U Colorado vs. Stony Brook vs. NYMC

[premedgirl888]

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Hi all, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been accepted to a few med school programs, but I would love some guidance on which school I should choose. For reference, I’m from New York, and I’ve been accepted to University of Colorado, Stony Brook, and New York Medical College.

CUSOM
Pros:

• The faculty seem extremely supportive and willing to listen to students
• LIC - feel like this really helps you develop closer relationships with faculty and patients (especially since you get to follow patients to their appointments, ER, etc.)
• Quizzes on Fridays - seems that most people don’t work much on weekends because of this
• P/F preclinical
• Overall really chill and nice student body - all seem to know the people in their class well
• Skiing

Cons:

• Far from home/family and I’ve never lived outside the northeast
• Seems that a lot / most people match in the west coast, and realistically, I would like to do residency in the northeast
• Don’t love the location, seems super quite - I’m a huge city person and I worry that I will get bored (I like outdoorsy stuff but not all the time)
• Not very diverse student body from what I’ve been told

RSOM - honestly don’t know too much about the program as I just got accepted, so would love some insights
Pros:

• Close to home/family and also somewhat close to NYC
• SUNY so in-state tuition
• Higher ranked than NYMC at least but this probably doesn’t matter
• P/F preclinical
• Lots of global health opportunities, which I would be very interested in

Cons:

• Not the best location - not much to do in the area and high COL (but I would have my car)

NYMC
Pros:

• Close to home/family and VERY close to NYC (could live in NYC the last two years and do rotations there)
• Often matches in the northeast/NY
• Areas of concentration program - I could explore interests outside the curriculum and some seem super interesting to me
• Faculty seemed very passionate about medicine and those that went to NYMC said it was some of the best years of their lives
• Each class seems pretty close / do a lot of things together

Cons:

• Facilities seem a bit run down (also housing and gym)
• In house exams - I’ve been told students have to study a decent amount of material on their own for step
• Students didn’t seem as friendly / seemed a bit cliquey when I visited? At least the prospective students
• I have also heard that resources are not great and students are left on their own a lot

Would love to hear thoughts on these schools! Not totally sure the accuracy of what I’ve listed, so if any current students can also provide any insights, that would be amazing. 🙂

 

[surelycalm]

According to admit.org Colorado uses both in house and nbme. I'd view that as a con.

What specialty are you interested in? Check out the match lists. The Stony Brooks match list (up on SDN 2025 match thread) also has a page showing their Step1 and Step2 stats. They also have a 3 year accelerated program for most of the residencies that are part of their home program.

NYMC is going to be more expensive and probably not offer anything over SB - which will probably end up being the cheapest, even more so if you got into any of their 3 year programs.

From what you wrote, I can't think of any reasons to support choosing Colorado.

 

[yeoko4]

I would choose Colorado

btw in-house and nbme is not necessarily a con. lots of med schools do "custom" bc their curriculum doesn't perfectly line up with nbme.

Also from New York and had to make similar decision, and I ended up going public West Coast over NYMC and Stony Brook. I will say, as someone who wants to match back into NY, I felt going to the more productive West Coast school was best. It's hard to match into NY for even NY med schools. At the end, it came down to quality of medical education for me.

For whatever decision you make -- good luck! you have 3 great options!!

 

[FantasticBug5960]

Colorado is on another level compared to NYMC and SB imo. If it's important for you to stay close to family I'd personally say SBU > Colorado > NYMC, but Colorado is definitely the best pick without considering family. Don't underweigh how important it is for you to have family nearby though, Colorado is 'better' but you will probably still be able to match where you want to at Stony Brook.

 

[secondariesftw]

Colorado is on another level compared to NYMC and SB imo. though, Colorado is 'better' but you will probably still be able to match where you want to at Stony Brook.

Based on what exactly? I did a basic comparison of the match list from Colorado to SB and NYMC, and Colorado matched 1 to derm, 5 to Ortho (I stopped after that). SB matched 2 to derm and 6 to Ortho. NYMC match 5 to derm and 7 to Ortho. Going deeper is going to Astrology level. Any MD school in the US that doesn't have accreditation issues is going to do a good job. To say that Colorado is on another level compared to SB and NYMC needs quite a bit more info than you provided. How do the step 1 pass rates compare? What about step 2? I didn't find that info for Colorado or NYMC, but it is listed for SB (between 98 - 100%). Step 2 average at SB is a 257.

There was a recent thread even talking about Harvard and how they manipulate some of the data.

The current rankings are predominantly based on "research". Research funding has a huge impact on where schools end up in the ranking. None of that even remotely ranks schools in terms of how good the program, how good of an education doctors receive there or how well prepared their graduates truly are for residency.

The current rankings are truly flawed. All I will say is a T10 will open up doors that your scores, networking and research might otherwise not have, but it's not magic.