I pre-matched to UTHSCSA this week and am having difficulties ranking schools now. The three that I am trying to decide between are UTH, UTMB, and UTHSCSA. Before pre-matching I thought I liked UTMB more than UTHSCSA, but now I am confused knowing I have an acceptance and I feel the schools are all now starting to blur together. What do you guys like and dislike about UTHSCSA (I know that some things have been said in previous posts, but just wanted to see if anyone had some more input). I know that having pre-matched I am in a better situation than a lot of other people, and am thankful for that, but this confusion is majorly stressing me out.
Also, does UTHSCSA have a second-look day? I haven't heard anything about it.
I am in the exact same situation. I prematched at UTHSCSA, and I really like all the UT schools except for southwestern (I loved it actually, but I just don't want to get TOO sucked in to medicine despite my burning passion for it. I feel like the other three schools are going to help me balance work and real life).
I honestly feel like all three (UTH/UTHSCSA/UTMB) are more or less identical. Other than location, its easy to debate the minute differences between the three but when it comes down to it I don't think the experience will be all much difference. If I had to pick out the small differences that I think are important, these are what I would pick:
1) UTMB has less class time than the other two. I'm not entirely sure if they videotape lectures, which UTH does, and UTHSCSA does podcasting for the first year/videocasting for the second year. from what I heard, podcasting (just the audio) works just fine and you can use that if you want b/c class isn't mandatory. UTH of course is famous for their videocasting, however. Of course, at both UTH/UTHSCSA you have a lot more lectures to watch. The only bad thing about UTMBs half day schedule, in my opinion, is that you get to spend the other half of the day in galveston....meh?
2) UTMB has PBL. Someone just posted about PBL in the main forums which really struck a chord. You have PBL during the entire first year having no clinical knowledge...which really ends up not being such a fantastic learning experience. I like to learn a lot before I apply my knowledge.
3) I heard from an A&M student that UTMB students have like 4 months to study for step1 and they have amazing resources/incentives to study.
4) UTH has great clinical opportunities. Better than UTMB/UTHSCSA? Probably no difference when it comes down to it. Both schools rave about their clinical opportunities. This makes sense because all three schools have absolutely massive hospitals, huge patient loads, and gobs of learning opportunities.
5) Research opportunities are the same at all the schools. UTMB/UTH/UTHSCSA all have nearly identical NIH funding (i think UTMB might be higher than the other two, but what is a few million out of hundreds of million).
Really, all the schools are gonna be the same in my opinion. Any inequity in 'experience' can probably be easily negated by a student's willingness to seek out opportunities. All three are replete with opportunities. This is evidenced by the percentages of residency matches which are essentially the same at each school. And lets be honest, the students are all the schools are not going to be too entirely different. Compositions of each school (esp UTH and UTHSCSA are going to reflect to a larger extent the ethnic/cultural attitudes of their respective cities).
I will be deciding where to go based, more or less, on location alone. Its looking like UTHSCSA for me just based on climate/city alone. I honestly can't find a more compelling reason despite all the research I have done in trying to differentiate the schools.
Let me know what ya'll think about this analysis, and if you can provide any real, concrete differences between the schools (besides the class schedules which I do think is the biggest difference) please post!
