Hey great discussion and some good points brought up. Basically to restate my view on the matter: USU's reason for existance is to produce CAREER medical officers. Not only is the education great, but the networking and the exposure to the leaders in military healthcare cannot be found anywhere else. For instance just last week we had a presentation by the Col. that was the group surgeon for Task Force Ranger, in Somolia when the "Black Hawk Down" thing took place. Surgeon Generals and past Surgeon Generals of the different services make fairly frequent visits and give talks about various topics. I guess you could compare it to the service academies vs. ROTC. Both will give you a great education, but if you want to be a career line officer you can't beat the academies. For instance you could go to say Harvard and do the ROTC thing there, but as a career line officer that diploma from Harvard isn't going to get you anywhere that a degree from a state school would. On the other hand, if you attend one of the academies, that degree will open doors for you that the Harvard grad either didn't know about, or may have a harder time opening. However, if both grads were to serve their payback time and then get out and persue jobs in the civilian sector the tables would be completely reversed. I think this is very analogous to HPSP vs USUHS. This is not to take anything away from ROTC or HPSP, you definitely aren't signing your death warrant by entering through one of these programs, certainly there have been many successful people from both, but the academy or USUHS is always going to have the edge all other things being equal. Also the first USU class to grad (1980) is just now comming to the peaks in their careers and so prior to now pretty much all the leaders in military medicine came from HPSP type progams.
As far as the quality of education, I have nothing to compare it with but I have been very satisfied with it so far. The support here they say is second to none since they do have a vested interest in their students they will do whatever they can to help you succede. One other thought on this, I have found that my medical education so far has been what I made of it. Med school for me has been completely different from undergrad where I could attend the lectures, pay close attention, and do well with minimum studying. There is no way that I can see that you could do that in med school even with the best lecturers in the world. I have found the lectures to be an adjunct to my own learning, which much to my inherently lazy chagrin, has involved sitting down for hours and teaching myself. I guess what I am getting at is that for at least the first two years a school with great facilities and support from the faculty to facilitate its students learning is what it is all about and I think you will be hard pressed to find much better than USU. In the end what you will not get is a diploma from a school that has a great reputation in research (little if any involving its students), or a top 10 ranking, but as I've already discussed above, this may or may not be a big deal depending on your career goals. One last thought on quality of education, by all accounts that I've heard from different docs, med school is just your ticket to your real education which occurs during your residency.
Now as far as the financial aspects, going to USU definitely has its perks. But as someone else pointed out they are definitely not worth it if you don't want a career in military medicine. If for your entire life you have planned on being a Opthamologist in Little Rock Arkansas, and you just won't be happy unless that's what you do, you would be nuts to go to USU just because you will get a paycheck throughout med school. Personaly, I have a family, and I have been in the military for 12 years and have loved it. I know what I'm getting into and I don't have any doubts that this is what I want to do, so for these reasons USU was far and away my top choice. I can give my family a decent life where we aren't scraping and borrowing money to survive, while at the same time getting a great education that will set me up well for the rest of my career. Kind of like Rock Star above, I have a little different perspective than the typical premed/med student. As far as the cost of living in Bethesda, it is outrageous, that's why no one who goes to school here lives there. Most people live in Rockville/Kensington/Gaithersburg, where the cost of living is much more reasonable. One thing EurodocMom might not be aware of is that on top of base pay you get a housing allowance which for the people with no prior service is around $1100.00/month for single people, and $1300.00 for married. Most people have been able to find pretty nice places within that price range.
Euromom, what are you confused about as far as residencies? To quote the Col. in charge of Air Force GME selection "USUHS grads do very well in the selection process" in fact something like 95% of USU grads got their first choice of specialty last year, and ~85% got their first choice of location. You would be hard pressed to find another school with similar stats.
Well now that I've written an entire novel on this topic I'll quit. The bottom line is if you are unsure about a career in military medicine or you are just looking for a way to make it through school without owing anything, HPSP is the way to go. If you know military medicine is for you and you want a career in it, you would be crazy to go anyplace else.
Oh yeah I guess I should add a disclaimer...These views are mine alone...I do not claim to speak for USUHS in any way, these are just my opinions and observations.
