What To Look for in a Medical School

Ben Ferguson -- What to look for in a medical school, in this order:

1. Location, location, location! I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s well worth passing on again: You will be spending four (or more) years at whichever school you choose to attend, and you should be sure that you can handle living there for that long. An amazing location won’t add all that much above and beyond a solid school, but a poor location can and will drive you crazy and distract you from your work as a medical student.

2. The grading system. This, to me, is by far the most important academic feature of a school. I cannot put into words how beneficial the pass/fail system used at my own school has been in every single aspect of my daily life as a medical student. Schools’ grading systems were not something I closely looked into while applying, but in retrospect, a pass/fail grading system should have been at the top of my list of requirements for a given school. I’ve clearly not attended a medical school that employs letter grades, so it’s tough from a personal experience standpoint to directly compare them, but based on stories I’ve heard from friends and colleagues at such schools, let’s just say I do not envy them in the least.

3. Happiness. When you visit a school, take a pulse of the emotional well-being of its students. Do they seem happy? Do they seem suicidal? Do they seem to get along with each other? Does anyone smile or laugh or crack jokes? Are there people studying together, or is every table you come across occupied by a single wallflower with his or her nose buried in a book? Try mentally inserting yourself into the school’s environment and see what happens. See how it makes you feel right then and there. See how it makes you feel one hour after leaving, and the next day, and the next week. Sometimes gut feelings can be great decision points, and this area is based almost entirely on your gut. A school’s social environment is almost as important as #1 up there, although at most schools, the classes are big enough that you can find friends and like-minded people practically without trying.

4. A great supporting cast. How nice has a school’s administrative staff been to you throughout your application process? That is indicative of how they’ll likely be when you’re a student there, and the quality and helpfulness of the administrative staff can most definitely make or break your quality of life as a medical student. Some schools can make you feel like a rock star all of the time, and some can make you feel totally alone. Don’t disregard this one.

5. Financial support and knowledge. Medical school is stressful enough on its own without having to worry about money. Throw financial issues into the mix, and you can get mighty distracted. A school that gives a lot of money to its students is one that has a supportive and active alumni and community and one that clearly finds it important that its medical students are able to focus on learning medicine. A school that has staff who know what they’re doing and can explain to you in clear terms what you need to sign/pay/do/read is absolutely priceless (especially if you score a full ride!).

6. Everything else. Student mentorship, shadowing and research opportunities, enthusiasm of faculty in working with students, daily routines, curriculum formats, number and breadth of extracurricular groups and intramural sports teams (if that’s your thing), format of patient records in the teaching hospital(s), and even match lists (so long as you have some idea of what fields interest you) go here at the end. They are all important factors to consider, but to me, they pale in comparison to those above. They are extremely flexible and largely dependent on how you thrive upon, or cope with, them, and they should not make or break your decision in general.

What not to look for in a medical school:

1. Board Scores. I’m probably going to get reamed by some for saying it, but this really shouldn’t be taken into account when you’re deciding between schools. There are so many confounding factors that go into a school’s average board performance, and overall it’s a poor judge of academic quality in my opinion. If you’re a genius, you’re probably going to do very well on the boards no matter what school you attend, and a few extra points in a school’s average board score doesn't come anywhere close to making up for other shortcomings it may have. If you’re not so good at standardized exams, there are far better ways of determining what sort of professional success you’re going to have other than a given school’s average board score, and going to a school with very high reputed average board scores doesn’t in any way guarantee you a very high board score.

2. US News ranking. Seriously? It’s a magazine just trying to sell issues like everybody else. In 20 years, none of your patients are going to come to your clinic on the basis of your medical school’s #11 ranking in the April 2004 issue of US News and World Report. They are going to come to your clinic because you have a medical degree, you are an expert in your specialty, you are comforting, and you don’t kill your patients. If you are lacking any of these things, a poor US News showing from 20 years prior is the least of your worries.

3. Hottest potential suitors/faculty/patient population. You don’t even have time for that anyway. Professionalism, people.

4. How many derm/plastics/rad-onc residencies the Class of 2006 matched into. These numbers tend to vary widely from year to year and are largely based on whether anyone was even interested on an individual level in these fields in a given year. If you think this is an important thing to look at, you need to reconsider your priorities.