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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have an MD/PhD from a too med school (think Johns Hopkins/Harvard/UCSF) and I think, as a woman, it has hurt me professionally.

It made it easier to get a good residency, but since then I have worked with men from predominantly mid-tier and foreign medical schools in an academic/research setting. I’m in a more technical speciality and most of my colleagues are men. My  “fancy” med school appears to trigger their insecurities.

Occasionally when I say something incorrect or just not that smart, my med school pedigree is whipped out and people make snarky comments about what “quality graduates” my med school produces. A few times they have “joked” that I was an  affirmative action admit. (I am old - there were affirmative action admissions for women in the MD/PhD program back then). They love to ask me to translate Latin terms, and when I say they can’t, they act “surprised”. And it’s not like I even talk about my pedigree, and I would certainly never hang my diploma in my office.

Honestly, I think that my career may have gone smoother if I had gone to a mid tier med school. As a woman, it’s like my fancy degree is a target on my back and the guys need to prove that they are better than a graduate from my school. I wonder if it is this way for other women?[/quote]

URMs are often unprepared. [/quote]

Only according to your perception. Not if you look at the data. 
[/quote]

Read PP’s description of how his or her colleagues are judging her character irrespective of her degree. [/quote]

PP here. I guess I wasn’t clear. I am easily as good as if not better than my male colleagues, and have the CV to match. Don’t worry, women doctors aren’t dumber than the guys! And nowadays there are actually more women than men in most med schools.

My point was that coming from a top med school seems to have put a target on my back. There are a lot of insecure people out there, and shooting down a fancy-school grad is apparently more fun and satisfying than shooting down someone who went to a med school like UTSW, Vandy, CWRU, or Tulane, although we are all of the same intellectual caliber. Men who trained at foreign med schools seem particularly triggered by the “name brand” nature of my degree.

Just a dissenting opinion that, as a woman, a fancy degree does not buy an easy road to success and may in fact engender envy more so than opportunities if you don’t work with or for very secure people.[/quote]

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