- Joined
- May 20, 2011
- Messages
- 9
- Reaction score
- 0
I was accepted at both schools, and have until Monday to decide. Which should I choose and why? Thanks!
Columbia or Cornell?
- Thread starter nycdocsayz
- Start date
- Status
I would say you should go with the cheaper option. If money is not a problem, however, then I vote Columbia, only because I think Columbia is more prestigious than Cornell.
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2008
- Messages
- 6,190
- Reaction score
- 5,628
Which is cheaper?
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2011
- Messages
- 3,154
- Reaction score
- 53
Derp SOM or Herp COM?
BMW M5 or Audi S6?
Jessica Alba or Jessica Biel?
BMW M5 or Audi S6?
Jessica Alba or Jessica Biel?
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2010
- Messages
- 3,751
- Reaction score
- 19
mmmcdowe
Duke of minimal vowels
Staff member
Administrator
Volunteer Staff
Lifetime Donor
15+ Year Member
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2008
- Messages
- 9,912
- Reaction score
- 1,946
There are several older threads about this that may be helpful. They are both great schools and it should come down to your own preferences rather than right vs wrong.
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2011
- Messages
- 1,262
- Reaction score
- 2
People will always believe name and "prestige" of one over the other will get you further but the truth is you really need to figure out what the best fit is for you (as cliche as that sounds) and which will make you happier. I usually wouldn't offer my own opinion because this is all highly subjective, however I would go with the BMW personally. Hope I don't get flamed; They're both awesome cars! It's mainly based on aesthetics for me. I'd also go with Alba. She just seems like a cooler person to hang out with.
Good luck
Good luck
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2011
- Messages
- 3,154
- Reaction score
- 53
People will always believe name and "prestige" of one over the other will get you further but the truth is you really need to figure out what the best fit is for you (as cliche as that sounds) and which will make you happier. I usually wouldn't offer my own opinion because this is all highly subjective, however I would go with the BMW personally. Hope I don't get flamed; They're both awesome cars! It's mainly based on aesthetics for me. I'd also go with Alba. She just seems like a cooler person to hang out with.
Good luck
You're 2 for 2. Herp vs. Derp was a trick question, but if you answer the OP's question correctly you'll win the internets for the month of June.
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2010
- Messages
- 27
- Reaction score
- 0
Go Big Red
Congrats on getting into both places!
I interviewed at both schools (got into Cornell, WL at Columbia) and here are my impressions:
Both are top notch schools and you can't go wrong with either.
As far as reputation, Columbia is slightly more prestigious but not significantly. They both share the same major hospital and many students from each institutions do research at the other school and cross-match for residencies all the time. I would say that the clinical/research experience at both will be identical. The preclinical years are slightly different, with Cornell being a lot more PBL heavy and 2 years, whereas Columbia's is a bit more condensed into 1.5 years and I feel more lecture based (though the Patient Professor lecture series was awesome and motivational)
Location wise, Cornell definitely takes the cake and also the subsidized housing in such an awesome location is a huge plus (compared to Columbia's Bard Hall which kind of feels like the slums after seeing Cornell's housing option for the same price).
Both schools stress artistic endeavors with Columbia slightly making it more of campus tradition with the P&S club, which isn't as structured but student organized. Cornell, on the other hand, has it more low key but has very good structured programs such as music and medicine with the Julliard School of Music, if that's your cup of tea.
As far as students and faculty, THIS IS BASED SOLELY ON THE FEW PEOPLE I MET ON INTERVIEW DAY AND IS NOT A REPRESENTATIVE RANDOM SAMPLE, Columbia has the cooler dean and really gave the impression that he cared about every student, not to mention he knew every student's background by heart (probably photographic memory). My interviewers were much better at Cornell, and seemed more caring of the students and interested, whereas Columbia, he came 40 min late, was very unemotional and kicked me out after 20 minutes. Based on these experiences, I'd say both have a mixed bag of amazing teachers, and big shot doctors who don't care as much about their students. The students seemed to be much more cohesive at Columbia, mainly due to the Bard Hall living environment, and much more patriotic and laid back than Cornell's students. Cornell seemed to generally be less aloof and more focused and serious, as far as student tours went, but that could also be due to the fact that Columbia's tour guides were in their early 20's and first years, whereas Cornell's were 4th year married students.
Overall, I personally got a slightly better vibe at Cornell, and would have matriculated there had I not been screwed over by not qualifying for any aid, which brings me to say that Cornell gives no incoming merit scholarships at all, and does everything purely on need, whereas Columbia does give out incoming merit scholarships.
Hope this helps!
I interviewed at both schools (got into Cornell, WL at Columbia) and here are my impressions:
Both are top notch schools and you can't go wrong with either.
As far as reputation, Columbia is slightly more prestigious but not significantly. They both share the same major hospital and many students from each institutions do research at the other school and cross-match for residencies all the time. I would say that the clinical/research experience at both will be identical. The preclinical years are slightly different, with Cornell being a lot more PBL heavy and 2 years, whereas Columbia's is a bit more condensed into 1.5 years and I feel more lecture based (though the Patient Professor lecture series was awesome and motivational)
Location wise, Cornell definitely takes the cake and also the subsidized housing in such an awesome location is a huge plus (compared to Columbia's Bard Hall which kind of feels like the slums after seeing Cornell's housing option for the same price).
