UW vs. UTSW

Started by neoserenity333
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neoserenity333

neoserenity333

foxy fox mccloud
15+ Year Member
any thoughts? greatly appreciate it! 🙂

(sorry to jump on the "which one" band-wagon)

my personal thoughts:
- want to do cancer and/or immunology, maybe structural bio/drug design, or bioinformatics research
- love the outdoors (+ for seattle)
- don't know much about UW medical school (what are their strong specialties?)
 
One thing that I disliked at UW was the number of hours med students seem to spend in class. I forget the exact figure, but I remember being negatively impressed by it.

Good luck making a decision! 😀
 
You probably already know my thoughts on this 🙂 but I thought I'd write them down anyways

-UTSW is a great basic science research place
-Dallas weather is nice (better than Houston)
(-) Dallas isn't awful, but it's no Seattle imho
(-) Medical school isn't quite up to par with UW
(-) Rumblings about how the medical students aren't happy (debatable)

-UW is arguably the best well-rounded medical education (strong in family medicine, internal, surgery, rural medicine, and a host of others)
-UW is funded out the yin-yang
(-) UW isn't quite as strong in some basic science research fields
(-) UW severely limits choices for a SO (especially in medicine)

All in all, I think this decision comes down to feel more than anything else. The fact is that anyone can do medicine at the Brigham at any of these top programs if they wish, so it's much more important to be happy for those years. The happier you are, the more productive you'll be, and ultimately the more your career and personal lives will mature.
 
lundysd said:
UTSW
(-) Rumblings about how the medical students aren't happy (debatable)
Click to expand...
I heard that too (from a direct source).

lundysd said:
-UW is funded out the yin-yang
(-) UW isn't quite as strong in some basic science research fields
Click to expand...
It's funny cause I heard the oppposite from a faculty member from another institution: that they seemed a little tight on money, but they had a top-notch biochemistry department. But again, this is just hearsay.

lundysd said:
(-) UW severely limits choices for a SO (especially in medicine)
Click to expand...
Definitely agreed. haha

Btw, very insightful conclusion, lundy. 👍
 
Hmm -- maybe it's just how the way things are spun to me then Several people at UW quoted that they were number 2 in NIH funding for medical schools. At least in my field (bioengineering), they're pretty rich, but let's not forget about "lies, damn lies, and statistics" 🙂
 
neoserenity333 said:
- want to do cancer and/or immunology, maybe structural bio/drug design, or bioinformatics research
- love the outdoors (+ for seattle)
- don't know much about UW medical school (what are their strong specialties?)
Click to expand...

On the balance of stated factors, I'd go with UW all the way.

Cancer and Immunology Research- UW has FHCRC and SCCA affiliated with it. The Immunology department is strong and has several very productive labs.

Structural Biology. Also very strong. The BMSD program has a list of faculty.

Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. The Genome Sciences department is extraordinarily strong. IMO it's the best for genome-scale research.

UW Medical School is a powerhouse. It puts primary care at the top of its list of stated goals, also ranks high in most specialties. The schools' graduates match well accross the boards. The MSTP alumni list speaks to this.
 
- want to do cancer and/or immunology, maybe structural bio/drug design, or bioinformatics research
- love the outdoors (+ for seattle)
- don't know much about UW medical school (what are their strong specialties?)
Click to expand...


I cannot speak for UW but can shed light on UTSW:

-Pretty good cancer and immunology
-Amazing structural biology people.
-Dont know of any bioinformatics people here

-Very little to do outdoors in dallas except running/biking around man-made lakes.

UTSW
(-) Rumblings about how the medical students aren't happy (debatable)
Click to expand...

This is pretty variable. Most UTSW med students want to go into specialties rather than primary care, so the med school is pretty cut throat. Unfortunatly, some med students feed into a cut throat atmosphere and become unhappy. However most students are social and happy and just fine. The grad school here is relaxed and happy.


Seatle sounds nice nice..... but again I do not know much about it.
 
thanks for everyone's valuable input and opinions!
i'll post more thoughts after my second look @ UW this coming April.

good luck to everyone and happy deciding
 
Cancer:

It's a huge research area and anywhere you go will have good people working on cancer. The more important thing is to look at the PIs themselves and see which approach you like the best. There are so many angles by which to study cancer.

UT Southwestern has Xiaodong Wang, who is a leader in understanding apoptosis, which is critical to understanding why cells becomes cancerous instead of self-destructing.

I have not talked to any faculty at UW specifically about their cancer research, but with Hutchinson, I'm sure there are many people there working on something that interests you.

Immunology:

Again pretty broad field. Figure out your angle on it. UT Southwestern has several people (Rosen, Wuelfing, Wu, Alchuster) who are collaborating on a project to examine how the actin cytoskeleton may play a role in T-cell activation.

Structual Biology:

Rama Ranganathan at UTSW has some of the best ideas about protein structure I've seen. Some other people around the country are using similar approaches, but his explanations seem very clear from first principles to the actual engineering of a protein.

UW has some people working on interesting self-assembly questions such as Sarah Keller.

Bioinformatics:

UTSW is at some disability here because of the lack of a whole university; however UT Dallas is an excellent Computer Science school, whereas SMU has excellent staticians. The recent hire of Steve Alchuster and Lani Wu as heads of the Green Institute is making things interesting. UT Austin also has excellent supercomputing facilities. There are several people working on Bioinformatics projects (Rama, "Skip" Garner, Scheuremann). You actually might want to look Schueremann up since he's working on multi-dimensional analysis of flow cytometry data, which could be applied to many cancer / immunology questions.

Outdoors:

Washington State would be amazing place to hike about. The Northwest coast is also awe inspiring.

I have to agree there is not much to see around Dallas that you probably have not already seen.

Medical School:

UTSW has a fairly large medical school, but I think its advantage comes in with the hospitals nearby. Learning and practicing medicine in a place like Parkland is hard to beat; I'm not sure where else you would get that much hands on experience. At a large charity hospital, you will see cases that would be rare to witness anywhere else. The recent aquisition of St. Paul and Zale-Lipsy is also a plus and addresses the need for specialty procedures.

Especially for MD/PhDs, the med school classes themselves are not a particularly distinguishing factor; they cover the biology of the human biology with great breadth but lack the depth that you will end up with in the graduate classes. Mike Brown feels very strongly about the traditional curriculum so that is unlikely to change in the next few years at UTSW.

Conclusions

I am a little bit biased towards UTSW, hence my selection. Either school is amazing, but to make your decision I encourage you to try to become more specific. What are your research interests? Is there anyone that you talked to that is approaching that interest using techniques that agree with how you think about the problem?

Given the strength of the medical experience and of the basic research, I think it is difficult to find a school that is as well rounded as UTSW. I have seen better disease oriented research at other places, but perhaps it was just because I was not looking for it in Dallas.

Anyways, good luck with your decision. Probably the best thing to do is to visit UW, sleep on it, wait a week, and then go with your gut instinct. There is just way too much information to rationalize in your concious mind. Go with what feels right.
 
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