- Joined
- Apr 8, 2016
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I feel incredibly lucky and am tremendously honored by my acceptances. None the less, I've been wrestling with this decision for the past couple of weeks and I feel completely torn. My decision deadline approaches and I was hoping that the SDN community might offer new/different perspectives on my dilemma.
I am very interested in continuing to perform research in the wet-lab setting, but am also open to the idea of moving to the clinic/database for future research. I am a self-learner and want to devote as much time as possible to extra-curricular projects--in other words, I want to be in an environment where curriculum is relaxed (optional lectures, no class ranking, extracurricular work/research is emphasized, etc). I have been lucky enough to spend most of my life by the ocean, and surfing/diving/fishing has been my go to source for relaxation and meditation. However, I am totally willing to find new hobbies if circumstances change.
Hopkins
Pros
UCLA DGSoM
Pros
I am very interested in continuing to perform research in the wet-lab setting, but am also open to the idea of moving to the clinic/database for future research. I am a self-learner and want to devote as much time as possible to extra-curricular projects--in other words, I want to be in an environment where curriculum is relaxed (optional lectures, no class ranking, extracurricular work/research is emphasized, etc). I have been lucky enough to spend most of my life by the ocean, and surfing/diving/fishing has been my go to source for relaxation and meditation. However, I am totally willing to find new hobbies if circumstances change.
Hopkins
Pros
- Roughly 600 million dollars in NIH funding, in 2015 JHU was the top NIH funded institution in the country
- small class size (120)
- strong hospital affiliation in Johns Hopkins Hospital, ranked top 3 by US News,
- interesting (diverse, low income, high trauma) patient population
- cheaper cost of living versus Westwood
- prestige edge?
- 2 billion dollar endowment, which could translate to internal grant/funding opportunities for medical students
- Area of “scholarly concentration” built into curriculum ensures that every student has time/resources/advising to undertake a unique research project
- location in Baltimore, cold(California native)/far from family and friends
- perhaps slightly more difficult to match back into California for residency when compared to UCLA?
- 47k/year tuition without opportunity for scholarship (I do not qualify for need based aid, will take out some of the cost in loans)
- pre-clinical AOA ranking, competitiveness amongst students (although all the students that I met on interview day seemed to be very chill and laid back)
UCLA DGSoM
Pros
- location, warmer, close to beach/ocean/friends, love the Westwood area
- strong hospital affiliation, Ronald Reagan, ranked top 3 by US News
- diversity of rotation sites ranges from 'boutique' medicine at Cedars-Sinai to county safety net hospital Harbor-UCLA
- also an interesting diverse patient population
- multiple rotation sites improves my ability to network at multiple residency programs and students seem to be very successful at matching into southern California for residency
- many research opportunities, 11th most NIH funding in country in 2015, 370 million
- cheaper cost of attendance, 32k/year (possibly negated by higher cost of living?)
- true P/F for pre-clinical years
- really liked prospective and current students that I met on interview day/second look weekend
- higher cost of living
- lower “prestige” than Hopkins
- bigger class size (170)
- not much research emphasis designed into the curriculum, although there will be plenty of extra-curricular research opportunity