Best Chicago Program

[Guest]

Uchicago is where it's at. Haters be damned

[Guest]

U Chicago has a huge name, good training, and will soon have another major trauma center. Don't be distracted by the haters!

[Guest]

Does a sub-I at northwestern guarantee an interview? Can anyone share their recent experiences? Thanks a million guys!

[Guest]

no it does not....NU is super competitive and they are hard to get into

[Guest]

U Chicago is the best MW program by far

[Guest]

Rush has been considered as the best place for operating for years. That new study ranking resident research output also places Rush far ahead of NW and UC in terms of research productivity.

[Guest]

Not surprising at all... you have to be clinically busy to have stuff to write about, excluding basic science papers

[Guest]

M3, considering doing an away rotation in Chi-town.

How's UIC? I'm considering doing an away at either Rush or Northwestern as well.

[Guest]

(09-08-2018, 12:41 PM)Guest Wrote: M3, considering doing an away rotation in Chi-town.

How's UIC? I'm considering doing an away at either Rush or Northwestern as well.

As people have mentioned, Northwestern Rush and UIC are the chi-town programs you should be looking at. Decision comes down to what you want in a program

Northwestern is clearly the big name one. That means several things for you--it's more academic and research-oriented. Their elective case volume is probably very good especially with respect to tumors (lesniak, bloch, chandler are faculty there). This is probably the place to be in chicago if you want to do surgical neuro-oncology and also peds with Lurie childrens. However, a lot of big name academic programs (take columbia for example) have been criticized for having poor resident autonomy. This was also something that several away rotators at northwestern mentioned on the trail last year. 

Rush is also a high-volume program, private hospital with a big presence in spine. It is definitely more clinical-heavy and i would say there is significantly more spine going on than cranial. This is the place to be if you want to do MIS spine or really any spine (fessler, traynelis, O'toole are there to name a few). Not to say cranial isn't there but a would highly doubt they have the tumor volume of northwestern or the open vascular volume of UIC. I believe one of their dual-trained vascular guys also just left recently. Trauma experience is prob some of the best in the region being that it's cook county hospital.

UIC is a long-standing smaller program at a public state hospital with a different patient demographic than Rush and Northwestern. Pros are a huge presence in cerebrovascular neurosurgery, (charbel, hanjani) especially considering their size as well as very stable leadership for a long period of time. I believe they also just added a dual-trained open/endovascular guy to their faculty. You'll probably have better autonomy there and a great exposure to vascular and skull base. Con is probably just not being as big of a name as the other two, and for that reason i suspect that you'll have less elective tumor cases coming in. They put out some good clinical research in cerebrovascular but not so much in basic science if that's your thing. 

All 3 are great, you'll be trained well. Just figure out what you want in a program: which area of neurosurgery you're interested in, do you want a big or small program, etc... I wouldn't recommend doing more than one Sub-I in a particular geographic region, it may prevent you from getting interviews in other regions.