Both schools stress artistic endeavors with Columbia slightly making it more of campus tradition with the P&S club, which isn't as structured but student organized. Cornell, on the other hand, has it more low key but has very good structured programs such as music and medicine with the Julliard School of Music, if that's your cup of tea.
As far as students and faculty, THIS IS BASED SOLELY ON THE FEW PEOPLE I MET ON INTERVIEW DAY AND IS NOT A REPRESENTATIVE RANDOM SAMPLE, Columbia has the cooler dean and really gave the impression that he cared about every student, not to mention he knew every student's background by heart (probably photographic memory). My interviewers were much better at Cornell, and seemed more caring of the students and interested, whereas Columbia, he came 40 min late, was very unemotional and kicked me out after 20 minutes. Based on these experiences, I'd say both have a mixed bag of amazing teachers, and big shot doctors who don't care as much about their students. The students seemed to be much more cohesive at Columbia, mainly due to the Bard Hall living environment, and much more patriotic and laid back than Cornell's students. Cornell seemed to generally be less aloof and more focused and serious, as far as student tours went, but that could also be due to the fact that Columbia's tour guides were in their early 20's and first years, whereas Cornell's were 4th year married students.
Overall, I personally got a slightly better vibe at Cornell, and would have matriculated there had I not been screwed over by not qualifying for any aid, which brings me to say that Cornell gives no incoming merit scholarships at all, and does everything purely on need, whereas Columbia does give out incoming merit scholarships.
Hope this helps!
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2009
- Messages
- 9,746
- Reaction score
- 1,667
awesome awesome post
mmmcdowe
Duke of minimal vowels
Staff member
Administrator
Volunteer Staff
Lifetime Donor
15+ Year Member
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2008
- Messages
- 9,912
- Reaction score
- 1,946
This is a "summary" of Columbia based along the lines of the tour that students get when interviewing.
As an aside, for the sake of keeping the thread readable PLEASE don't quote this entire post at once.
(Alumni Auditorium)
Please take a seat at the front of the auditorium. Welcome to Alumni Auditorium. As well as classes, this is also the site of our White Coat Ceremony. Columbia University was the first medical school to hold a formal white coat ceremony, which is funded by Dr. Gold and the Gold Foundation. The Gold Foundation now funds white coat ceremonies at 97% of medical schools in the United States now, and Dr. Gold himself is a practicing pediatric Neurologist of 53 years here at Columbia University. I hope to live to be 53 let alone practice for that long. He gives a beautiful speech on ethics at the ceremony and gives us all a pin which is a stethoscope in the shape of a heart, symbolizing the unity of science and humanism in medicine. Due in part to the Gold Foundation, I think you will come to see that Columbia has a very large involvement in ethics.
As well as the White Coat Ceremony, Alumni Auditorium is also where the Bard Hall Players performs three times a year. BHP is our theatre group here at Columbia, and we put on one musical, one classical, and one modern piece a year.
As far as the pre-clinical curriculum goes, we have a three semester curriculum instead of four. Most days are from about 9-12 or 9-1, with one to three afternoons a week with afternoon classes for about 4 hours depending on the part of curriculum you are in. The first semester consists of 3 major courses: Molecular Mechanisms, which is an umbrella course for essentially all basic medical sciences, Anatomy, and Foundations of Clinical medicine. FCM is on Wednesday mornings instead of MM and is a combination of bioethics and clinical skills. For example, you may have a lecture on how one appropriately ascertains a patients sexual history and then move on to small groups to discuss and practice this interview with a standardized patient (which is an actor). You then will move onto real patient interviews at an afternoon clerkship on either Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. In the clerkship, you are paired with a health care practitioner at a wide variety of sites (such as The Door, Calvary Hospital, Young Mens Clinic, Neurosurgeons, Physical Therapists, offer examples as needed, preferably your own experiences) and get to interview patients in a very diverse array of situations. You do two clerkships in the first semester, and you do have some say in selection when possible. After the first semester you switch over from history taking to physical examinations in the second semester and then finally to how one efficiently conveys information from histories and physicals to an attending during presentations and in the form of write ups.
Anatomy consists of basically two full afternoons, one in the dissection lab and the other in small groups (and I believe one lecture on a separate day). Small groups consist of four students per cadaver, with 2 groups dissecting the same cadaver on alternative days. Now some of you may be thinking ah man I want to dissect the whole cadaver myself, but I promise by the second day you will be thinking Im so glad it isnt my turn to dissect today. Dont get me wrong, I love to dissect, I still go in on occasion and do so. HOWEVER, dissection itself has a very low benefit to cost ratio and consists mostly of cleaning up things so that you can actually decide what everything is. The reason why we only dissect half is to save everyone time, you still get to see and learn everything. Now, the non-dissecting group consists of osteology- the study of bones-, radiology, and applied clinical skills. For example, guy walks in with knife in arm, what nerve was cut, what finger cant he move? This is great practice because both our exams and the step 1 test anatomy in this format.
