For those who got an offer from Flinders, how do you square off between getting a great medical education vs living in a somewhat rural area for four years of your life?
I am an American and currently have offers from Flinders, Sydney and University of Queensland (Gold coast, baby!). I love medicine but I like to have a life outside school too (or is that not possible??). Any advice is appreciated!
For me Sydney was out almost right away because of cost. It's just too expensive to justify going there for four years. I'm going to be in debt regardless, I'd rather reduce it as much as I can...Queensland I'm leaning away from because I'm really unimpressed with what the school is becoming. A class size of 400+ is more than any North American school I have heard of and this Oschner program (while I'm sure it's successful) sounds an awful lot like a Caribbean school to me. No qualms with that, I have loads of friends who were successful through that stream, but if that's what I wanted I'd apply to SGU and be significantly closer to home...It just seemed to me like Queensland was becoming a degree mill, so to speak. I could be wrong.
Now for my less subjective reasons. I am fortunate enough to have some fairly strong contacts in the US medical community (family). One of my relatives was recently at a conference with a lot of big name Aussie docs (pres. of aussie diabetes, etc. etc.) and he sent several of them an email with my question: "Which Australian school would you choose amongst USyd, UQ, Flinders". Their answers:
- choosing between Australian schools is not like the US where you theoretically have tiers 1,2,3. It's more like Canada where all schools are considered equally prestigious.
- Internationally USyd and UQ will likely get you recognized because of their research record but Flinders is becoming more well known, especially in Canada
- In my [all three of them] it boils down to where you want to live. Sydney is a big metropolis, UQ is on the Gold Coast and Adelaide is a smaller city but has a lot of charm
- Flinders program is a little more traditional and UQ is a bit more progressive [I didn't know what this meant to be honest...]
So those are the opinions from some of the big gun doctors in Australia. I was fortunate enough to be in a department in my graduate program where several of the professors have done sabbaticals in Australia, and one of them has done it in Flinders (the other at Newcastle). Here are their opinions:
Prof 1 (my supervisor): Flinders is a great school. They are definitely smaller but I like that about them. Queensland is a great school too but like you say the class size is big and I'm not sure how much I'd like that in med school. I also preferred Adelaide as a city to Brisbane, but that's my opinion.
Prof 2 (MD/PhD in my dept and my close mentor): Well you know I did a 1 year sabbatical at Flinders right? I really liked the school. They have a hospital physically attached so getting your rotations and clinical exposure is easy. I helped with some of the anatomy and physiology courses. The anatomy labs had really modern equipment, pretty much the same as what we have at our medical school [Canadian school]. I didn't find Adelaide boring. It's kind of like Calgary; it's a city of about 1 million people and if you want to get out and have fun you will. We [his family] lived right on the beach for the year so that was fantastic and it was a very affordable city. In comparison I found Melbourne and Sydney really expensive.
Next, my second cousin is a vascular surgeon in Sydney. Born an Aussie citizen and did all his training at USyd. He is heavily biased towards me studying there (till he learned how much I'd have to pay...). In his opinion Flinders and UQ are on par. With him he also said "what city would you like to live in? Adelaide is not far from Melbourne when you are missing big city life but if you are the type who wants to party and club it isn't for you. [I'm personally a bar/pub/video games with friends kind of guy so that doesn't bother me...]. Next when I asked about a "trauma center" he laughed and told me that Australia does not get nearly the same volume of trauma injuries (gunshots, stabbings, etc.) that the US and Canada gets. If he were to rank it though, it would be Sydney, UQ, Flinders just based purely on population size and levels of urbanization.
Finally, I was in Europe not too long ago and I ran into Aussies on the train! What luck! Anyways, both were graduates of USyd so obviously had a slight bias towards that school however they both agreed that they liked Adelaide as a city more than Brisbane. They could not comment on Flinders vs. UQ as they are not in the medical field.
So there you have it. I'm not saying this is the be all and end all of evidence. Ultimately I think it boils down to two things:
- what kind of person you are (party animal, metropolitan, homebody, mellow)
- What YOU PERSONALLY make of your time in whatever city you're in
I just need to convince my parents, who will ultimately have the final say regarding co-signing my loan.
