<p>*Do you guys know what JHU looks for in their applicants? *</p>
<p>My guess for all the top schools…they are looking for people who will make them look good as matriculants and will make them look good as future physicians. They like it when Dr. X does/writes/develops/researches some fabulous thing and when written about, it gets mentioned that s/he went to their elite med school. </p>
<p>Others may disagree…that’s my take.</p>
<p>oops, my bad (#20). Back to Starbucks for another cuppa Joe, to improve those critical reading skills.</p>
<p>@bluebayou-- lol, yea, sorry mostly people talk about med school X vs med school Y. But I’m just comparing (as someone matriculating to college), a competitive undergrad VS competitive med school to get an idea. Seems like it gets harder and harder as you go from hs–>college–>med school —> res. ugh. ugh.</p>
<p>You guys are making an important mistake in how you are reading the school rankings. It depends on what your future goals are… if you want to be an MD/ PhD then a research university is the way to go. However, if you only want an MD than residency programs refer to the Primary Care rankings, suprisingly which holds many state schools. You would be suprised to know that UMASS has a relatively high interview/acceptance rate and ranks #8 amongst primary care universities well ahead of most of the big name schools. I have a friend there now, who has had a great experience, has done independent research, and has multiple publications. Well on his way to a great surgical match I would say. (If only I was a MA resident)</p>
<p>Oh, my point is… don’t look at the “big name” schools look at the precedents and who makes better physicians. Look at the Match lists, the rotation distribution, and the speciality selection of recent grads. This will tell you alot more about a program, and help you decide what school would be a good fit for you. </p>
<p>I am not trying to be a downer, but admissions counselors say this is the #1 reason people do not get in the first time around. They are not aiming for places that they fit into. Instead of trying to fit into a mold of what the school wants, find a school that fits the mold of what you want and who you ultimately want to be.</p>
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A problem is: How do you know which specialty you will likely go into when you are a premed? I heard that, in reality, after the brutal rotations like surgery or something similar, many are persuaded NOT to go into a specialty he thought he would like to go into when he was a premed (or even as an MS1.)</p>
<p>It appears to me that many very competitive medical students end up choosing one of the “life-style” specialties in the end – especially for those students whose financial situation is still not that bad after paying the tuition for 4 years (i.e., do not accumulate too much debt due to various reasons.)</p>
<p>As regard to primary care doctors, I wonder how many percentages of newly-minted primary care doctors are from foreign medical schools and it appears most, if not all, medical school students are able to get into one of the residency programs for training primary care doctors. (Heck…for one of them, texas tech, you only need to pay for tuition for two years only and will be graduated in 3 years, in order to entice the students to go into that field.)</p>
<p>This is a direct result of the fact that, as of today, medicare barely pays enough to primary care doctors for their business to make even or even lose money when they see mostly medicare patients.</p>
<p>vpappas83, We may also argue that STEP 1/2 scores have little to do with the quality of a primary care doctor. This is because it is well known that a quite high percentage of medical schools high in the primary care ranking produce students who have a lower average STEP 1/2 scores. At least one of medical schools which is very high in the primary care ranking has one of the lowest passing rates on the board exams. We may as well argue that the whole board exam affair has nothing to do with the estimate of the quality of medical schools, as the correlation of the board exam scores and the primary care ranking is poor.</p>
<p>With this said, I believe the quality of the 3rd year in MS is important. Especially, avoid the schools that may on the border line abuse the students (e.g., regard their time as free for them to exploit when they are not able to extract enough labors from their residents) while the quality of real learning is relatively poor.</p>
<p>Mcat2 - touchee my friend, good point! I’ve always figured if you are relying on superhigh board exam scores to place you in a top residency than chances are you don’t stand a chance cause you already haven’t put the work in that you needed. </p>
<p>However, your point is valid and well made!</p>
<p>vpappas83, Thanks for the compliment. I said it mostly in a tongue-in-cheek way but it appears I failed it miserably due to my limited language skill, and I apologize for it because I might have written it in a misleading way.</p>
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<p>As a premed, how can you even interpret this information? Can you compare match lists and determine which is “better” or which is more well-suited to you? Do you know for sure which specialty (or even which field) you’ll enter? How do you compare curricula in the clinical years?</p>
