Hi everyone, any help would be appreciated and would love to hear any opinions you all have on the three schools! Just for some background on me - cost would be roughly the same for all as I am OOS for UVM. I'm not sure what specialty I would like to go into, but I know I would 100% like to do residency at Warren Alpert/Brown. All three schools are also affiliated with pretty big academic medical centers and I've heard that finding research opportunities at all three are very easy.
Finally, the rankings of the three schools are, in my mind, negligible with Tufts being #55 primary care/#50 research, Jefferson being #51 primary care/#53 research UVM being #47 primary care/#56 research.
Tufts
Pros
Jefferson
Pros
UVM
Pros
Finally, the rankings of the three schools are, in my mind, negligible with Tufts being #55 primary care/#50 research, Jefferson being #51 primary care/#53 research UVM being #47 primary care/#56 research.
Tufts
Pros
- Location - currently live in Boston so I have great friends here and I am very close to my family (under an hour drive away)
- Standard curriculum - some people may see this as a con, but with both UVM and Jefferson both revamping their curriculums, I appreciate that I would not be a "guinea pig" and look forward to the stability of the Tufts curriculum
- True P/F for preclinical years, no rankings
- Great match list - matched 5 people to Brown residency (where I want to go), 10 people to ortho (I don't really care about ortho specifically but I realize that that is a pretty large number for a highly competitive specialty), and a lot of people to top tier residency programs when compared to Jefferson and UVM.
- Location - I did undergrad in Boston and currently live in Boston and could use a change of scenery; its also unfortunately the most expensive of the three cities I'm considering.
- School doesn't really have a "campus feel" and most student are spread out all over Boston
- 200 people class size is a little bigger than I would prefer, but not as bad as Jefferson at 270
Jefferson
Pros
- Location - I've never moved out of the Rhode Island/Boston area and I LOVED Philadelphia, and the Center City neighborhood seemed great (and very affordable compared to Boston)
- Despite being a city school, I felt like Jeff still had a great "campus" feel, and many students there all seem to live in the area, which I also appreciate as there is more of a "community feel"
- Two months without scheduled classes to study for STEP 1 (Tufts and UVM both would only give me one month)
- Very large class size (270)
- Class rankings of upper third, middle third, lower third (although the preclinical years are P/F in my mind these rankings still scare me as its not "true P/F")
- My class (2022) would be only the second class to go through their new curriculum (JeffMD) which worries me a lot, although the curriculum itself doesn't worry me at all (I actually really like it, I just wish it were a bit more established)
UVM
Pros
- Love the campus, definitely my favorite campus/facilities of the three
- Small class size (120)
- 1.5 year preclinical curriculum
- True P/F for preclinical years, no rankings
- Most students live in Burlington, giving the school itself a great community feel
- Location - I actually LOVE Burlington a lot, but it is also pretty isolated (I'm worried about spending 4 years there), not very diverse, very cold, and far away (4+ hour drive) from most of my friends/family.
- The new curriculum wants to be "lecture free" by 2019 which means the preclinical years would entirely be done in an "active learning style" (think TBLs, PBLs, simulations; flipped classroom, debates, case discussions) - this means my class, which would start in summer 2018, will probably be the first class to have NO lectures - this TERRIFIES me and people don't seem to love it; also means more mandatory class time.
- H/P/F for clinical years (compared to Tufts and Jefferson which have H/HP/P/LP/F and High Honors/Excellent/Good/Marginal/Fail, respectively) - not sure if this is good or bad?
. Great school, go there!