Is medicine not enough?

The whole prestige thing is meaningless with medicine. When you apply for FY jobs your medical school is kept annonymous so it doesnt make any difference in that sense. The best med school to go to is the one who's teaching methods suit you personally best. I think the whole oxford medicine obsession is largely to do with being able to show off (not saying thats why all oxford medics went there, but im sure its why some did).

Play to your strengths when applying to Med school, anyone who uses any other arbitrary method is almost certainly doomed to fail.

To clarify then, being a potential medical candidate there is the obvious lurking around all the Medical school threads, however I constantly find myself getting agitated at the amount of people who do not seem to actually sincerely considering where they are applying and going. Many apply without even researching their university, rather simply the looking at the league tables. Surely, getting into medicine is enough of a privilege and comes with its own prestige?

I see quite often people not sure where to go because they have never looked into their choices, rather are simply asking about prestige! Surely all medical universities are very good in themselves and some arbitrary notion of "prestige" should not be the deciding factor for choice of med school.

So as the title says, is not getting into med school enough? There isn't a single med school I would consider "bad" or not "good" yet people seem to be less concerned with their own comfort and personal choice and more with either getting into Oxbridge or simply making a random choice based on some flaky concept of "prestige".

Discuss.

Well I wouldnt start for a moment thinking that you need to pick a place with the most privilege, because a privilege is something that you enjoy, like a 30% your shopping bill or free use of the ski lodge on your stay abroad. Indeed a privilege to be able to apply to university ... the vast majority dont have the option. Its a privilege to be at a uni that suits your needs...but not simply to be at a posh uni. If that uni dosnt suit your needs, its no privilege, its a dull-as-death sentence for five years.

a privilege isnt a doorway into career that will have you facing lots of rather uninteresting nonstop exams, lost earnings from the extra years at university, a massive debt on leaving university and a job that will put you in an early grave if you do it properly.

although the fairly good eventual wage is a definitely a privilege! and having the time to enjoy your life outside medicine is, you will find, the biggest privilege of all....unfortunately you've shrunk that privilege by choosing this profession.

Well I wouldnt start for a moment thinking that you need to pick a place with the most privilege

blah blah I've burned out on medicine blah blah no time for pottery or posting endlessly about poshies on tsr any more blah blah

Some med schools are 'better' in as much as their students get significantly higher pass rates in the post uni exams.

Prestige is pointless in applying for foundation jobs, but it probably has an effect later in your career.

They get statistically significant higher pass rates when analysed en mass in papers, not significantly higher pass rates for the actual individual. Person A at university X won't necessarily do better than Person B at university Y.

Also, and I can't stress this enough: Those studies are based on people who went to medical school in the 1990's. How relevant it is to students now you can exrapolate yourself but I would say its basically meaningless.

What the hell else would anyone have thought I meant?
People fail from every university. Obviously. Stop trying to be so PC.




They're very much not though :/

Are you honestly trying to say all med schools are EXACTLY as good as each other. I'm not even saying any particular one is any better, but it's pretty inconceivable that we've managed to completely level the field.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1741-7015-6-5.pdf

It takes data from as late as 2006, it couldn't be that much more modern and still be testing for performance in MRCP etc. And it shows that over 16 years things were pretty constant. (see page 5 and page 9). Why are you trying to suggest that all of a sudden this trend, present from 1989 to 2005, will have changed and they're all equal. I believe there was also another released quite recently which showed the same thing, I can't find it immediately but will try if you're that desperate to not believe me?

I didn't suggest reasons why these trends exist. I put across an impartial view of the trend. It could be better teaching, a certain type of course is easier to learn, simply some universities take brighter students, some unis teach hard work better, certain universities might end up at better hospitals after graduating, etc.,etc.

Stop trying to be so PC and pretend that everything in the world is equal.

End of the day, even if one med school is 'better' than another, there is little point in going to it if the course, environment, teaching methods and town don't suit you. Of course you can do fine anywhere, and all med schools will churn out plenty of respectable doctors.

****s sake.

Well good because nobody said that. They said "prestige" which, although confusingly it also starts with "pr" and ends with "ge", is actually a different word.

No one cares.

The debate of "does the prestige of a medical school matter?" is as old as the medical profession itself. True story..

This thread is not going to bring up any new or interesting points that haven't been heard literally hundreds of times before

Play to your strengths when applying to Med school, anyone who uses any other arbitrary method is almost certainly doomed to fail.

So would you rather there were no doctors