JBJ - quitting the music industry for emergency medicine might seem like a poor move, but your stuff started to slide after New Jersey, so maybe it's better to go out in a blaze of glory than to just fumble into obscurity like so many other great bands have done.
But seriously, I did a month at East Carolina, and the volume in Greenville is amazing. The city itself might be 60K, but their catchment area is huge, all the way out east to the ocean, basically from the Outer Banks down to Wilmington. And their faculty is great to work with, not to mention bright. (Especially in tox; they've got some guys who are just amazing in that department. Their EMS director also appears to be very involved in what he does.) You also cover the college kids at ECU and get a lot of the people from the military bases around the area there, and it's just phenomenal what you will see. I didn't expect it to be like it was, either. And now they've built a brand spanking new ED with even more beds. It's an established program (since 1986, I want to say), and the PD, Dr. Charlie Brown, is a straight shooter and will tell you how it is, which I think is a most desirable quality in a PD. They have a good commitment to didactics, and the residents seemed happy enough, even the ones on trauma. As for Greenville...well, it's what it is. Metropolitan, it ain't. But it had everything I needed, and should you desire haute couture, you've got Raleigh-Durham about an hour away. The town has a crime problem (it's currently #6 in the U.S. in violent crimes per capita), but it's mostly pretty and the weather's generally nice. And if you happen to be a single guy, I can tell you that Greenville is absolutely incredible in terms of eye candy. It is simply amazing; it puts anywhere else I've ever been to shame, quite simply. I don't know HOW they do it. Something in the water. As for academics...you COULD do academics there. The resources are there, and nobody will try to stop you. In fact, there are a few guys there who would be happy to see somebody interested in research.
As for Wake Forest...can't help you there.