Now for some general things about our courses. All classes are recorded, and what is especially nice is the slides are synched to the lectures. So if you fell asleep during slide 33 you can click it and just watch that part of the lectures. This makes it a great study and review tool as well. In addition, we are a pass fail unranked school during the pre-clinical years. The unranked part is the most important part, as a lot of schools say they are pass fail but have an internal system of rankings. Unless everyone who passes is ranked first, then clearly they used grades to determine your grades. Our system is not about slacking off and just breezing by, everyone works hard and the average grades have not changed since before the system was instituted. What it does is take as much of the anxiety out of medical education as possible and gives you the confidence to take advantage of the free time that is naturally built into the pre-clinical curriculum. So you can do volunteering, do fun things, do research, do shadowing, or just figure out what you want to do with yourself after medical school without a nagging voice in the back of your head eating away at you because you are terrified of getting a 99 and not a 100. Pre-clinical grades and rankings are ultimately not highly valued by residency directors, so you arent losing out on anything when compared to the confidence to build your resume in other ways. Another nice thing is that we take our anatomy practical exams in the groups that we dissected in. So, once again, everyone still works hard and learns everything, but it takes the stress out of the experience and gives you valuable experience on how to work on a problem in groups like you will on the words. We also have great professors leading our courses that really care. Dr. Barasch, the MM director, has in the past re-recorded lectures for us and spent the night before the first exam in a sleeping bag in his office so that we could come and ask him questions all night. All right lets move onto the student lounge.
(student lounge)
Welcome to the student lounge. This is primarily used by third and fourth years to hide from their attending or take a nap in the sleeping room. However, first and second years also use this for eating lunch, doing some studying before class, and especially for the P&S club. The P&S club is an umbrella organization that is formally run and organized by the university with full time staff that work to maintain it and assist student groups. This is assisted by the fact that we have the oldest and largest alumni association of any medical school. This year alone weve had about 55 million dollars in donations, some of which goes towards funding the P&S club. The Alumni Association also buys every first year a Litmann III stethoscope and pay for an annual book signing gala with Dr. Eric Kandel (he invented memory essentially and won a nobel prize. He is also one of our professors in neuroscience). As far as organizations go, we have a wide number of clubs. For fun, we have the ultrasounds, our a capella group. We also have bard hall players, which I mentioned before, and the musicians guild. This group forms our pit for BHP musicals and also hosts a musical event every month known as Musical Mondays. We also have Bacchus, our wine tasting club. We also have the less formal Beerchus, Vodkus, and Whiskus. We have the squash club and the rugby team known as the Orthopedics. I find this funny because of the fact that the ortho department essentially donates a few thousand dollars to them and gets a million dollars in business from broken bones. We also have two student clinics known as COSMO and champ. COSMO focuses on the uninsured while CHHMP focuses on the homeless. Cosmo is whenever you want to sign up where as CHHMP is a steady commitment for all four years with the same patient set. This allows you a more longitudinal look at health care than one can usually get in medical school. We also have a great interest groups who have great activities within them. The Whipple Society, our surgery interest group, has the transplant pager program. Basically, when the intern is too tired to go you get called up and hop and a plane to go assist a organ harvest. You arent being handed the scalpel and being told to hack away, but you do get to be a part of the team and do something that you very likely wont ever do again unless you go into surgery for residency. You can go do acute stroke workups with the neuro interest group, learn blood drawing and suturing with the ER interest group, literally catch babies with the OB/GYN interest group, and learn to read magazines really well with the anesthesiology interest group. There are plenty of others, so go to the P and S club website (google P and S club Columbia) for a full list. The bottom line is, because of our deemphasized grading system during the pre-clinical year and a half you will have the confidence to take advantage of these groups for fun and for academic development. Now, lets go see some hospitals.
(hallway to Presbyterian)
So you may have noticed on the wall to your left a plaque commemorating Columbia as the first school to offer the MD degree in the United States. This is contested by Penn, who also claims to be the first school to offer the MD degree. The point of contention is that Penns first MD class started before the first Columbia MD class. However, as Columbia students are naturally a little swifter than Penn students, the actual degree was awarded to a Columbia student first.
(Presby)
Welcome to Presbyterian hospital, Columbias major affiliate hospital. This is where you will see a lot of out-patient service and the Emergency Room. When you are thinking of the pros and cons of medical schools as far as the clinical years go, I strongly recommend that you focus on two points: diversity of patients and volume of patients. As far as diversity goes, I think you will agree that New York and Columbia offer essentially the widest array of patients around. We are at the heart of enormous amounts of immigration and travel all over the world, and our patient population (and their medical problems) reflects a diverse array of ethnicities, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds. This patient diversity is coupled by our wide array of hospital affiliates both within the city (Harlem, Saint Lukes-Roosevelt, Bronx VA, Allen Pavilion, etc), as well as in more rural parts of the country such as Indian reservations in the southwest, the Bassett hospital is Cooperstown, and the Stamford Hospital in CT. At the same time, while it is nice to see some of the rarest conditions in medicine, our volume of patients assures us that we will also see all of the bread and butter health problems that are also crucial to ones education during the clinical years. Another advantage of being affiliated with the NYP hospital system is that it does offer a certain level of informal affiliation with Cornell. While it isnt particularly common, students are able to rotate at the New York branch of NYP during their 4th year, and vice versa. Of more importance is the fact that there are a large number of academic affiliations between the two schools. A number of the residency programs are now combined (5 last time I checked) between the two schools, which just offers more spots at your home base when you apply for residencies (this can be a significant advantage). Even for those that are not combined, you cant tell me that the attending arent quite familiar with each other at each branch, which can come into play as well during residency applications. To give you an example, there are over 30 neurosurgery attendings at NYP. Not only does this allow them to have proportionally large residency programs, but this just gives you, as a student, access to more mentorship, clinical, and research opportunities in whatever specialty you are interested in.
