Placements Outside of Major Cities

[spl22]

Hi everyone! I'm curious what everyone's experience has been with their placements during grad school if their school isn't in a larger city. I'm considering Purdue and U of Illinois (along with Rush and Northwestern) and am curious if the experiences I gain in Chicago might be stronger.

Thanks and I hope you're all staying healthy out there!

[bibliophile222]

I'm at UVM, and although were right in downtown Burlington, Vermont is a small, rural state. We don't have any problems finding school placements, but medical placements are obviously in shorter supply. Most people do their medical placement over the summer, and many people go home and do a placement in their home state. Those of us who stayed may have needed to drive a ways (I had a 45 minute commute for my placement in a SNF). The people who didn't do medical placements over the summer did them later at our university hospital, when more people were doing school placements and the demand was lower.

On the plus side, since we have the only program in the state, those of us who stayed local didn't have any competition from people in other programs, as I imagine happens quite a bit in some areas. People who went home for the summer did sometimes have a lot of competition.