Hello everyone!
I have been blessed to be accepted to these two schools.
As someone wanting to go into orthopedic surgery and match residency in California, which school is more of a match. I was comfortable at both schools and can see myself at both places.
I want to know which one you believe will give me the better chance with all else being equal.
Thanks!
Hello. I did my med school at Georgetown and currently in residency at UCI. The school you choose should depend on several factors like location, fit, education, etc.
In general, preclinical education is gonna suck everywhere you go. You'll be hounded with tests on the regular. However, Georgetown's grading system did seem to foster a lot of stress. They grade H, HP, P based on a curve so if the average is 90 getting a 91 likely is a P. I can't say anything about UCI but from the med students I talked to they weren't fond of their system either. However, I think what I found more informative was the M3, M4 education. Georgetown gives you strong training and independence. The system is more "East Coast" with a strong hierarchy and mentality that go-getters are rewarded. My experience with UCI med students have been less than stellar and probably the "West Coast" mentality where they seem disinterested, disrespectful and very poorly motivated. Going to Georgetown would probably make you better prepared for intern year.
The fact that you want to match in California strongly lends you to stay in California. It is harder to match into Cali but not impossible. At least in my class there were at least 10 people who ended up doing residency in cali. May not be ortho but they came back. You're gonna have to be stellar overall to match ortho anyway >230 STEP 1, mostly Honors, multiple publications so you'll probably be competitive to match back into a Cali program anyway.
In terms of wanting to do Ortho. Georgetown has a very strong ortho department. They routinely match 15-20 people into ortho per year. Their former chair would call the students top choices and vouch for them. He used to say "give me a 220 and I'll get you into a program". That being said he was set to retire in a couple of years so I dont know if he's still there. I worked with plenty of UCI orthopods and their chair is a huge a-hole but does have a big name which can help you
if you get a letter from him. That being said UCI is a busy ortho department but doesn't seem to be one of the better programs. Lots of faculty turnover because of the chair but good to have lots of new young attendings since they teach a lot.
I forgot to mention cost of attendance. DC is an expensive city and housing/rent is just plain ridiculous. I paid 1200-1400 for a room in a ****ty house. Here I pay 1300 for a 1 bedroom apartment with utilities paid for. I don't know how much UCI cost but cost of living and ultimately loans/debt coming out of school should factor into your decision.
In the end what gets you into Ortho is going to be your individual effort. Having a big name write and vouch for you can be helpful but if ortho is your goal, I'd choose Georgetown. If you wanna stay in cali probably UCI.