(Entrance to CHONY and ERs, you can see the Russ Berrie Medical Pavilion outside).
Speaking of research, a number of students do go down to Cornell, most often the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center affiliate. As far as research on campus, I first want to emphasize that COLUMBIA DOES NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DO RESEARCH. They just want you to be the best at whatever that you choose to do so that they can brag about and ask you for money. However, if you do have an interest in research, this is a major research institution. The Russ Berrie Medical Pavilion is one of several on campus research buildings. While some people start research earlier on, many start their research experience during their first summer. Essentially, if you apply you will be funded for the summer. Everyone who applied for the Columbia-NIH summer fellowship, more this year than ever before, received funding for summer expenses. Others chose to go elsewhere for research. Advisors are very good at setting up research positions all over the country. I know that several of my friends went to California for research positions and others went internationally. As well as clinical and basic science research, Columbias strong affiliation with the Gold Foundation (Dr. Gold being a physician here for over 50 years), one can also do a humanities related project such as something involving socio-economic disparities, etc. They also offer a program for an entire year long project. About 1/3 of Columbia students take a fifth year to do research, a non-research project, or a 2nd degree. As far as clinical research goes, Columbia is one of the 12 members of the prestigious Doris Duke Research Program. We do very well and, this year, we have more Doris Duke Scholars working at Columbia than any other institution, including 5 more than the CDC. So, the bottom line is if you want to do research it is definitely an option, but there are a wide array of other opportunities as well. Other options for the summer include community service programs here and abroad, Spanish immersion clinics, or just enjoying the last summer of your academic career.
(On the way to CHONY and at CHONY)
So we are on our way to Morgan Stanley Childrens Hospital of New York, the number one pediatric hospital in New York. This is where Cystic Fibrosis was discovered for the second time. It was discovered the first time by a Russian gentleman who had the misfortune of living right before the Revolution. After his work was destroyed Columbia was more than happy to rediscover for him. To be fair though this is also where the sweat test for CF was invented and where the first pediatric heart transplant was performed. This is also where Dr. Apgar, known for the Apgar scoring of neonates, studied and taught for many years. This rotation is spoken of highly by many of the students that I have spoken to because of the excellent facilities, faculty, and staff in terms of both being of the highest quality for both patients and medical students. One great thing about this hospital is that there are numerous events held in the pavilion for the children in the hospital. The Ultrasounds have also been known to perform here. Now, we cant go outside because of construction, but this is area is a great place to go for a break for the urban sprawl. It is also the original site of the Highlanders Stadium (now the Yankees). This is also the site of our non-denominational chapel where we host our anatomy memorial service. Columbia was the first school to begin having an anatomy service for the cadaver donors. Since we began doing this, our number of donations have risen from 1-2 a year to the point where all cadavers that are dissected here are donations.
(to Harkness Pavilion)
So lets talk about some of the support programs set up for students here at Columbia. There are a number of them that are both student and faculty based. In terms of student ones, my personal favorite is SSN. SSN is a group of second years (and 4th years now) that go back and relearn the first year curriculum. Then, they give review sessions covering every hour of lecture for all of the courses that are covered during the first year curriculum. They also offer practice gross anatomy tutorials and practical exams, and free tutoring to those that want it. Its a great program designed to give incoming students a sense of direction in a very new learning environment, and its great review for 2nd years too.
Another great program is the advisory dean lunch program. Every student is put in a group with a prominent faculty member who has lunch with them every other week or so. It is designed to be both a place to vent to people who can get things fixed and also a forum where speakers are brought to talk about relevant topics (summer research, uncommon specialties, etc). Its very competitive, something like 10% of those who applied are advisory deans, so you really know that the deans are dedicated to helping you out. They will meet one on one with you if you have any concerns or are just looking for help to set up research, shadowing, etc.
We also have meetings with the dean of student affairs and meetings called open house (I think) where the president of the medical center and others come and sit down with the class to hear what is going right and going wrong. They also sponsor breakfasts a few times a year as well to keep up dialogue. I think it is a great example of the willingness of the medical school to work closely to meet our needs. We also have a large student council, many of which are essentially positions to communicate with the various departments relevant to medical students. We have things like academic reps, eco reps, library reps, etc.
We are currently in the Harkness Pavilion, where a large amount of the ophthalmology program is. There are a number of other private and public out patient services as well.
For personal health, we have the student health and wellness center. They offer free anonymous counseling to students on a variety of issues. They also hold courses on nutrition, stress relief, exercise, dating, and more. They also host stress relief events like parties, massages, acupuncture, and puppy petting. There is also free psychiatric counseling available that is private.
(Bridge between Presby and Milstein)
So we are going to stop here for a minute just to emphasize that Columbia is, believe it or not, in New York City. While we are in a more residential area, we are also on the A express line. The A is arguably the most versatile line on the west side. You can be at times square in 20 minutes and the west and east village in 40. When we have interschool mixers with the other medical schools in the area, we are often the first ones there. That may be because we are more neurotic than other medical students, but I like to believe it is because we have better transportation. We are also on the 1 line as well, which will take you down to the undergrad campus in 10-15 minutes. This is important because Columbia offers up to two free classes per semester at any school or department. People have taken history, language, math, arts related, and other classes over the years. You can also take public health classes up here, which is great if you have interest but dont want to take a year to get a degree. Because of the de-emphasis on grades you really do have time for this kind of thing if it is a priority.
