Hahaha, this again...wellll.... lets see.
I have nothing particularly horrible to say about Columbia.... other than the neighborhood, and in it's defense is getting much better than it used to be. It's a great school, with amazing faculty who were definitely some of the most warm and welcoming group of people that I'd ever met. On the somewhat negative side, while the clinical facilities were really nice, the pre-clinical stuff looked at least 25 years old, and they were still using all old film x-rays and paper filing - though they did have some cool imaging stuff in the Ortho department. Pitt on the other hand had a very new looking pre-clinical setup, and uses all digital x-rays and digital filing. One of the other important things to me was specialty matching, and while Columbia has amazing numbers for matching residencies, that's somewhat skewed by the fact that to practice dentistry in New York you are required to do a residency. When it came to the numbers I was looking at, Ortho matches, both Pitt and Columbia had everyone who applied to Ortho get accepted somewhere last year - or so the information I was given says. Also, a more personal preference reason, I just don't like living in a big city environment. I've gone to New York many times, and I just don't think living in the city like that is for me. When I went to Pitt, I really liked the area, it was city, but not huge huge, and although the area around the school isn't the best in the world, I really liked it.
All of the above, and a number of other reasons as well which I've detailed elsewhere, is really just my brain's justification for my Gut feeling, which told me to go with Pitt. Both interviews were during the same weekend, Columbia on Friday, Pitt on Monday, and when I went to the Pitt interview, I just felt like it.... fit/connected(?) with me better personally - I'm not sure if that's quite the right word to use. The hardest part was that I got both acceptances on the same day, and was given by both exactly a week to decide which to pick. That was really one of the most difficult decisions I had to make, and I think I made the right choice for me. I'll be eternally honored that I was thought of as high caliber enough to be a student at Columbia, and I was sure to let Dr. McMannus know that in a letter I wrote to him, but Pitt felt like the right choice to me.
PS. A big ZoT shoutout to my fellow anteaters! =D I hope you're all in ASDA at UCI!!
