I am a M1 assigned to Rockford for my 2-4 years. I have already checked out the school in Rockford a couple of times and talked to med students there and I have to say that my whole opinion about the UPR ( Urbana, Peoria, Rockford) track has changed from a year ago. When I first got accepted to med school I was praying to get Chicago. I didnt want to get assigned to these small cities which were in the cornfields for all I knew. I wanted to be assigned to Chicago because it was my home, and because I knew that the med students rotated through 7 or 8 big Chicago hospitals which were all bigger that the largest hospitals in Urbana, or Rockford. However numerous things have changed my opinion: yes the students get to rotate through big chicago hospitals but they dont get to do anything. In Chicago there is so much competition to do procedures not only from University of iLlinois med students, but also from Rush students. You have a overabundance of medical students, and an overabundance of residents. By the time you go through the chain of attending doctor, residents, and med students your lucky if you can say when your done when med school that you observed a childbirth much less say you delivered a baby. In Rockford there is only one residency program, Family Medicine. That means that for all the other rotations such as Surgery, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, and any other sub-specialty you want to do in your Fourth year, there is only one attending doctor and maybe 2 or most times one medical student. You do many procedures and have a lot more responsibilities. I have talked to many M4's from Rockford who have rotated through an elective in chicago with chicago track students. They say that most of the Chicago students havent actually done half the procedures the Rockford students have done. And this goes a long way in imppressing your attendings and receiving a good recommendation. IN addition, in your second year in Rockford you do a family medicine oriented program in which once a week you go to a clinc and you have your patients and you treat these patients throughout your 3 years there. This is also an added expereince which is very benefical before starting your third year.
This whole question about that in Rockford or Peoria your trained for Primary Care is totally false. It is true that if you want to do Priamry care you have a lot better resources than if you were in Chicago. And about 60% of the students will probably do primary care.However if you want to specialize in something else I believe you have better chances of matching in a good residency: first of all because since there is less competition and less people doing it and the doctors who are in surgery for example are going to get to know you better and write more personal letters of recommendation.
And before I go I would like to say that Peoria and Rockford students score well above the average of the CHicago track students on the step 1 USMLE. At first I thought that it was just a small difference but I found out it was a considerable increase. I dont want to go into numbers though. Mabye its because there are more distractions in Chicago ,I dont know. Well I have to go but if you have any other questions feel free to ask. Sorry about all the grammer errors I had to write this quickly.