(walk towards elevators in Milstein)
So we are on our way to Milstein. This is where a lot of our in patient wards and the surgical ORs are. A lot of people ask why we have changed our pre-clinical curriculum to 3 semesters instead of 4. There are two major advantages to this set up. First, we take our Step 1 after the major clinical year. While major clinical year knowledge is not required for the step 1, it is still an extension of the same material. It just gives you more knowledge and experience to bring to bear on the exam. You will be more familiar with drugs, with analysis of tests, the specifics of diseases and with the deductive reasoning necessary to do well on the step 1 once you have done it for real and with real examples for an entire year. The step 1 is an exam of clinical vignettes after all. After the clinical year you have until February (about 8-10 weeks if you factor in vacation plus a free database of 10,000 USMLE questions) to study for the step 1. The other major advantage is that you now have a 4 month period to dedicate to a project that you are passionate about. Once again, it DOES NOT HAVE TO BE RESEARCH. If you want to write a sonnet about medicine, you can honestly spend the time to write a sonnet. I have a friend who is planning to write a treatise on the philosophy medicine. You can do research, public health, a clinical project, a humanities project, etc. If you take a fifth year off to do a degree or a project, that counts as your creative project, giving you two options. You can either take those 4 months to continue what you were doing or you can add that time into your fourth year to do more clinical rotations and what not.
(through milstein)
During your fourth year, you are allowed to do essentially anything as long as you are keeping busy. About 1/3 of students go abroad on a rotation. We have affiliations with 27 hospitals in 20 different countries that you can do quick and easy exchange rotations with (some are funded others are not). This doesnt mean that you cant go elsewhere, you can go anywhere you please. These programs are just less work to set up and have the guarantee of being a good educational experience.
(on the way to Hammer Building)
So a lot of people ask about living arrangements. About 2/3 of 2nd years stay on campus, but the remainder live in the area, down in the Upper West Side or further. A few live in Jersey and the lower east side. There is actually quite a bit in Washington Heights if you know where to look. We are just north of Sugar Hills famous jazz scene, the Harlem Dance Theater, and other local attractions. We are also just south of Yeshiva University, which has a great neighborhood to live in as well as many college amenities and a movie theater. Everything else is just a subway ride away.
(Hammer)
This is the Hammer Building, where 2nd year students take their classes. This is also where our computer labs and library are. The library is mostly online as well as in paper here. If you arent a big book fan your textbook can be accessed online as reference instead. We have one of the largest online academic repositories in the world. Interestingly, the most common piece of information stolen from Columbia students is not their SSN or credit card info, its their library access.
(Small group rooms with fancy TVs)
Welcome to our microscopy lab. You may wonder where all of the microscopes are, and in fact they are these lap tops. Columbias entire slide database has been uploaded online and can be accessed anywhere. This allows everyone to be looking at the same sample at once. It is also nice because this means that you dont have to come into the lab to check out slides. It also emphasizes a great thing about the curriculum, which is that almost everything is non mandatory. Except for a few quizzes and patient interactions, you can choose what works for you and focus on that. Columbia doesnt force just lecture based or problem based learning down your throat. If you dont like to attend lecture, dont. If you dont get anything out of small group, dont go. Its almost all available online in one form or another. You dont have to relearn how you learn here, just find what works for you. I personally went to some small group sections, but other ones I just found better to do on my own. I think it is a great option to have.
(back to P&S)
As an aside, for the sake of keeping the thread readable PLEASE don't quote this entire post at once.
(Alumni Auditorium)
Please take a seat at the front of the auditorium. Welcome to Alumni Auditorium. As well as classes, this is also the site of our White Coat Ceremony. Columbia University was the first medical school to hold a formal white coat ceremony, which is funded by Dr. Gold and the Gold Foundation. The Gold Foundation now funds white coat ceremonies at 97% of medical schools in the United States now, and Dr. Gold himself is a practicing pediatric Neurologist of 53 years here at Columbia University. I hope to live to be 53 let alone practice for that long. He gives a beautiful speech on ethics at the ceremony and gives us all a pin which is a stethoscope in the shape of a heart, symbolizing the unity of science and humanism in medicine. Due in part to the Gold Foundation, I think you will come to see that Columbia has a very large involvement in ethics.
As well as the White Coat Ceremony, Alumni Auditorium is also where the Bard Hall Players performs three times a year. BHP is our theatre group here at Columbia, and we put on one musical, one classical, and one modern piece a year.
As far as the pre-clinical curriculum goes, we have a three semester curriculum instead of four. Most days are from about 9-12 or 9-1, with one to three afternoons a week with afternoon classes for about 4 hours depending on the part of curriculum you are in. The first semester consists of 3 major courses: Molecular Mechanisms, which is an umbrella course for essentially all basic medical sciences, Anatomy, and Foundations of Clinical medicine. FCM is on Wednesday mornings instead of MM and is a combination of bioethics and clinical skills. For example, you may have a lecture on how one appropriately ascertains a patients sexual history and then move on to small groups to discuss and practice this interview with a standardized patient (which is an actor). You then will move onto real patient interviews at an afternoon clerkship on either Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. In the clerkship, you are paired with a health care practitioner at a wide variety of sites (such as The Door, Calvary Hospital, Young Mens Clinic, Neurosurgeons, Physical Therapists, offer examples as needed, preferably your own experiences) and get to interview patients in a very diverse array of situations. You do two clerkships in the first semester, and you do have some say in selection when possible. After the first semester you switch over from history taking to physical examinations in the second semester and then finally to how one efficiently conveys information from histories and physicals to an attending during presentations and in the form of write ups.
