Originally posted by Procrastinator:
•I would choose Hopkins over UCSF because of three main factors.
1) Hopkins has the better reputation. Just ask people outside of the medical arena and most have never heard of UCSF. (Inside the medical arena Hopkins still has a slight edge.)
2) Hopkins grads have more career options. Just look at where the faculty went to school in any med school listing and you will see few UCSFers. Going to Hopkins keeps more options open.
3) Hopkins is a private school and you generally get better treatment as a student in a private school setting.
Any way you look at it, its not a bad choice to have to make, but I would give Hopkins a strong edge over SF.•••
Just wanted to comment on a couple things. I agree that people outside of medicine know about hopkins, but I have never been able to figure out what difference this makes (unless you just like to impress people on the street). I do think that hopkins med is filled with people who do think this is important. I have never met a more depressing group of prestige loving empty sad people than the hopkins med students I've met in my time as a jhu ugrad and working down at the hospital/med school.
Hopkins is a little backwards in its thinking... one would assume that a private school takes better care of its students than a public, like UCSF, but this is not the case. There is almost no administrative support and the only comment I've heard from md and md/phd students is that the admin's attitude is that if you're smart enough to get in here then figure things out on your own.
In conclusion, if you like to feel isolated, depressed, you are more interested in the name of your school than the subject of medicine, and you feel like all those people at P/F schools are babies who need to be coddled since they can't actually learn anything, then I think hopkins is the best school for you.
Personally, I'd take SF, but just by a little bit
Originally posted by WatchaMaCallit:
•please hopkins versus UCSF....hopkins is the #1 in the country, and Hopkins is known worldwide...
UCSF is a great school, but it pales in comparison the prestiege that hopkins has all over the world...you can go to china, europe, and everybody has heard of hopkins....
and you get the best residency positions in the ENTIRE COUNTRY....I would go to hopkins over UCSF..
I tend to normally brush off incendiary comments such as this, but I had to take the bait on this one. The reason Hopkins is known worldwide by the layperson is because of the hospital, not the medical school. The reputation has to do with having outstanding clinical departments and excellent subspecialist physicians who see extremely complicated and rare cases. In addition, there are a huge number of clinical trials conducted there.
The same can be said about UCSF, however. The UCSF hospitals have an excellent reputation and many outstanding clinical departments. Moffitt-Long hospital is a tertiary care facility that receives referrals from all over the Western region of the nation and some international.
The reputation of a hospital does not necessarily correlate with the quality of medical education. There are many other factors that go into one's education. Hopkins is obviously an amazing place to learn medicine, but may not provide the best environment for everyone. There are many people who choose UCSF over Hopkins for the various reasons that I mentioned in the earlier post.
I think you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone in the medical community that will be underimpressed by a UCSF education. Still, if what matters to you most is having maxed-out prestige and being able to tell everyone that you went to Hopkins, then by all means go ahead.
Originally posted by Vader:
•
I tend to normally brush off incendiary comments such as this, but I had to take the bait on this one. The reason Hopkins is known worldwide by the layperson is because of the hospital, not the medical school. The reputation has to do with having outstanding clinical departments and excellent subspecialist physicians who see extremely complicated and rare cases. In addition, there are a huge number of clinical trials conducted there.
The same can be said about UCSF, however. The UCSF hospitals have an excellent reputation and many outstanding clinical departments. Moffitt-Long hospital is a tertiary care facility that receives referrals from all over the Western region of the nation and some international.
The reputation of a hospital does not necessarily correlate with the quality of medical education. There are many other factors that go into one's education. Hopkins is obviously an amazing place to learn medicine, but may not provide the best environment for everyone. There are many people who choose UCSF over Hopkins for the various reasons that I mentioned in the earlier post.
I think you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone in the medical community that will be underimpressed by a UCSF education. Still, if what matters to you most is having maxed-out prestige and being able to tell everyone that you went to Hopkins, then by all means go ahead.
oh and don't I like to make incendiary remarks
post something silly and have pple bicker on silly details here and there
hehe,...I'm so evil.....coop can vouch for me there
<img src="graemlins/laughy.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughy]" />
Hopkins has the better reputation. Just ask people outside of the medical arena and most have never heard of UCSF••
Okay...so WHO CARES if you're fifth cousin from Peoria has never heard of SF--that is the absolute *WORST* argument i've heard for deciding where to attend medical school (sorry procrastinator
The decisive factor is where you think you'll be happiest and from everything that I know, this is absolutely NO contest--SF is an essentially equal school academically where everyone is really much much happier (on average) than people at Hopkins.
Postbacchus--if you knew the sheer # of amazing applicants that I know who didn't even apply to Hopkins but applied to every other top school, the decision would be really easy for you. Go to SF...
Oh, lastly, contratulations on being accepted to such great schools. Good luck with your choice!
Originally posted by mma:
•
If it's science-based clinical or medical research, go with Hopkins. If you are more into health care policy and community medicine, go with UCSF.
•••
I'd like to clarify things a bit. If you are familiar with research (basic or clinical), you'll know that UCSF is a powerhouse in terms of publications and the school receives a ton of NIH funding. In fact, a large part of my choice to attend (MSTP) was the strength of the neuro research and faculty here. Many of the programs I looked at were heavily lopsided toward either clinical medicine or basic biomedical research. UCSF was unique in having a superb combination of both. Therefore, I would NOT think what was said above would be a good reason to attend one over the other. Sorry mma...
Again, there are many factors that go into making a decision, but it is generally a good idea to avoid misperceptions. The best way to do this is to talk with a variety of faculty and students, search web sites or literature, and ask people to back up strong claims with evidence (yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. Bean
. This is all in good fun guys. I thought that i was quite good at giving UCSF it's strengths. I thought it was a great school and I would be very happy there. But, it's not perfect and I can tell you from my tourguide there on interview day, the curriculum isn't as laidback and chill as you think. She was the most stressed out person i have ever met at any of my interviews. Pick which school you think you fit the best at. It's not gonna be JHU for eeveryone and maybe not even for half the people who visit. True, many dont even apply. But, Hopkins is a truly special place.the curriculum isn't as laidback and chill as you think. She was the most stressed out person i have ever met at any of my interviews. ••
I don't know who gave you the tour, but I can assure you that most people in my class like the new curriculum. This from talking with people and near-unanimous sentiment during our feedback sessions with the faculty and administrators during each block. That's not to say there haven't been any bugs--of course there are going to be in the first year of any new thing. But no major ones so far (mostly room scheduling issues, occasional lecture/small group order). The administration has been extremely receptive to our feedback and has actually made changes already based on what we said. It's cool going to a school where students feel empowered in their own education.
As I've said before on other threads, the Prologue was pretty stressful because of the condensed anatomy plus histo and other subjects squeezed into 6 weeks. They are definitely going to modify that for next year. Also, the scheduling should be less of a problem because both 1st and 2nd year students will be on the new curriculum. This year, some professors are having to teach their material twice: once to the 2nd years on the old curriculum and again to us since our new curriculum is integrated and includes path, pharm, etc. Since the Prologue, however, I think it has gotten a lot less stressful and if you ask people in my class, they'll tell you they love the curriculum. I don't really have to study all that much and we only have 2 hrs/day of lecture and 2 hrs of small group or lab, leaving tons of free afternoon time to do anything one wants. The P/F system does wonders for taking the pressure off and fostering comraderie among classmates.
Well, it sounds like the above debate is cutting into at least a couple people's work (including my own)... although I don't really mind being kept away at least briefly from the exciting topic of "clinical evaluation of body fluid osmolality"
