhere to be found. Looks like Houston is not diverse at all. (http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/cities/lifestyle/most-diverse-cities-in-america/)

Another study, this time by Brown, lists the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan area as being more diverse than Houston. Looks like Stanford students will have the opportunity to see a greater diversity of patients/pathologies than Baylor students. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...-cities-brown-university-study_n_1865715.html)

The more I think about it, I like this cherry picking approach to statistics and making broad statements. I'll remember to do this when applying to residency as it seems to have worked out pretty well for you.

P.S. Sorry for derailing your thread OP and I won't return to further disrupt the conversation here. You have wonderful choices before you but it appears that Stanford's the winner here.
 
Just an update, I decided to go to Stanford :soexcited:

If anyone out there wants to join the wagon train headed out West, I'd be happy to have road trip buddies.

Thank you all for your thoughtful and entertaining responses. Best wishes to everyone!
 
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