<p>I always hear that the most important thing about going to med school is doing really well in your undergraduate years to get a good GPA, EC, and MCAT scores, and once you get into med school, no matter which one you're set as long as you do pretty well and graduate with an MD or DO (depending on the school). </p>
<p>Now my questions are, when you go to a doctor for the first time, is which school he or she went to at the top of your list of questions? Or do you simply care that this person got an MD (or DO), has been accredited etc. and will be happy to help you?</p>
<p>I'm asking this because not everybody is going to Stanford/UCLA/JHopkins/Harvard/etc. Med School...and many will end up in not as "famous" school for their MD work. It seems that some undergrads are worried about not going to a world renown place, and end up not as successful doctors in the field.</p>
<p>the prestige of the medical school seems to only matter at the highest levels of academic medicine-the faculties of IVY league medical schools are heavily made up from graduates of IVY league medical schools. In private practice, it matters very little. My father states that no patient has EVER asked him what medical school he went to, and on his exam room wall-he has board certification certificates for his specialty and subspecialty, all the other diplomas from 'the paper chase' hang in his personal office-where patients do not venture.</p>
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the prestige of the medical school seems to only matter at the highest levels of academic medicine-the faculties of IVY league medical schools are heavily made up from graduates of IVY league medical schools. In private practice, it matters very little
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<p>I would add that it matters if you have a heavily marketing-driven customer-focused elective specialty, i.e. plastic surgery or LASIK. For these sorts of elective procedures, customers generally have little idea about which doctor is good or not, so they have to rely on marketing. And your school, if it is famous, can be part of your marketing.</p>
<p>Notice how the following LASIK doctor prominently displays that he is a Harvard MD on his website. I am quite sure that that fact has landed him some clientele. </p>
<p>PS: The guy DOES have amazing credentials, but I think it's important to point out that they're not "perfect" the whole way -- that is to say, many CC'ers would flip out at attending UCSD, for example. (I don't know anything about whether Cal-Pacific is a good residency -- it sounds UCSF affiliated, in which case it would be.) The point is that sometimes the obsession with prestige is ill-founded. Many HS seniors would be despondent over "only" getting into UCSD -- but it doesn't seem to have harmed this fellow in the least.</p>