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U. Chicago vs. the U. of Washington
- Thread starter jlamacc1
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I look at this board and I just see a bunch of people crunching numbers...
what is your point?
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The point is that NIH grants are awarded on a competitive basis and thus the award level at a particular institution offers *relatively* objective information about the quality and quantity of work being done at said institution. That is all. As for the departmental rankings, like I said, it provides useful information in limited situations.
Most of the people currently posting have just spent the last year applying to many programs, traveling all around the country, and are generally exhausted past sanity...
We're now in the fortunate position to compare multiple programs and see where we want to spend the next 8 years (approximately 1/3 of our lives to that point)
As science-types it's easier at times to look at numbers when you're trying to be truly rational about a decision...is this the right way? not always, but if it works, it works...
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Ok.. gonna take a deep breath and calm down again...
Here is my point...
Maybe I need to move up to the big board.. who knows if it will be any better
I just see a lot of people weighing their academic options and being far too concerned with themselves.
What are your priorities?
Who gives a **** if you go to UC or UW?!?
Why are you going there in the first place?!?
To feel like a stud? To impress your friends?
We are in this to help, and care for, and heal others.
I don't see one thread on this board about how to improve care, or develop better techniques...
Maybe I came to the wrong place.. was this place just set up to polish off all of your own egos?
I'm ****ing poor, fat and ugly, but I've dedicated my own life to improving the health and quality of life for others.
In my minimal time here I've seen very little of that. I have read a few quality threads.. but it seems like a lot of them are pretty much in vein.
Here is my point...
Maybe I need to move up to the big board.. who knows if it will be any better
I just see a lot of people weighing their academic options and being far too concerned with themselves.
What are your priorities?
Who gives a **** if you go to UC or UW?!?
Why are you going there in the first place?!?
To feel like a stud? To impress your friends?
We are in this to help, and care for, and heal others.
I don't see one thread on this board about how to improve care, or develop better techniques...
Maybe I came to the wrong place.. was this place just set up to polish off all of your own egos?
I'm ****ing poor, fat and ugly, but I've dedicated my own life to improving the health and quality of life for others.
In my minimal time here I've seen very little of that. I have read a few quality threads.. but it seems like a lot of them are pretty much in vein.
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A MD/PhD troll! It has been a long time since the last one.
looks like you need one
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And I would even argue that ultimately, you do have to make a decision based on a "holistic" (evil word in the MD world, I know
) "gut-feeling" basis. But I think that that gut feeling is simply the sum of experience you've had concerning all your schools, not some ethereal "handed down from god" state. Everything, then, goes into the development of that gut feeling, even the quantitative, "rational" stuff. To use the "gut feeling" argument as an excuse for not crunching the numbers and considering every last bit of data pro/con each school is just a copout, in my opinion.
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fair enough
while you are making these very important decisions for yourselves, I wish you clarity... and I hope you will take a few moments to consider why you are doing it in the first place
be well,
- g
while you are making these very important decisions for yourselves, I wish you clarity... and I hope you will take a few moments to consider why you are doing it in the first place
be well,
- g
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As you can see from my own dilemna, I am no expert at making this kind of decision 
. But if I have to vote, I would vote UW. Seattle is one of the nicest city EVER. It is beautiful green, organic, healthy, cultural, filled with good food and good outdoor activities, etc.
Good luck in your decision!
. But if I have to vote, I would vote UW. Seattle is one of the nicest city EVER. It is beautiful green, organic, healthy, cultural, filled with good food and good outdoor activities, etc. Good luck in your decision!
uhm...>90% of the posters are APPLICANTS
not MD/PhD students...it therefore follows that the majority of posts will revolve around applications...
if you wish to start a thread about a technique (like the learning a new technique thread) or about how to improve care, then by all means do so.
It's equally ridiculous though for you to post about this cr@p in a thread asking opinions about two schools...we're not vain, we're concerned about where we're spending the next 8 years of our lives
/rant
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I would be very careful calling trolls on this board. This is not pre-allo, and we should not make judgments based on a few posts. GWD may be having a not-so-good day, and may hold a more negative view of number-crunching than some of us, etc., etc. That said, I don't think GWD's response to weezy was 100% appropriate, but I, for one, would not be pro-active in propagating negativity in any situation.
weezy, even though numbers are important, I still maintain my view of macro vs. micro-environment
GWD, I agree that we should have concerns and thoughts about improving health care, but we are just lowly applicants, and before we are in any position to express our opinions and make improvements in any meaningful way, it's crucial that we make sure we indeed have our feet in the door. There are people who want to study how health care policies have evolved (dodo), and people who applied PRIME to serve the under-served and poor (not in this thread), but it will be a moot point if they end up nowhere, or at the wrong place.
weezy, even though numbers are important, I still maintain my view of macro vs. micro-environment
GWD, I agree that we should have concerns and thoughts about improving health care, but we are just lowly applicants, and before we are in any position to express our opinions and make improvements in any meaningful way, it's crucial that we make sure we indeed have our feet in the door. There are people who want to study how health care policies have evolved (dodo), and people who applied PRIME to serve the under-served and poor (not in this thread), but it will be a moot point if they end up nowhere, or at the wrong place.
