<p>Okay, so you're very lost...but that's okay b/c youre only in HS.</p>
<p>1: there are only 125 med schools in the us. All do a great job preparing their students for medical practice. None are crummy.</p>
<p>2: you do realize that you have to undergrad first, right? Undergrad school factors very little into med school admisions. You just need to do well in college with grades, the MCAT, on-campus involvement, research, and volunteering and then apply to schools where you will be competitive. There are no safeties (to use a CC term) in med school admisions. But there are reaches and matches. If you do well while an undergrad, and apply to schools that fit your stats, you will have a good chance to be accepted. </p>
<p>3: Don't read too much in to those acceptance numbers. They don't take into account things like state residency. Your Arizona example is a great choice b/c they only accept applications from AZ residents or people with significant AZ ties, which artificially limits the number of people who apply. State schools often give huge advantages to in state students, and everyone is aware of that fact so people are reluctant to apply to state schools of which they aren't a resident. That fact alone raises the number of applicants to private medical schools. Other places like George Washington and Tufts get an abnormally high # of applications b/c of their locations and the fact that they often have rather low stats for their entering class (Tufts had an average entering GPA of 3.48 when I applied there 2 years ago) and remember what I said about applying to places where you'll be competitive - people think they have a better shot of making it in there so they apply. Just b/c GW had only about 1% of it's applicants actually earn and take a spot in their school doesn't mean that they are a better school than say Iowa.</p>
<p>4: There are plenty of people who are not geniuses in medical school. In fact I'd say most are simply above average people who work hard.</p>
<p>5: Like with any USNWR rankings they need to be taken with a grain of salt and an understanding of how they arrive at those rankings. For Primary Care, there is a lot of emphasis on how many students the schools place into PC residency programs (Med, peds, OB/GYN, Family). The research rankings are dependent on how much money they earn in grants.
I'm of the opinion that the PC rankings are a rough approximation of how good the school is at producing quality doctors across the board, but it is by no means absolutely true, and certainly should not be taken as an absolute. The research rankings are much more helpful if you are actually thinking of doing research in the future.</p>
<p>That said: UW is an amazing school from what I've heard and it really is better than the schools you mentioned. Remember we're not talking about undergrad criteria at all, and only the medical school. UW has some really innovative programs. Some schools like mine (Nebraska) are really, really strong in certain areas which translates well for all their grads in terms of board scores and peer review (my school's Internal Med clerkship is phenomenal). That doesn't mean that Stanford isn't really strong in some other area, just that that area isn't quite as useful to the medical students...for example, a university medical center may be the best Breast cancer facility in the country, but most medical students are never going to take a clerkship in that area, and the knowledge one might learn there is not broadly applicable to other fields of medicine.</p>
<p>As for your residency choices: </p>
<p>Ophtha is the hardest. It's up there with Derm and Ortho in terms of difficulty of obtaining a spot anywhere.</p>
<p>The Surgery and Med residencies are easier to get into, but the top programs will be just as competitive as Ophtha. There is also increased competition at geographically desirable programs - it's harder to get people to Montana than it is California.</p>
<p>As for your 4th choice...do you want to do a Hematology fellowship or a GI fellowship? Or are you interested in cancers of the GI system? Those are all very different paths. You do realize that if you are looking for fellowships that they will follow a 3 year residency first, right? Specifically if you are hoping to go into either Hemotology/Oncology or GI, that you will go through three years of Medicine or Peds then apply for the fellowship.</p>
<p>If you are interested in colon cancer, then you would likely do Internal med, followed by three years of Hematology/oncology, do your research in colon cancer during that fellowship and then attend whatever other Continuing Medical education/seminars/conferences you could on colon cancer.</p>