<p>Hello all, I am senior in HS and becoming a doctor has always intrigued me. I know it doesn't mean much now, but obstetrics and trauma surgery are two of the more interesting subfields to me. I benefit from having a close relative who is a doctor, but admittedly times have changed since he was in med-school. </p>
<p>My plan is to attend University of Wisconsin (already accepted) next year as a genetics major. The pros and cons as far as I can tell are:</p>
<p>Pros:
- IS tuition
- It has a med-school affiliate
- Numerous research opportunities/internships available to undergrads
- Decent level of prestige (maybe?)
- Located in an idiosyncratic town with some decent biotech industry
- Name recognition throughout the Midwest and nice job-placement in Chicago
- I'm top 25th percentile so I have the potential to be ahead of the curve (31 ACT, 4.0 uw GPA in HS) </p>
<p>Cons:
- Very big/grind school (poor advising as well?)
- Somewhat isolated
- I'm not in BS/MD
- Unknown reputation/no prestige outside of the Midwest
- I don't have many AP/IB credits going in</p>
<p>I'm leery about doing honors because I'm not sure that it will be worth risking my GPA. If accepted to med school, I would consider doing ROTC to help pay for it. I do not know the details of this just yet.</p>
<p>Is this a good tentative plan or is is there more than I should consider? Any other general or specific tips? Obviously, I will try my best to keep grades my up in college and the little time I have left in HS. </p>
<p>I realize that I could just search for many of the answers to my questions and concerns but I was hoping for more personalized responses. Thank You!</p>
<p>FWIW, I’ve always liked Madison. Interesting town. Know a faculty member or two as well as a number of (former) grad students (now working professionals in places across the US and in Europe) who really liked living there.</p>
<p>And UW is NOT “unknown” outside of the Midwest. UW is first-rate school with excellence in sciences across the board: bio, chem, math, physics, engineering, comp sci.</p>
<p>Attending UW for undergrad is a fine plan. I see no problems with it. </p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>But a comment–there is no such thing a “ROTC for medical school”. There are 2 basic options: attend the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS) as a commissioned officer in one of the branches of the Armed Forces, or a HPSP scholarship. HPSP incurs a 8 year service obligation and requires you to accept a military residency upon graduation.</p>
<p>Ok, good. My biggest concern has been that UW wouldn’t give me the prestige I might need to get into a well-reputed medical school (are top-15 still out of reach?) but I’ve since learned from here and other sites that undergrad is less important than GPA. The IS tuition was very appealing to my family for obvious reasons. I didn’t want to blow $50,000 a year on an ND or Northwestern (if I even could’ve gotten in) and then take out massive loans for med school. </p>
<p>I understand UW isn’t necessarily “unknown” outside the Midwest, but I just felt that it didn’t bear the same name recognition/network outside of Wisconsin/Chicago. As in, people assumed it to be just a party school or something similar. I’m not a partier (I’m planing on being premed, obviously ;)) and I feel this is only a “half-truth.”</p>
<p>Thank you for the information on the Armed Forces and Med School opportunities. I assume the HPSP is more in line with what I was talking about, because I do not plan on enlisting prior to my acceptance into medical school.</p>
<p>I think setting your goal of getting into a top-15 medical school at the beginning of your college career is not healthy, especially when you are not sure whether you will be interested in pursuing an academic medicine career.</p>
<p>A majority, if not all, of medical schools are well-reputed.</p>
<p>When DS, who is an MS1 at a school which happens to fit your definition of a top one, was your age, he had not set a goal of getting into any medical school, let alone a top-15 medical school. Even in the middle of his medical school application cycle, he did not set such a goal. He had a much relaxed premed life in college and during medical school application because of this attitude.</p>
<p>Regarding your feeling about “UW didn’t bear the same name recognition/network outside of Wisconsin/Chicago,” do not feel so. You could be successful from anywhere except when you are from a very low tiered college. The only difference may be that, if you are from the school X1, you need to be in the top X2 per cents, while if you are from school Y1, you need to be in the top Y2 per cents.</p>
<p>Agree with mcat. Besides, any major public university like UW has the “reputation” and more importantly the resources to allow you to maximize your potential, where ever that may lead you. I went to a “less reputable” school and had not difficulties competing with similar applicants from “more reputable” schools.</p>