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hahahahahaha for some reason, this cracked me up
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While J-weezy is right that we are basically all applicants trying to decide on a major life choice on where to spend the next 8-9 years of our lives, and we want the opinions of our peers, I can also see where GWD is coming from... Not to offend jlmacc, j-weezy, or any of the other posters making threads asking for advice, but somebody who isn't familiar with this forum or the people on it may misconstrue all these threads as a way to boost the ego
Just my two cents, so no point in immediately jumping on everybody- Joined
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About Seattle--It isn't the rain that gets you, it's never seeing the sun... ever (except for maybe 3 weeks in the summer...) lol
Anyway, I am from the Seattle area and am currently a MD student at Pritzker (U Chicago). Although I think that UW is a great school, I think it being ranked so high by USNWR just goes to show how flawed those rankings are.
As for Pritzker, I have really loved my time here. The classes are fantastic, the administration is wonderful and the city, well.. you can't do much better than Chicago. When I go home to visit, it is hard for me to even think of Seattle as a city... lol... (and I really do like Seattle, it just isn't even close to Chicago in my book...)
Also, I really wonder on what everyone is basing their comments that the clinical training at UW is superior to Pritzker? (it better not be the primary care rankings, because that is just SILLY!) I am only a first year, so I guess I can't comment first hand about the clinical training here, but my third year friends have been extremely impressed by the training here. I am sure the training at UW is top notch too.
Anyway, good luck with your decision!
Anyway, I am from the Seattle area and am currently a MD student at Pritzker (U Chicago). Although I think that UW is a great school, I think it being ranked so high by USNWR just goes to show how flawed those rankings are.
As for Pritzker, I have really loved my time here. The classes are fantastic, the administration is wonderful and the city, well.. you can't do much better than Chicago. When I go home to visit, it is hard for me to even think of Seattle as a city... lol... (and I really do like Seattle, it just isn't even close to Chicago in my book...)
Also, I really wonder on what everyone is basing their comments that the clinical training at UW is superior to Pritzker? (it better not be the primary care rankings, because that is just SILLY!) I am only a first year, so I guess I can't comment first hand about the clinical training here, but my third year friends have been extremely impressed by the training here. I am sure the training at UW is top notch too.
Anyway, good luck with your decision!
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Thanks for the insight. I think one of the reasons UW is considered highly in clinical terms is that the school has a self-professed interest in primary/rural care and thus tends to focus on getting it's students into the clinic as much and as early as possible. This is evident in the med curriculum, as there are preceptorships and community clinic opportunities out the wazoo. So, UW obviously makes clinical training a focus, but the real question is whether or not UW does it better than Pritzker (or any other med school, for that matter). After visiting the U of C multiple times I'm not convinced this is the case: the UC hospitals seem fantastic and I've only heard GREAT things about Pritzker's teaching faculty. Needless to say, when I revisit UW this will be one the aspects of the program I intend to really focus on.
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UW is very well known for primary/rural care and community care medicine. MD/PhDs are typically not going into primary care, which if anything makes this neutral. It could even be a down side in my opinion as there's liable to be a ton of this stuff required and that only takes time away from the specialized sort of medicine and research you want to be doing.
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For the students I talked to this didn't seem to be much of a problem, but when I go back I do plan on asking everyone in sight if they've felt the "clinical" side of their training to be burdensome.
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Don't ask if it's "burdensome". You'll probably get a bunch of cheerleaders and first years who don't know what's going on. Ask what specifially UWash requires of its MD/PhD thanks to its primary care focus. Then ask yourself if that sounds burdensome to you.
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Right, can't bias the study. Hey, if the students I'm asking don't know what's going on, then I certainly don't know what's going on...that makes this a double-blind study!!! Who says this process can't be objective?
In all seriousness, though, thanks for the advice. I have a pretty good idea about the medical school requirements, but I'll try to ask my questions wisely.
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Wisconsin has a primary care and rural medicine focus as well, and a lot of the current students (MSTPs in particular, who typically don't intend on doing primary care) find these requirements really annoying.
I don't really care for the area of Chicago that Pritzker is in though, so I'd still put my vote down for UWash.
Good luck with your decision! Is Wash U still in the running?
