<p>It's very important to get into a very good, if not top, law school, in order to be guaranteed a well-paying job at a prestigious firm. (Think HYPS, Duke, Cornell, Georgetown, law schools, and admissions are of course, very tough). However, is this the case with medical school and med school graduates ? I mean, it seems like doctors/dentists get hired left and right at hospitals and private practices, no matter where they went to school. Does a doctor really need to be admitted to a "top" med school in order to have BETTER chances than the next applicant for getting hired ? I mean, you don't really here "hey, you need to go to harvard med school to get hired at XY hospital", whereas, for prospective lawyers, where you go to school really predetermines the caliber of the firm you'll be working at. Also, placement for med graduates are very high number-wise, are they not ?</p>
<p>prestige of a medical school is really not that important...especially compared to law school. The only cases in which medical school matters is if you are interested in academic medicine (being a med school prof) but even then, I think that the importance of med school is not particularly influential. Residency programs probably matter more in such cases...but even then no where near the extent that being in a top 15 law school does.</p>
<p>Part of this is the greater selectivity of medical schools. Eventually if you lower your standards enough you can get into law school somewhere which is not the case in medicine. The other thing is that once you are in medical school, the odds of you flunking out are minimal. Medical schools will keep you around b/c of the money they have invested in you. Law schools on the other hand won't.</p>
<p>As far as dental schools, since most people don't take a "residency" (and I use that term loosely...by which I mean post grad training - ie orthodontics) for dentistry, the competition for such positions is intense. From the little I know about the process, school doesn't matter as much as grades, class rank and board scores. There are only like 5 dental specialties and the competition for orthodontics is much more fierce than the other options. so for ortho it probably matters a little more.</p>
<p>from what i gather, it does not matter where you go to med school if you want to go into private practice. Research is another issue, where you need to have a high caliber school to support you. It also doesn't matter where you do your residency because in the end, all that matters is if you are a good doctor or not, and if people want to come to you over others in ur field.</p>
<p>thanks guys. Also, what about these fresh, young med grads who open up their own practices ? Do you think they get some kind of funding from their wealthy parents, or savings, in order to simply open up a practice ? Or do they take out loans ?</p>
<p>I'm going to say loans...</p>
<p>However the prospect of opening up a brand new practice solo is to me, fairly risky proposition. The start up costs of medical equipment and the necessary adaptation of an existing building (or building a new one) is very expensive. And to try to develop a patient base from nothing...well it just seems particularly difficult.</p>
<p>What's more likely is to have a person getting out of residency come in and take over for a physician who is about to retire. Take out loans to buy into the practice and after a year or however long buy the remaining share of the practice. then you've got the patient base, have the office space and so on ready to go.</p>