<p>I’m not trying to be a jerk at all. I start med school soon and when I was applying found it remarkably difficult to understand residency placements/match lists…plus I have no idea what I want to do for sure with my MD (isn’t that was M3 is for?). If your advisors have taught you how to read, interpret, compare, and critically think about the information you wrote, I’d really like to know your tricks!</p>
<p>(Obviously I can look at the differences between curricula and can notice differences on match lists. What I can’t do is determine which is better for me and why, and you seem to be able to do that.)</p>
<p>Mcat2- I only saw the 2nd post in my early morning stupor to get to the hospital. </p>
<p>As for the choice of specialty- it gives you an idea of what the education at that school is geared at. As for the quality of primary care physicians… remember at the end of the day that you graduate med school you are nothing more than a primary care physician. But if you want a specialty like surgery, you better be the best primary care physician, because you need a really strong general foundation and good bedside manner. </p>
<p>These are things I didn’t think of on my own, it was a friend who placed into a top surg residency told me as advice in my app process.</p>
<p>Vpappas: Not really. For example, Columbia and UCSF med puts out as many ortho and neurosurgery people as any school in the country. It isn’t because the education is directed towards those sub-specialties. So much is personal choice/interest that match lists are simply unreadable and always shaded by the biases of the reader (Even program directors don’t agree what the best residency programs are for a given specialty). The only exception would be MAYBE if, in the recent past, there have been NO students that went into those specialties that you think that you are interested in because it may indicate an absence of strong opportunities to explore those specialties on your own time or, possibly, that you may have a harder time with interviews because the residency programs you apply to may not have any past experiences to draw upon in terms of residents from your school. </p>
<p>When you graduate from medical school you are most certainly not a primary care physician (and god have mercy on us all if they ever are), nor do all surgeons have admirable bedside manners or a markedly strong general foundation of medical knowledge. The fact that you are getting your info from a surgeon doesn’t really help your case, because if you are interpreting the statements properly he or she clearly doesn’t know what a primary care physician is.</p>
<p>The problem with using the primary care ranking is the fact that a major factor in the ranking is the number of people who go into primary care. That can be confounding, because we have no idea why they are going into primary care and we can’t assume that just because they have the most they are necessarily the most prepared on an individual level.</p>
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<p>This is almost exactly what I’ve heard about rankings and match lists, and why I think it is challenging (impossible?) for savvy premeds to use rankings and match lists when applying. Since I don’t know what those rankings mean, or how reliable they are, I definitely don’t feel confident basing my decisions off such numbers.</p>
<p>But then again, it seems like I frequently heard, “Oh, you don’t know where to apply? Just look at the match lists.” when I was applying to med school. It was frustrating because I wanted to say “Look at the match lists? Doesn’t that mean I have to have some idea of what field I’m going into, and from that, which residencies are good ones for what I’m looking for, and from that, have a sophisticated understanding of how to compare them?” but I never did.</p>
<p>My personal take home message from match lists/residencies and rankings is that they’re challenging to interpret, an inaccurate interpretation could be a big mistake, I don’t know what specialty I want to enter (but should by the time I’m done with my first clinical year), and I personally am likely better off choosing a school for other reasons. </p>
<p>At the same time, I’d like to be able to use and understand rankings and match lists–but maybe that’s still too over my head. Oh well, guess learning about all this is part of what med school’s for :)</p>
<p>The problem with understanding a match list, even under the assumption that everyone went to the most competitive specialty/program they could, is that every specialty has a different list. U of NM, for example, is a top peds program. Barrow Neurological Institute, something that most people have probably never heard of because it isn’t an affiliate of a university, is among the top neuro/neurosurg programs. The straight truth is that most people “reading a match list” simply count the Harvards/Johns Hopkins’s/Mayo Clinics and the Derms/Plastics/Rads, etc. Most people involved in residency programs only have knowledge of their own specialty. </p>
<p>Things get even more confusing when you realize that top program and top residency program are also not the same thing.</p>
<p>Guys, I think we all have the same idea. There are a lot of different factors and someone really needs to do their homework and not get caught up. My simple point was that you need to find a program that fits you, and not a mold you can squeeze yourself into.</p>