Tulane University School of Medicine

David describes three to four lectures a day that most classmates watch from home, with professors who answer email quickly and care about each student's progress, a contrast with a cutthroat undergraduate experience.

Clinical skills run alongside: standardized patients each month matched to the organ system being studied, a simulation center for suturing and drug effects on robotic patients, assigned preceptors through the first two years, and student-run clinics for hands-on exams.

Tulane's teaching hospitals cluster downtown: University Medical Center New Orleans, which opened in 2015 to replace Charity Hospital and is the region's only Level 1 trauma center; Tulane Medical Center, connected to the school by a skybridge; and the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System, opened in 2016.

Tulane says it has no minimum GPA or MCAT threshold for a secondary application or interview, and uses each applicant's highest overall MCAT score.

Ask Tulane students their favorite part of school, David says, and most will name their classmates: a class selected for very different upbringings, experiences, and interests.

That mix fuels programming across the city, from community clinic volunteering to fundraising concerts. David counts community involvement, class diversity, and the match list as Tulane's top strengths.

There's always something happening: food and music festivals, concerts, sports, parks, and an endless restaurant scene David tries to work through every weekend.

The downsides are real: limited public transit (a car helps), potholed roads, and visible poverty in a city without the budget to fix its infrastructure.