The father of one of my closest friends from home is a medical professor at UC Davis in Neuro. I'm a non-trad, so her dad is in his late 70's. He has become extremely disappointed at the deterioration of the medical education at UCD in the past decade or so and has increasingly felt that the reputation of Davis is just taking a long time to catch up with the deterioration of its education. I believe he thinks a huge part of the problem stems from cuts (whether financial-based or simply time-wise I don't know) to the anatomy curriculum and less tangibly from students' understanding of basic physiology/biomedical principles that mean by the time he gets the students in their 3rd and 4th years, they are too often disappointingly underprepared. He has gone as far as to say that he has felt that some (not all) of the Touro D.O. students who have rotated through have been better prepared recently and that he truly feels some of the recent grads will not be competent and safe physicians due to their shortcomings in really fundamental concepts. What I don't know is if this truly speaks to the education as a whole or actually speaks to shortcomings within the basic education relevant to his field (for instance maybe Davis is really preparing students more for fields other than Neuro and he perceives they are more broadly underprepared than they are b/c Neuro is his field), but it is definitely something he has been really distraught about for the past several years.
I believe he has made comments about a significant portion of the anatomy labs being computer and/or pro-section supplemented and thus not "sticking" with students? I am not 100% certain this was a comment about the Davis students b/c he gets graduates from all med schools as residents in addition to rotating med students, but I do believe it was a comment about Davis and some of the other UC schools. I would simply investigate the anatomy education and see if you feel it is lesser than at UVA.
-Look into the match lists for both schoools.
-Consider the location (Sacramento stinks...someone just reminded me that the med school is in Sac...as a former CA engineer, I was thinking of the main UC campus. At least Davis has some cute parts).
-People do have an easier time matching places near where they went to school, so long-term if you want to stay in CA, it *might* behoove you to go to Davis, but it definitely isn't necessary. If you want to stay out east, UVA might be a better option. Either school is good, so it's not like you're not going to match, and your own USMLE's and clerkship performance will be the biggest factor in your success.
I don't have any inside info for comparison to UVA, so please don't take this as a statement that UVA is a better option than Davis...maybe if I also knew someone there, I'd say UVA had worse problems. I just want to alert you that I know some issues to consider.
Obviously you have 2 great choices. Good Luck!
Maja, you know I love you...but you will never be able to convince me that Sacramento is a decent city.
