ucla opthy residency: would it improve my chances to attend ucla med vs top10 school?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

chef

Senior Member
15+ Year Member
20+ Year Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2001
Messages
1,004
Reaction score
1
Hi all,
I'm about to start med school this fall and I kinda have my heart set at ophthalmology. I really like jules stein, that would be my ideal place for pursuing more research and clinical practice. NOw, if I was given a choice of attending ucla med vs a top 10 program (yale, stanford, or mich), would it make a difference? Does jules stein give preference to ucla med grads? Does Jules Stein publish their match results?(where residents came from?) any help is appreciated.

Members don't see this ad.
 
I have a feeling that my comments will be ill-received, but...

I think it's a shame that many pre-med students are actually pursuing medical schools that will "best help them" in getting into a particular residency program.

I think this is short-sighted on at least two counts.

#1: Before you've even started, you've discounted every other medical field. As much as one says that he'll always keep his options open, I really doubt this ever occurs. You're spending so much time figuring out how to get into residency X that you're doing what you have to in order to make the grade in all the other rotations and rarely stop and think, "hey, XYZ is pretty neat; maybe I could be an XYZ."

#2: You really should be picking a medical school based on how well it prepares you to be a physician, not how well it prepares you to be an XYZ type of physician. Included in this I might add the following: how well you fit in with the other students; how well you like the cirriculum; how much experience you get on 3rd and 4th year rotations; and how well students do on Step I and Step II.

Personally, I think you should go to the best medical school you can get into. Going to a school with the best XYZ residency doesn't guarantee you a spot in that residency...

•••quote:•••Originally posted by chef:
•Hi all,
I'm about to start med school this fall and I kinda have my heart set at ophthalmology. I really like jules stein, that would be my ideal place for pursuing more research and clinical practice. NOw, if I was given a choice of attending ucla med vs a top 10 program (yale, stanford, or mich), would it make a difference? Does jules stein give preference to ucla med grads? Does Jules Stein publish their match results?(where residents came from?) any help is appreciated.•••••
 
I've got to agree with the above. Med school will likely be a pretty different experience from what you imagine it to be.

Out of my class, pretty much everyone who said "i'm going to go into field X" ended up going into field Y, where field Y was completely unrelated to field X.

My advice is to keep an open mind. You never know what you might like.

-mrp
 
Members don't see this ad :)
go the the least expensive medical school (trust me I am paying loans off now).

how well you do on boards will be determined mostly by how hard you study and how well you do on tests in general.

you will have good clinical exposure during your 3rd and 4th year no matter where you go. You will learn what you need to know to practice during residency (trust me I am going through residency now)

what residency you get will depend mostly on you and not the american medical school you go to.

This post will be hard to believe for someone applying to medical school but I am very confident it is correct.
 
hey guys, as a person who did ophthal. research at Wilmer Eye for 4 yrs b4 starting med school, and countless hours shadowing & discussing w/ various clinicians, researchers, and physician-scientists, I thought I had a pretty decent idea of what I want to do in my career. Of course I haven't tried all the other fields.

Thanks for the input however, they do make sense and you guys went through this whole thing already. I'll keep an open mind.

But no one answered my question: Are UCLA med students preferred in any way in residency selection at UCLA, in any specialty???
 
while all the advice you got was good, in regards to your question, ucla matches well, especially at ucla hospital (just like every school). Going to ucla would give you the opportunity to get to work closely with the people at jules stien if thats what you want, and obviously if you impress them, they'll likely rank you high when it comes time to match. But the other schools you mention match very well as well, and you certainly wouldn't hurt your chances at any residency by going to any of them. But making the distinction between "ucla med vs a top 10 program" is kind of silly when ucla is ranked what? 12th? At the other schools, if you really want to match at jules stein, it might help you to do an away rotation there, but pick where you want to be for med school, none of those schools will hurt your residency chances.
 
I agree to a point that you should keep an open mind and look at what other areas of medicine have to offer, but if your mind is made up then that's fine. Don't let anyone else tell you what to do.

That being said, I think the decision of UCLA vs. a top medical school is a little bit of a wash. If you go to UCLA, you will obviously know all the faculty and have a chance to make a good impression, but you will also be competing with everyone else from UCLA who wants to stay there for Ophtho. I guarantee you that no residency program wants to fill up with people from its own school, no matter how qualified. Obviously, if you don't go to UCLA, you should do a rotation there if it's your goal. However, I disagree with rad saying that it doesn't matter at all which school you go to. Top programs like UCLA want students from top med schools. That's just reality.

One thing you might want to keep in mind. I matched in ophtho this year, and in my experience and the experience of most of the people I met on the trail, the interviews you get can be very regional. This is especially true for California schools. It is hard to get into a nice West Coast residency - everybody and their mother wants to do it. You not only need to be a great student, you probably also need to show some reason or connection to why you want to go the West coast. Finally, don't forget that residency interviews, especially in tough specialties, are a little bit of a crapshoot. There's lots of really good candidates, so don't get your hopes too set on any one place so soon.

Hope this helps. Good luck.
 
Top