It is exciting to receive offers to attend medical school. Simultaneously, it is stressful to have to choose which medical school to attend.
It is natural to experience a mix of anticipation, excitement, and fear of making a mistake as you make this career decisions. Here are some suggestions to help you make this important career decision.
Revisit your criteria for choosing a medical school
Look over your original criteria that you developed when choosing a medical school. You can go beyond the national rankings of medical schools ask yourself, has anything changed, become better clarified, or new come up that will influence your decision?
Be sure to factor in your personal impressions from your interview, opinions that you received from medical students, your desires from medical school training, and your values .
For MD/PhDs
You may want to consider such things as location, time allotted for research and clinical, the faculty you will be working with, and the opportunities for conference and presentations.
Review the following article for additional criteria to use when choosing a medical scientist training program.
Attend the Second Look programs
One of the main reasons that medical schools hold revisit or “Second Look” programs is to give admitted students another opportunity to learn about their school without the pressure of an interview.
This is time well invested by Deans, faculty, medical students, staff and other campus departments who come together to put on their best show with the goal of helping you to experience what it will be like to matriculate in their school. If you attend you will have a second opportunity to ask questions of students, sample classes, tour learning facilities, learn about housing, libraries, research, ask more questions about financial aid, and other resources without the burden of interviewing.
In the instance where two or more schools have conflicting second look dates, you will have to choose the one that you need to visit most. Before you go, review the AAMC article that discusses several questions that medical students wished they had asked when selecting a medical school.
Use a weighted decision- making ranking system
To look at your decision more objectively, use a ranking system to evaluate the schools on key criteria that you have identified.
Step 1 Make a list of the criteria that you must have in a medical school
Step 2 Using a scale of 0-5, rank each criterion using 5 as the highest correlation
Step 3 Add up the numbers in each column
| $ Funding | Family Housing | Research Options | Diversity | Great Peers | Total | |
| School | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 21 |
| School | 3 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 13 |
| School | 0 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 18 |
These are a few additional criteria that will help you with make this decision.
Feel free to make an appointment with an OITE career counselor or premed to further help you with decision making. We encourage out expanded readership to utilize resources in your community for similar assistance.
