<p>This is something that I've been wondering about for a while now. Does the medical school that you go to have very much of an impact on the kind of opportunities available to you? </p>
<p>For example, is going to Harvard Medical School give you that much of an advantage over, say, University of South Florida College of Medicine? If so, why?</p>
<p>In some senses yes, in others no. If you go to Harvard and barely pass your boards, then your not going to be in good shape for a competitive residency. However if you are from Harvard against another person from a less prestigious place and you have the same board scores, it will all depend on your recommendations from med school profs. At the same time the Harvard person will probably have the upper hand on you if both of you have the same USMLE scores.</p>
<p>A bigtime medical school is clearly useful if and when you want to go into private practice. Saying that you're from Harvard or Johns Hopkins is then going to be very useful for attracting a clientele. </p>
<p>A name-brand med-school is also useful if you ever want to branch out of being a simple doctor, for example, if you eventually want to get promoted into management at a hospital, or you want to work for a pharmaceuticals company or a biotech. Or if you just want to get out of the health-care industry completely and do something totally different, ala Michael Crichton, who graduated from Harvard Medical. </p>
<p>In short, the more you deviate from traditional medicine, the more valuable the brand-name becomes.</p>
<p>I think the advantages of the prestigious name is not that great in clinical medicine, but does probably carry some weight. I know someone who was just matched into a Derm residency (one of the most competitive specialties) straight out of USF, and one of my college buddies got into Mass General for Plastics from SUNY Upstate a number of years ago. It's still a lot about connections, so maybe you can get slightly better connections at the big name school, but you can probably get a good residency if you do well enough and impress the right attendings at any med school.</p>