<p>I don’t know/think volunteering at a certain hospital matters during med school applications, as long as you volunteered (with good hours/duration) at a hospital.</p>
<p>But besides that, anyone have experience in volunteering at either hospital? Brackenridge recently made their program semester based, whereas St. David’s has kept it on a rolling basis. I’m deciding whether or not to apply to St. David’s this week or wait till the Spring semester for Brackenridge.</p>
<p>I’m a Junior but am waiting till SENIOR year to apply. Thank you!</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen, most students enjoy volunteering at St. David’s over Brackenridge. St. David’s is a for-profit private hospital and things are cleaner and generally nicer. But if you want to see more diversity in the patient population, Brackenridge might be the place to be given that it is the county hospital.</p>
<p>Actually, Breckenridge is also privately owned by Seton Healthcare, which is a non-profit. It does take the MAP program which is country program.</p>
<p>Not quite. The hospital is owned by the City of Austin and they lease it to Seton. By all means, UMC Brackenridge is a public hospital. I’m not sure what the MAP program is, though.</p>
<p>In any case, my personal advice is that you apply to St. David’s now. It sends a bad message when a student only begins volunteering in their final year of school.</p>
<p>You are correct that it is not owned by Seton, but it’s not owned by the City of Austin either. It is owned by Central Health which is part of the county but is basically part of the state government since 2004. It has been run by Seton since 1995 and is run as if it were a private hospital with the exception of MAP. It does not provide certain services that truly public, secular hospitals would. Though St. David’s does seem to have better funding/processing.
You can read about MAP here: [Home</a> | Central Health MAPCentral Health MAP | Local health coverage](<a href=“http://www.medicalaccessprogram.net/]Home”>http://www.medicalaccessprogram.net/)</p>
<p>If you are interested in working with different ethnicities and socio-economic classes, or in the area of mental health- Brackenridge has great exposure for those areas because of MAP. </p>
<p>There are other Seton locations you could apply to in Austin as well- Dell Children’s or the Seton Medical Center on 38th st.</p>