Decisions

We had a usual week with the our usual ups and downs. The weekends are always nice and long because Patrick has Fridays off from school. He has been studying for a linguistics test. We will be glad to get that over with. Patrick got accepted to UT Southwestern. It is funny how things work out. A year ago that was our #1 school. We loved the idea of having family right in the area and really loved the cheap tuition. It is also ranked in the top 20. The benefits of THE Ohio State University definitely out weigh what Texas has to offer. Here are things about OSU that have us excited: We will not be the minority with our kids, there are a lot of married students with children that attend OSU (there are about 20 students on average a year from Utah). It is a very family friendly city, lots of good neighborhoods and school systems (UT is located in the red light district of Dallas.) The financial aid department is amazing and are great about getting you all the money you need. UT is quite the opposite. Any married student's spouse is expected to provide financial support for their family. They award the same amount of financial aid to all students even if you have kids. The exception with kids is they award you extra money for child care so that you can go and work. I am not willing to put our kids in day care while Patrick attends medical school, even if the day care is paid for, no thanks. Housing in the Columbus area is cheap and there is a lot more to offer. OSU also offers two different curricula, either the independent study program or the integrated pathway (that is more traditonal). Both are organ and system based. UT doesn't offer the independent route and the curriculam is different. The grading system at OSU appeals to us a lot more. They have a pass/fail/honors system. UT has a letter grade system the first two years and no one seems to like it. The two things that I remember hearing about both of the interviews from Patrick were how stressed out the UT students seemed and how much they complained about the curriculum and grading systems. He said that the students at OSU were easy going, open, and seemed more like a family unit. Also, the faculty didn't seem as accesable where as OSU both the students and faculty raved about the accesability of the faculty. The cool thing is both schools basically the same averages on the USMLE's. Both schools also have a high match rate. Those were some of the deciding factors for us. We eventually might end up in Dallas for residency. UT has an outstanding and very competitive surgery residency. Patrick is pretty interested in surgery (pediatric) and who knows, we will see what he ends up doing in four years. These last four years have certainly flown by.