I wrote reviews of a few programs on my mdapplicants site last year. I'll post them here for easy viewing:
School impressions, to help me remember and future applicants know what to expect:
UTSW - The focus here is balancing clinical and research sides, rather than one or the other. It's great strength, though, is the research (greatest # of nobel laureates of any medical institution), and Brown is director of MSTP. There's also great financial support bc of ties to Ross Perot, who visits specifically with MSTPers annually. You'll hear all about how 'collaborative' it is, and it's true, even from my short summer experiences. Labs are open door, and people are genuinely interested in each other. The interview day was a bit disorganized, our speakers didn't show up, our student hosts were confused about the schedule, interviewees were left to ourselves most of the time. This is likely not an accurate reflection, as every current student talks about how helpful the administration is. There is a second interview in February if you make the cut (I got the call yesterday), which hopefully will reflect better on the school.
Northwestern - Focuses on physician-SCIENTIST. Really great mentorship, and graduates have 3-10 publications (all of them do), and 22 currently are on their own grants. Research is admittedly not as spectacular as some other places but certain fields are focal. Neuroscience is huge and incorporates interdisciplinary investigators, and autoimmunity and microbiology/virology seem strong, and there seems to be a big strength in nanoscale chemistry. 3-day interview gets VERY tiresome.. 5 faculty, 1 student, 1 administration, but they definitely were very organized and worked on impressing us with what they had. Students say greatest strength is support of other MSTP students and integration with the MD class. Also, location in Chicago is cold, but very beautiful.
-------Never got around to writing about the other interviews, but here are some revisit impressions-----
Harvard - Diversity in every research field you could possibly want. Their revisit showed a lot of attentiveness to the students--all years of MSTP were available to speak with, as well as all the deans, and many of the prominent faculty members. A faculty who was not available that day invited me to call him at my leisure. The 1.5 day revisit was a whirlwind of people to meet and impressive research to discuss. I was initially concerned about the HST program (i was hesitant about being with the same 30 people with the same interests all the time and also the seeming lack of time for grad school courses and research), but now I think it sounds like an amazing opportunity. Faculty are invited to give lectures on their area of expertise... while it would cause some redundancy in the curriculum, I am excited about the depth that they would bring to the class, and the non-textbook quality. The students emphasize how much they really learn the concepts. All my faculty meetings were extremely interesting and were welcoming to MSTs. Harvard has really played a role in unifying the MD and PhD to shorten the time to graduation. Students (even in year 7-8) were generally pleased with their experience.
UCLA-Caltech - The UCLA students are probably the happiest I've met all around. The sun was so infectious to people's personalities that I wonder how I would turn out if I were here for a few years. The faculty were all extremely open in discussing their research, and the collaboration was apparent, as 2 of my faculty meetings in entirely different departments were well aware of each other and had even begun collaborations. I was excited at UCLA, and extremely so by Caltech. Caltech MSTPs all seem to be selected for a technology-based background (the other prospective, and both students that showed us around were into physics/engineering/etc). The faculty were developing such great technology for their studies, and while the labs seemed less collaborative than UCLA, each was very good at what it did. The focus in the Caltech program is definitely research (the current students did not wish to pursue clinical practice later), and that mindset, the disjointedness of Caltech from UCLA, and the small-school feel of Caltech ware not what I'm looking for in a program. We still have the option of doing the PhD at UCLA.