<p>I would suggest that it’s likely a lot better to go to a public school than a mid tier private school, regardless of the comparative reputation. I think a lot of med schools know that kids go to their state schools for money or location reasons, and they don’t fault them for that. We can’t all hit the jackpot and have our state school be UVA, and they know that. I really don’t think that going to s atste school like that is a bad thing. It won’t get you brownie points like going to some elite private school, but I would definitely argue that it’s better than a mid tier private school, especially if you kick some ass.</p>
<p>I think there’s very little reason to go to a top-15 medical school–even if you do want to be a leading professor/researcher. Medical school is trade school. The pancreas is the pancreas, and it operates the same way whether you study it at Yale or the University of Oklahoma. In many kinds of graduate education, you need to be an innovative thinker; you need an idea of your own that you can make a dissertation this way. Medical school is different. You need to learn a huge volume of technical information, but instead of seeing it in a new way, you need to know the same things that everybody else knows.</p>
<p>IMO, if you want to be a regular doctor, who takes care of sick people, you should go to your home-state medical school and pay resident tuition. And if you want to be a leading professor/researcher, you should still pay resident tuition at your state medical school, but you should excel there so you can do your residency at Mass General or Hopkins or someplace fancy.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, every attending (20?), med school professor (30?), advisor (10?), medical student (100?), administrator (10?), parent of a med student (20?), resident (15?), fellow (20?), etc I’ve talked to has told me almost exactly the same thing.</p>
<p>I took that advice (am currently halfway through my first year of med school) and couldn’t be happier. (Perhaps worth mentioning that my list of required text books is almost identical to that of a few Ivy schools, other public schools, and two DO schools.)</p>
The key phrase is “you should excel there so you can do your residency at Mass General or Hopkins.” Easier said than done though no matter what medical school you attend, especially when you are also interested in getting into a lucrative (better lifestyle or $ or both) specialty like ROAD.</p>
<p>Another point is that, if you are really a very top applicant who is destined to be a top researcher in academic medicine, it could be cheaper to go to a selected few research medical schools and pay less there than going to a public medical school (could be free if you are willing and able to go the MSTP route.) The key phrase here is: you should really excel as a premed and as a medical school student. But the challenging part is: Are you one of these selected few students there? This may not be harder than getting into a hot specialty residency at Mass General or Hopkins!</p>
<p>But thank you all. Obviously, what you’re telling me basically mirrors what I have heard elsewhere. From my observation, it seems like the road to medical school is much more straightforward than some other professions–a great deal more difficult, but at least straightforward. I’m not sure if Wisco is more apt to take its own undergrads or if it has a quota or something like that, but I think the fact that it has a med school affiliate will be helpful to me even without BS/MD.</p>
<p>I still have some questions about the military service/med school prospect. How and when do I get started on that? Is it before or after I apply to med schools and will it be binding if I don’t get in? Could someone provide a link to exactly what we’re discussing because I don’t know exactly what it is?</p>
<p>I’m almost certain I want to do something with biology but I’ve considered dental, veterinary and grad school as well. All of which require high marks which I hope I can achieve at UW–even if it is a bit of a grind school.</p>
I’m sold on posit 1, not as much on posit 2. Academic medicine, some difficult to get residencies, and research-biased residencies (where research is effectively essential to getting the residency) do apparently give an edge to the “top research med school” grads. </p>
<p>That being said, when my D faced this very choice she had savvy folks dissect the match lists for 3 years of the last two schools standing (as she or I would have been judging a beauty contest as we knew nothing but the fancy names). At the end of the day, her chosen experts felt that the uber-school did have a quantifiable edge in outcomes, but the edge was not that great. (And not worth the cost differential.) Her choice then came down to “feel” and “gut” about the “learning environment” and whether that difference in atmosphere was worth the money. Not something quantifiable by any metric of which I am aware. </p>
<p>So. For my one data point, she chose based on reputation (as reflected somewhat by match lists and rankings) and costs and curriculum and P/F pre-clinicals, but at the end of the day, she went where her heart told her to go …Montessori Med School. Where everything is ponies and bunnies. Yeah, right. It’s still a med school as she is finding out in her MS2 year. lol</p>