Anatomy consists of basically two full afternoons, one in the dissection lab and the other in small groups (and I believe one lecture on a separate day). Small groups consist of four students per cadaver, with 2 groups dissecting the same cadaver on alternative days. Now some of you may be thinking ah man I want to dissect the whole cadaver myself, but I promise by the second day you will be thinking Im so glad it isnt my turn to dissect today. Dont get me wrong, I love to dissect, I still go in on occasion and do so. HOWEVER, dissection itself has a very low benefit to cost ratio and consists mostly of cleaning up things so that you can actually decide what everything is. The reason why we only dissect half is to save everyone time, you still get to see and learn everything. Now, the non-dissecting group consists of osteology- the study of bones-, radiology, and applied clinical skills. For example, guy walks in with knife in arm, what nerve was cut, what finger cant he move? This is great practice because both our exams and the step 1 test anatomy in this format.
Now for some general things about our courses. All classes are recorded, and what is especially nice is the slides are synched to the lectures. So if you fell asleep during slide 33 you can click it and just watch that part of the lectures. This makes it a great study and review tool as well. In addition, we are a pass fail unranked school during the pre-clinical years. The unranked part is the most important part, as a lot of schools say they are pass fail but have an internal system of rankings. Unless everyone who passes is ranked first, then clearly they used grades to determine your grades. Our system is not about slacking off and just breezing by, everyone works hard and the average grades have not changed since before the system was instituted. What it does is take as much of the anxiety out of medical education as possible and gives you the confidence to take advantage of the free time that is naturally built into the pre-clinical curriculum. So you can do volunteering, do fun things, do research, do shadowing, or just figure out what you want to do with yourself after medical school without a nagging voice in the back of your head eating away at you because you are terrified of getting a 99 and not a 100. Pre-clinical grades and rankings are ultimately not highly valued by residency directors, so you arent losing out on anything when compared to the confidence to build your resume in other ways. Another nice thing is that we take our anatomy practical exams in the groups that we dissected in. So, once again, everyone still works hard and learns everything, but it takes the stress out of the experience and gives you valuable experience on how to work on a problem in groups like you will on the words. We also have great professors leading our courses that really care. Dr. Barasch, the MM director, has in the past re-recorded lectures for us and spent the night before the first exam in a sleeping bag in his office so that we could come and ask him questions all night. All right lets move onto the student lounge.
(student lounge)
Welcome to the student lounge. This is primarily used by third and fourth years to hide from their attending or take a nap in the sleeping room. However, first and second years also use this for eating lunch, doing some studying before class, and especially for the P&S club. The P&S club is an umbrella organization that is formally run and organized by the university with full time staff that work to maintain it and assist student groups. This is assisted by the fact that we have the oldest and largest alumni association of any medical school. This year alone weve had about 55 million dollars in donations, some of which goes towards funding the P&S club. The Alumni Association also buys every first year a Litmann III stethoscope and pay for an annual book signing gala with Dr. Eric Kandel (he invented memory essentially and won a nobel prize. He is also one of our professors in neuroscience). As far as organizations go, we have a wide number of clubs. For fun, we have the ultrasounds, our a capella group. We also have bard hall players, which I mentioned before, and the musicians guild. This group forms our pit for BHP musicals and also hosts a musical event every month known as Musical Mondays. We also have Bacchus, our wine tasting club. We also have the less formal Beerchus, Vodkus, and Whiskus. We have the squash club and the rugby team known as the Orthopedics. I find this funny because of the fact that the ortho department essentially donates a few thousand dollars to them and gets a million dollars in business from broken bones. We also have two student clinics known as COSMO and champ. COSMO focuses on the uninsured while CHHMP focuses on the homeless. Cosmo is whenever you want to sign up where as CHHMP is a steady commitment for all four years with the same patient set. This allows you a more longitudinal look at health care than one can usually get in medical school. We also have a great interest groups who have great activities within them. The Whipple Society, our surgery interest group, has the transplant pager program. Basically, when the intern is too tired to go you get called up and hop and a plane to go assist a organ harvest. You arent being handed the scalpel and being told to hack away, but you do get to be a part of the team and do something that you very likely wont ever do again unless you go into surgery for residency. You can go do acute stroke workups with the neuro interest group, learn blood drawing and suturing with the ER interest group, literally catch babies with the OB/GYN interest group, and learn to read magazines really well with the anesthesiology interest group. There are plenty of others, so go to the P and S club website (google P and S club Columbia) for a full list. The bottom line is, because of our deemphasized grading system during the pre-clinical year and a half you will have the confidence to take advantage of these groups for fun and for academic development. Now, lets go see some hospitals.
(hallway to Presbyterian)
So you may have noticed on the wall to your left a plaque commemorating Columbia as the first school to offer the MD degree in the United States. This is contested by Penn, who also claims to be the first school to offer the MD degree. The point of contention is that Penns first MD class started before the first Columbia MD class. However, as Columbia students are naturally a little swifter than Penn students, the actual degree was awarded to a Columbia student first.
