Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine

Mayo is a dream school. The Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins are the top 2 hospitals in the nation, and Mayo only has 42 students per class. The facilities are great for the students with lots of places to study, the nices anatomy lab that I have ever seen (surgery lights above each table, a really nice locker room to change into the provided scrubs before lab, and relativly mild smell). The students say that the learning there is great. Their teachers are so good and the students work together a lot, and they are surprised at how easy it is to learn the material and to keep up with the workload. THey seem to be more laid back than other schools- not stressed out and lots of time for sports and fun. Despite that, they rock the boards.

The Mayo Clinic was very unusual, but it would be a great place to be. It feels like a couple blocks of a big city, lots and lots of people around and very tall buildings. The students were from all over and had such diverse backgrounds. They seemed to be really great friends with each other. The housing was really nice. I saw several students' homes and they lived close to campus in very nice and warm little houses in nice neighborhoods. There are 2000 doctors there, and the students are given time during the week to shadow them, and most do it a lot. And the docs are supposedly really happy to have the students there and teach them well and give them hands on experience. The day is long but there is a lot to see. I walked around outside at the little shops and restaurants. I also thought that Rochester was a fine town. It has a population of about 90,000 and would be fine for me. I don't need a huge city, but if I have a good group of friends I will have fun (beside I don't have a lot of money to waste). There is a lot of outdoors stuff to do if you are not afraid to embrace the cold, and the not cold season is really really nice. I enjoyed the cool weather and blue sky.

The public tour of the clinic is 2 hours long, and I really could have taken the walk and seen what they showed me in 30 minutes, but the tour guide goes into great detail about everything. It is about the history of Mayo and the founders, and their families, and their pets, and ...etc. It was hard to patiently enjoy it while I still had an interview to do.