SLU vs. Mizzou. Which to choose?

[Mixolydian]

I have been accepted to both the Saint Louis University School of Medicine and the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine and am having a hard time choosing which one to attend. Other threads on these specific schools don't have any recent input.

If a few of you that are attending or have graduated from these schools could give me your opinion on the following I would be grateful. Note that money is NOT a determining factor for me (planning on an armed service health profession scholarship):

1) Your opinion of the atmosphere, quality of the professors, difficulty of the curriculum.

2) How well you think the school is preparing you (or has prepared you) for the real world.

3) Were you able to get in to your top residency choices.


I realize that there are official rankings out there (ie US News, Princeton Review, etc.) that do these things, but I would like to hear directly from students and doctors that have been to these schools as well. Thank you!

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[ksmi117]

Moving to the School-Specific Discussions forum.

 

[waitlist22]

While I do not attend either school, I have some knowledge of both and in my opinion it comes down to what type of learning system will work best for you and how you test. At Mizzou they are almost all problem based, you rely on a group for your learning and aren't given as much direction per se. Works great for some, not so great for others. Also keep in mind that they test for a whole week every 7 weeks and then you get a week off. Again, all personal preference in learning style and how much information you want to get in in each test. I believe that SLU is much more lecture based, with some small group learning but not much. If you do better in this setting then I believe SLU would be the place to attend.

One last thought I will leave you with, and mabye none of this has been helpful, is what you think you may want to specialize in. Columbia is much more rural so if you want to do general practice medicine that would be a great place to study. If you want to do something like ER, surgery etc. and urban setting in St. Louis is probably a better choice.

So in my opinion it matters less about what certain people match into, get residencies in because that largely rests on how you do on boards and in school and I beleive both schools will give you equal oportunities assuming you are competitive for whatever speciality you want. If I were you I would look at how you learn best and which setting, urban or more rural, better suits your ideal speciality at this point/where you would want to live.

 

[motomed]

agree with the above totally. these schools have next to nothing in common. mizzou has a well established PBL setup, SLU is lecture lecture lecture. Mizzou is fairly rural, smaller hospital, SLU is a large urban med center. Mizzou has all of the benefits of a large university within a five minute walk of the med school, if you want to be part of the college scene or just want a nice place to workout. SLU has all of the benefits of a large city fairly close. it's totally about fit. forget about which one will leave you in a better position in four years, because I imagine most people naturally fit much better at one school than the other.

both great schools, I'm currently waitlisted at both, so hurry up and decide!!