Stanford Vs. Columbia

[Bobofett]

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Hi everyone!

I am super grateful to be in this position, but also extremely conflicted and wanting to get as many perspectives as possible. Any insights you might have are very appreciated!

A little bit about myself is that I am interested in surgical subspecialties, but also medicine’s intersections with entrepreneurship and finance (VC, biotech, hedge fund, IB, etc)

Money aside, I think I would choose Stanford. A lot of people have mentioned that the loans will be easy to pay off as an attending, which I understand, but I suppose my thinking is in case I do want to take some sort of career risk after medical school, it would be nice to have some more flexibility.

Stanford: 150-170K Federal loans over 4 years

Pros

• From CA and wanting to match back to CA
• Unmatched entrepreneurial environment with tons of VC firms
• Extremely flexible curriculum and incredible research infrastructure
• Integrated with the undergrad campus + business + law schools
• Medscholars funding to help reduce COA
• Name recognition
• Ability for additional research opportunity through the 6-year Berg Scholars program
• Smaller class size

Cons

• Cost
• Stress from trying to find work to pay off loans
• Have always thought of the bay as being a little cutthroat
• Not as diverse a patient population
• Suburban
• Have heard clinical training is not as strong as other options

Columbia: $0 Loans, As it stands, received enough aid to cover remaining expenses with saved money and a little parental help

Pros

• Financial freedom
• I have never lived in a big city, and being in NYC has always excited me
• Strong clinical training in my surgical field of interest
• Finance opportunities in NYC
• Interest in migration policy
• Have heard of great mentorship and sub-specialty-specific support

Cons

• Weaker VC / entrepreneurship opportunities
• Weak biotech industry
• Less renowned research mentors
• No funding for research/stipend
• Separated from the undergrad campus and rather secluded in Manhattan
• Less prestige?
• Larger class size
• More challenging to match back to CA?
• Have heard mixed things about clerkships and stress levels

 

[dino12482]

While you're right that the VC ecosystem in the bay is better than in NYC, NYC completely blows California out of the water with all other aspects of finance and biotech investing. See: Baker bros, Perceptive, RTW, OrbiMed, Deerfield, etc.. Also, it's worth noting that career-wise, transitioning from early stage VC to large buyout PE or hedge funds will be difficult. With that said I would choose Columbia especially for the cost and if you're at all interested in exploring life science HF or PE

 

[Bobofett]

While you're right that the VC ecosystem in the bay is better than in NYC, NYC completely blows California out of the water with all other aspects of finance and biotech investing. See: Baker bros, Perceptive, RTW, OrbiMed, Deerfield, etc.. Also, it's worth noting that career-wise, transitioning from early stage VC to large buyout PE or hedge funds will be difficult. With that said I would choose Columbia especially for the cost and if you're at all interested in exploring life science HF or PE

Wow this was incredibly helpful, I have heard similar things as well about NYC but I guess I was just thrown off with how much people at stanford talk about the industry surrounding it, but your advice really helps clear that up thank you!

 

[YellowSalamander]

Unsure why you bother with the MD if you are strongly interested in biotech and private equity.

There is no universe where paying 150-200k (at 9% interest mind you) to attend Stanford makes sense when you have a free ride to Columbia.

Would not let the Berg Scholar program be a deciding factor here given that its highly competitive (even more so now that research funding is being cut). There is no difference in prestige between Columbia and Stanford.

 

[fire-fox]

Great situation to be in! I am choosing Stanford over Columbia, HMS, and a few peer schools for basically the reasons you mentioned in your pros list. The curriculum flexibility is awesome, my impression is that the privately funded research opportunities are more secure than at other schools right now, and the ability to explore non-medicine areas is, from talking to current students/looking at outcomes, unparalleled. If you want to work in VC or start a company, Stanford Med really seems optimized to enable those paths more than any other school. I have also met a few MDs who were able to do a funded MBA at GSB through Knight-Hennessy or another scholarship, so that's another possibility. A note on the cost: I have heard there are TA opportunities you can engage in which can help offset expenses.

 

[t10medschoolclassof34]

Columbia student here. My final decision came down to UCSF vs. Columbia, so not the same, but still NYC vs. Bay.

If you want to do VC or biotech, I guess go to Stanford. Matching in CA from Columbia is not hard, but I won't pretend it will be as seamless as Stanford.

w/r/t “surgical specialties”

Knowing what I know now, if you are certain about a particular field, this is how I’d approach it:

1. nsgy > columbia
2. ortho > columbia
3. vascular > stanford
4. CT > columbia
5. ENT > stanford if you care about doximity rep but take a look at UCSF’s newest class 🙂
6. Plastics > stanford, (though cornell is a plastics research powerhouse and students from columbia do research there often in addition to plastics research at columbia)
7. would prefer to pursue biotech post grad > stanford, no contest
8. undecided surgical field > hmmm… not sure, probably stanford if feeling more of a "gen surg to subspecialist route" vibe

 

[<><><>]

regarding financial careers, i think MD can help with biotech jobs. VC won't help much if you are not a previous founder. IB HF PE, you have no advantage, i honestly think it's a disadvantage. so out of those, if biotech and maybe VC, then stanford would edge out colubmia.