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Hey all!
I am very fortunate and quite grateful to be in this position. For context, I got off of both of these waitlists within the same day. My PTE designation was TCU because they sent their A first, but I thought I had a bit more time to decide between the two before formally dropping one of them. I feel long-term, I would like to end up in the Southeast (Georgia, as my family wants to move there sooner or later), but based on the match lists for TCU, it seems I wouldn't necessarily be hindered if I went there.
Now, I turn to y'all for a bit of guidance, because I am truly torn between the two. I've compiled the list below based on previous posts and some of the things I've heard talking to current students or hopefuls who know more than me about both schools. Please feel free to add/correct any thing if I have gotten it wrong.
UTHSC (Tennessee) - In-state
Pros
TCU - Out-of-state
Pros
- CoA would be roughly the same once I factor in the Financial Aid from TCU (TCU comes out to be about 20k more expensive over 4 years)
I am very fortunate and quite grateful to be in this position. For context, I got off of both of these waitlists within the same day. My PTE designation was TCU because they sent their A first, but I thought I had a bit more time to decide between the two before formally dropping one of them. I feel long-term, I would like to end up in the Southeast (Georgia, as my family wants to move there sooner or later), but based on the match lists for TCU, it seems I wouldn't necessarily be hindered if I went there.
Now, I turn to y'all for a bit of guidance, because I am truly torn between the two. I've compiled the list below based on previous posts and some of the things I've heard talking to current students or hopefuls who know more than me about both schools. Please feel free to add/correct any thing if I have gotten it wrong.
UTHSC (Tennessee) - In-state
Pros
- Much more established school
- New-ish home base (spent the last few years working in Memphis)
- Sites across TN for clinical years (really intrigued by working in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville)
- Has a home residency in every field I care about somewhere in TN (looking at surgical sub-speciality such as ENT, Ophtho, maybe even Derm).
- Massive network - paired with a few regional hospital systems
- Huge patient volume
- Lectures are recorded/not-mandatory
- Buys 3rd-party resources to aid in STEP studying
- P/F during M1-2 years
- In-house exams (heard these are very similar to STEP, though)
- Larger class size
- Research does not seem as intentional (heard they are changing the curriculum though)
- Seems to match decently, but I could not find much more information on this
- Internal rankings (4 quartile ranking system in M1-2 years)
- Memphis roads have taken a toll on my car
- H/HP/P/F in M3-4 years
TCU - Out-of-state
Pros
- NBME exams
- Much closer to family (am a DFW native)
- Matches fairly strongly at some top places despite not having much of a reputation (#39 according to matchstrength.org)
- Smaller class size (more individualized experience)
- True P/F all 4 years, no AOA, no internal rankings
- New school = gorgeous, new facilities
- Assigned community physician mentor
- Big sports fan, so being near undergrad campus is kind of cool
- Mandatory research project
- Very early clinical exposure
- Much newer school, so does not have the reputation that UT would
- Rotations across DFW would mean there'd be some driving involved (though my parents live in Dallas, so I guess I could just move between Dallas and Fort Worth as needed)
- Heard mixed things about the LIC model
- No home residencies
- Mandatory lectures (though the structure might help me, so this isn't a huge con)
- Dress code?
- CoA would be roughly the same once I factor in the Financial Aid from TCU (TCU comes out to be about 20k more expensive over 4 years)
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