<p>My kid has always known that her heart is not in primary care. She is now and has always been a research-oriented nerd who wants to teach, run a lab, and see patients to perform “procedures” (likely surgery of some kind, likely cancer related). She has found 2 mentors who do exactly what she wants to do. And they are both from top research med schools (for what little that data is worth).</p>
<p>BTW, UVa is a fantastic medical school. My D seriously considered attending and was very proud of her acceptance. I think that the arbitrary top 15 number is just that…arbitrary. I do think there is a smaller co-hort of tip-top med schools, arbitarily decided by me to be less than 10, then some great schools in that next 25. I see no obvious break at 15 on the research list.</p>
<p>Excellent point. I should have mentioned that the list of individuals I talked with (" every attending (20?), med school professor (30?), advisor (10?), medical student (100?), administrator (10?), parent of a med student (20?), resident (15?), fellow (20?), etc") was almost exclusively from my med school, which happens to be competitively ranked in primary care and tends to train many primary care docs. Those facts probably have a big influence on their perspectives.</p>
<p>Do I want to do primary care? Unsure, but worth exploring. Do I want to be a hardcore researcher ala Curm’s kid? At this point in the game, absolutely not. I want to “just” be a clinician, perhaps affiliated with a medical school (so I could spend some time teaching med students!), and could definitely see myself in some sort of peds specialty. So for a student like me, taking the route I chose makes sense–even though it may not make much sense for a kid like Curm’s.</p>
<p>kristin, you know how much I have appreciated your journey and your perspective on this process. I’m a fan. But you’re right. Y’all will likely have two different careers. </p>
<p>My kid loves children, still 'sits some in med school for extra cash, and doesn’t hate adults but she just knows she’s not wired for putting up with “non-compliant” patients over the long-haul.</p>
<p>From countless hours on the “bench”, she knows she can’t do that for a living either. Needs some direct, immediate, measurable correlation between what she’s doing and the patient. Hence her career aspirations, hence her focus in selecting a UG school with research connects, and hence her med school choice. </p>
<p>Good for both of y’all for knowing your own minds and doing it your own way and, more to the point of this thread, for knowing that her choice doesn’t diminish yours or vice versa.</p>
<p>Here’s the Army version (all branches are the same deal) Note: be aware this is a recruiting document. (i.e. it’s not going to talk about the negatives)</p>
<p>1) sign your enrollment papers sometime in the early to mid spring of your senior year and know ahead of time if you’ll be accepted into the program. But if you don’t get accepted into med school–there is no outie. You’re in the Army.</p>
<p>2) wait until after you’ve been accepted into med school, then start the recruitment process. But the scholarships are limited and there may not be any left. (Vets, current active duty and reserve personnel get preference.)</p>
<p>Obviously if you get an early acceptance (before Jan 1), you’re in great shape, but if not, then…you have to decide which way you want to gamble.</p>
<p>~~~~~~</p>
<p>One other thing–upon completing medical school, you’re obligated to accept a military residency. (Which means you may not get your first choice specialty. The military has the right to require you to meets its personnel needs.)</p>
<p>~~~~~~~</p>
<p>But in end, unless you’re sincerely interested in a military career, you probably shouldn’t considered the HPSP.</p>
<p>I should admit, I’m not a physician, so I may now be reaching the point of talking through my hat. I have a sense, however, that at this level of selectivity, matching in ophthalmology or matching in almost anything at Mass General is a little bit like getting into Harvard College: there just isn’t a sure-fire formula. You could go to the University of Kansas, be AOA, but not match at Mass General; you could go to Johns Hopkins, not be AOA, and not match at Mass General; I suspect it’s even possible, in many specialties at least, that you could go to Johns Hopkins, be AOA, and still not match at Mass General.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that AOA graduates of Hopkins have an easier time matching in prestigious programs than AOA graduates of KU. It would surprise me, however, to learn that being an AOA graduate of KU can’t lead to a career in a competitive subspecialty or in academic medicine.</p>
Top 10 is good enough, right?](<a href=“
Yeah, right. It’s still a med school as she is finding out in her MS2 year. lol</p>
but she just knows she’s not wired for putting up with “non-compliant” patients over the long-haul.</p>