Stay at Rutgers or Transfer to Penn??

astor
Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:03:35 +0000

seattlems333:

I’d like to go to a top-flight med school mainly for the name prestige that would come with getting a degree from said school, which would ultimately (at least I think it should) make it easier to attain a residency and job later in life.



First off, what a bad idea to choose top-flight med school, mainly for name prestige. That gives the impression that you want to be an elitist and brag about how you went to so and so just to sound superior, or even just so you can throw it into your arguments like “oh, trust me, i’m from ___, therefore making me smarter”. I mean, if you’re into research, then by all means, that’s a reasonable factor since that might win some favor in some research opportunities/fellowships.

The second this about making it easy to attain a residency is also a bad idea to base off of medical schools. Your residency depends on your grades, and on your USMLE exams that all med school students take end of 2nd year, and then USMLE Step II 4th year. Do well on that and you can better narrow your residencies. Simply the name prestige isn’t going to impress anyone if you score 185 vs. someone who went to a state medical school and scored 240. USMLE is the standardized factor that they can equally measure potential residents to, much like how MCAT will be the standardized factor since gpa is so relative.