What is Life Like

I have heard nothing but good things about Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. If you are interested in high powered academics and research, those probably aren't the place for you. Wayne State and Henry Ford both have sports fellowships. Henry Ford is the team docs for the Wings, Lions, and Tigers, so you may get to work on some high profile athletes when you are there. They are both in Detroit, so they are very trauma heavy. I don't know anything about flint or U of M, but U of M seems to be great in just about everything and I am sure they work on their own athletes. I don't know much about Beaumont either.

Life in an ortho residency is very demanding. Most residents work well over 80 hours a week, but there are new regulations going in to effect next year to limit that. Only time will tell what kind of effect it has.

By the way, I wouldn't limit yourself to Ortho, or medicine, for that matter if you are early in your undergrad career. You have years to figure this stuff out and will likely change your ming several times. I have bounced from physical therapist, to ortho, to geriatrics, to cardiology, to emergency medicine, and finally back to ortho.

Good luck.

I have a year left in my undergrad and will take the MCAT in April 2003. I am leaning toward ortho b/c I am an athletic training student. So I have a background in orthopedic sports injuries. Hopefully I will become an ATC, certified athletic trainer in august 2003. Will that type of training help when applying to med schools and later for residencies?

I think it helps, just like it helps to be a paramedic when applying for Emergency Medicine or a rad tech when applying for Radiology. Even if it were not to help you directly in getting into a program, it would help you indirectly by increasing personal knowledge on the subject. The most importanty factors, however, are grades and board scores and the other usual stuff. Just be the best you can be in whatever you do, and you can afford to keep your options open. When it comes to med school applications, it doesn't matter what your background is as long as you were good in that field and had good grades, MCAT, etc.

that's orthopAedics. . . .with an "A."
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Just a little pet peave of mine.

Seriously, though. If your interested in ortho, that's great. Go with it. It's a great field, with great people, and a great lifestyle. There's not a day that goes by when I question what I'm doing right now. I hate to even call it work because I'm having so much fun doing what I'm doing. Orthopods can fix things. Medicine docs are just prolonging the inevitable. Like "Wildcat" would say. While the medicine docs are doing their little dutch kid impression and sticking their finger in the failing dike, the orthopods are busy building another dike. Ortho is awesome baby!!! (dick vitale voice)

I knew that I wanted to do ortho in college too. there's nothing wrong with that. with that said however, concentrate on getting into med skool first.

Thanks everyone for the info about orthopaedics