(Presby)
Welcome to Presbyterian hospital, Columbias major affiliate hospital. This is where you will see a lot of out-patient service and the Emergency Room. When you are thinking of the pros and cons of medical schools as far as the clinical years go, I strongly recommend that you focus on two points: diversity of patients and volume of patients. As far as diversity goes, I think you will agree that New York and Columbia offer essentially the widest array of patients around. We are at the heart of enormous amounts of immigration and travel all over the world, and our patient population (and their medical problems) reflects a diverse array of ethnicities, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds. This patient diversity is coupled by our wide array of hospital affiliates both within the city (Harlem, Saint Lukes-Roosevelt, Bronx VA, Allen Pavilion, etc), as well as in more rural parts of the country such as Indian reservations in the southwest, the Bassett hospital is Cooperstown, and the Stamford Hospital in CT. At the same time, while it is nice to see some of the rarest conditions in medicine, our volume of patients assures us that we will also see all of the bread and butter health problems that are also crucial to ones education during the clinical years. Another advantage of being affiliated with the NYP hospital system is that it does offer a certain level of informal affiliation with Cornell. While it isnt particularly common, students are able to rotate at the New York branch of NYP during their 4th year, and vice versa. Of more importance is the fact that there are a large number of academic affiliations between the two schools. A number of the residency programs are now combined (5 last time I checked) between the two schools, which just offers more spots at your home base when you apply for residencies (this can be a significant advantage). Even for those that are not combined, you cant tell me that the attending arent quite familiar with each other at each branch, which can come into play as well during residency applications. To give you an example, there are over 30 neurosurgery attendings at NYP. Not only does this allow them to have proportionally large residency programs, but this just gives you, as a student, access to more mentorship, clinical, and research opportunities in whatever specialty you are interested in.
(Entrance to CHONY and ERs, you can see the Russ Berrie Medical Pavilion outside).
Speaking of research, a number of students do go down to Cornell, most often the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center affiliate. As far as research on campus, I first want to emphasize that COLUMBIA DOES NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DO RESEARCH. They just want you to be the best at whatever that you choose to do so that they can brag about and ask you for money. However, if you do have an interest in research, this is a major research institution. The Russ Berrie Medical Pavilion is one of several on campus research buildings. While some people start research earlier on, many start their research experience during their first summer. Essentially, if you apply you will be funded for the summer. Everyone who applied for the Columbia-NIH summer fellowship, more this year than ever before, received funding for summer expenses. Others chose to go elsewhere for research. Advisors are very good at setting up research positions all over the country. I know that several of my friends went to California for research positions and others went internationally. As well as clinical and basic science research, Columbias strong affiliation with the Gold Foundation (Dr. Gold being a physician here for over 50 years), one can also do a humanities related project such as something involving socio-economic disparities, etc. They also offer a program for an entire year long project. About 1/3 of Columbia students take a fifth year to do research, a non-research project, or a 2nd degree. As far as clinical research goes, Columbia is one of the 12 members of the prestigious Doris Duke Research Program. We do very well and, this year, we have more Doris Duke Scholars working at Columbia than any other institution, including 5 more than the CDC. So, the bottom line is if you want to do research it is definitely an option, but there are a wide array of other opportunities as well. Other options for the summer include community service programs here and abroad, Spanish immersion clinics, or just enjoying the last summer of your academic career.
(On the way to CHONY and at CHONY)
So we are on our way to Morgan Stanley Childrens Hospital of New York, the number one pediatric hospital in New York. This is where Cystic Fibrosis was discovered for the second time. It was discovered the first time by a Russian gentleman who had the misfortune of living right before the Revolution. After his work was destroyed Columbia was more than happy to rediscover for him. To be fair though this is also where the sweat test for CF was invented and where the first pediatric heart transplant was performed. This is also where Dr. Apgar, known for the Apgar scoring of neonates, studied and taught for many years. This rotation is spoken of highly by many of the students that I have spoken to because of the excellent facilities, faculty, and staff in terms of both being of the highest quality for both patients and medical students. One great thing about this hospital is that there are numerous events held in the pavilion for the children in the hospital. The Ultrasounds have also been known to perform here. Now, we cant go outside because of construction, but this is area is a great place to go for a break for the urban sprawl. It is also the original site of the Highlanders Stadium (now the Yankees). This is also the site of our non-denominational chapel where we host our anatomy memorial service. Columbia was the first school to begin having an anatomy service for the cadaver donors. Since we began doing this, our number of donations have risen from 1-2 a year to the point where all cadavers that are dissected here are donations.
(to Harkness Pavilion)
So lets talk about some of the support programs set up for students here at Columbia. There are a number of them that are both student and faculty based. In terms of student ones, my personal favorite is SSN. SSN is a group of second years (and 4th years now) that go back and relearn the first year curriculum. Then, they give review sessions covering every hour of lecture for all of the courses that are covered during the first year curriculum. They also offer practice gross anatomy tutorials and practical exams, and free tutoring to those that want it. Its a great program designed to give incoming students a sense of direction in a very new learning environment, and its great review for 2nd years too.
