I am reposting this post I wrote from another forum...
At BU, there are 5 categoricals, usually about 1-3 are female, though this year's class is 100% female (interesting result of the Match I guess). Fairly diverse group of residents. The hospital (Boston Medical Center) is very diverse as well in all respects, from other house staff to attendings to ancillary staff. There are a ton of languages spoken at this hospital, so if you are multi-lingual, that is a big help.
The residents also rotate through Quincy Med Ctr (community, gen surg), VA, and Cape Cod Hospital (community but full-service).
The patient population at BMC is that of a city hospital: poor, underserved, homeless, etc. Often foreign born, making language barriers very common and challenging. Trauma-heavy.
Training is excellent in trauma/critical care (lots of penetrating trauma), gen surg, vascular, colorectal, oncology. Much less time spent in transplant (kidney only), pedi (only one attending), and subspecialty. About 50-75% of residents do research. They will let you leave BU for research if you want to. About 75% go to fellowships.
The residents overall seem fairly happy, though I think they go over their work hours often (some rotations worse than others). The attendings are excellent, very supportive and willing to give the residents autonomy.
Boston is awesome. I don't think I really need to tout its attributes that much. Excellent restaurants, good nightlife, outdoor activities, theater and concerts, the best Fourth of July fireworks show anywhere, awesome sports teams, etc. And if that's not enough, NYC is about four hours away. BMC tends to get overshadowed by MGH and BI Deaconess, etc., but the programs are so different. While BMC is an academic program, it is not malignant or as intense as some of the bigger names in town (which is good, I think)
I don't know much about Tufts. I think they take 3 categoricals. I know that they rotate through our BU hospital (BMC) for trauma because they are a level 2 trauma center and we are level 1.
I hope that helps!