Another great program is the advisory dean lunch program. Every student is put in a group with a prominent faculty member who has lunch with them every other week or so. It is designed to be both a place to vent to people who can get things fixed and also a forum where speakers are brought to talk about relevant topics (summer research, uncommon specialties, etc). Its very competitive, something like 10% of those who applied are advisory deans, so you really know that the deans are dedicated to helping you out. They will meet one on one with you if you have any concerns or are just looking for help to set up research, shadowing, etc.
We also have meetings with the dean of student affairs and meetings called open house (I think) where the president of the medical center and others come and sit down with the class to hear what is going right and going wrong. They also sponsor breakfasts a few times a year as well to keep up dialogue. I think it is a great example of the willingness of the medical school to work closely to meet our needs. We also have a large student council, many of which are essentially positions to communicate with the various departments relevant to medical students. We have things like academic reps, eco reps, library reps, etc.
We are currently in the Harkness Pavilion, where a large amount of the ophthalmology program is. There are a number of other private and public out patient services as well.
For personal health, we have the student health and wellness center. They offer free anonymous counseling to students on a variety of issues. They also hold courses on nutrition, stress relief, exercise, dating, and more. They also host stress relief events like parties, massages, acupuncture, and puppy petting. There is also free psychiatric counseling available that is private.
(Bridge between Presby and Milstein)
So we are going to stop here for a minute just to emphasize that Columbia is, believe it or not, in New York City. While we are in a more residential area, we are also on the A express line. The A is arguably the most versatile line on the west side. You can be at times square in 20 minutes and the west and east village in 40. When we have interschool mixers with the other medical schools in the area, we are often the first ones there. That may be because we are more neurotic than other medical students, but I like to believe it is because we have better transportation. We are also on the 1 line as well, which will take you down to the undergrad campus in 10-15 minutes. This is important because Columbia offers up to two free classes per semester at any school or department. People have taken history, language, math, arts related, and other classes over the years. You can also take public health classes up here, which is great if you have interest but dont want to take a year to get a degree. Because of the de-emphasis on grades you really do have time for this kind of thing if it is a priority.
(walk towards elevators in Milstein)
So we are on our way to Milstein. This is where a lot of our in patient wards and the surgical ORs are. A lot of people ask why we have changed our pre-clinical curriculum to 3 semesters instead of 4. There are two major advantages to this set up. First, we take our Step 1 after the major clinical year. While major clinical year knowledge is not required for the step 1, it is still an extension of the same material. It just gives you more knowledge and experience to bring to bear on the exam. You will be more familiar with drugs, with analysis of tests, the specifics of diseases and with the deductive reasoning necessary to do well on the step 1 once you have done it for real and with real examples for an entire year. The step 1 is an exam of clinical vignettes after all. After the clinical year you have until February (about 8-10 weeks if you factor in vacation plus a free database of 10,000 USMLE questions) to study for the step 1. The other major advantage is that you now have a 4 month period to dedicate to a project that you are passionate about. Once again, it DOES NOT HAVE TO BE RESEARCH. If you want to write a sonnet about medicine, you can honestly spend the time to write a sonnet. I have a friend who is planning to write a treatise on the philosophy medicine. You can do research, public health, a clinical project, a humanities project, etc. If you take a fifth year off to do a degree or a project, that counts as your creative project, giving you two options. You can either take those 4 months to continue what you were doing or you can add that time into your fourth year to do more clinical rotations and what not.
(through milstein)
During your fourth year, you are allowed to do essentially anything as long as you are keeping busy. About 1/3 of students go abroad on a rotation. We have affiliations with 27 hospitals in 20 different countries that you can do quick and easy exchange rotations with (some are funded others are not). This doesnt mean that you cant go elsewhere, you can go anywhere you please. These programs are just less work to set up and have the guarantee of being a good educational experience.
(on the way to Hammer Building)
So a lot of people ask about living arrangements. About 2/3 of 2nd years stay on campus, but the remainder live in the area, down in the Upper West Side or further. A few live in Jersey and the lower east side. There is actually quite a bit in Washington Heights if you know where to look. We are just north of Sugar Hills famous jazz scene, the Harlem Dance Theater, and other local attractions. We are also just south of Yeshiva University, which has a great neighborhood to live in as well as many college amenities and a movie theater. Everything else is just a subway ride away.
(Hammer)
This is the Hammer Building, where 2nd year students take their classes. This is also where our computer labs and library are. The library is mostly online as well as in paper here. If you arent a big book fan your textbook can be accessed online as reference instead. We have one of the largest online academic repositories in the world. Interestingly, the most common piece of information stolen from Columbia students is not their SSN or credit card info, its their library access.
(Small group rooms with fancy TVs)
Welcome to our microscopy lab. You may wonder where all of the microscopes are, and in fact they are these lap tops. Columbias entire slide database has been uploaded online and can be accessed anywhere. This allows everyone to be looking at the same sample at once. It is also nice because this means that you dont have to come into the lab to check out slides. It also emphasizes a great thing about the curriculum, which is that almost everything is non mandatory. Except for a few quizzes and patient interactions, you can choose what works for you and focus on that. Columbia doesnt force just lecture based or problem based learning down your throat. If you dont like to attend lecture, dont. If you dont get anything out of small group, dont go. Its almost all available online in one form or another. You dont have to relearn how you learn here, just find what works for you. I personally went to some small group sections, but other ones I just found better to do on my own. I think it is a great option to have.
(back to P&S)
- Status
