Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science

I worked at Rosalind Franklin as a tech.
When my supervisor took a position at Rosalind, one of his references who did her undergraduate degree at UIUC warned him that the midwest was full of slow, lazy people.
Rosalind Franklin is situated in Lake County, north of Chicago in what I would consider the backwoods. It’s a *hick town*. My boss and I would go home fuming everyday over rude people. They can can tend to be mean, rude and rough — edged. And «backwards». They can get extremely lazy and take weeks to do tasks that take a few minutes. Many people who are excessively lazy and severely overweight.
What I liked about my job was that we were basically on our own island on a different floor from our department, isolated from the crap of the annoying department and administration. What I didn’t like is that they tend to change their own rules and even laws to fit their own agenda all the time.
My boss was «promised» that our lab space was exclusively his laboratory space, yet the lady in charge kept insisting that we give up some of our space for a possible new professor, summer projects, special clinical projects, etc. when they had other spaces they could have used for those purposes. This was not a public teaching lab, but a research lab, yet they treated it like their public toilet. They kept barging in on us while we were trying to focus on our work and keep our students focused. At one time, it was an absolute zoo in there at times. She did not even have the decency to make appointment.
Sometimes our lab instrument was monopolized by a professor and his group of summer students and one of those students also stole some reagents without asking.
The HR man claimed adamantly (as he probably did with my student) that all my personal property had been returned. Like I said, they lack transparency and tend to bend the rules heavily in their own favor. The correct answer would probably had been, *allow us to investigate and we will get back to you*.
Rosalindspeak: «we have returned all your personal belongings». Translation: «we are too lazy and selfish to look into the matter»
Rosalindspeak: «we do not consider the opinion of techs concerning graduate students». Translation: «we are too lazy to care about the progress of our students».
We were not paid that well, although Rosalind does have a relatively good pay scale for professors, compared to other public and private universities. I knew a girl with 7 years of experience as an associate/​tech who was paid a lowly $ 32,000 a year. She was really good at what she did, too. I bet she could run circles around those brain — dead admin people (she was a biologist). I admire the overworked professors and technical people there.
The research faculty was decent, but I was not impressed at all with the overall level of students (extremely unimpressed) compared to a typical top — 100 graduate program. And if they don’t get what they want, they tend to automatically bitch and blame other people for their lack of progress. 3 of my summer research students bitched up a storm — what they didn’t realize is when they did that and failed to produce in the lab, they bitched their way out of working in the group after the summer. We gave one girl a simple side project and she couldn: t do it — it took me 3 days to complete it around my other work (the student was given several weeks).
Rosalind Franklin is a bottom tier medical and graduate program. They are consistently ranked around 260 — 280 th according to US News and World Report. The way that most of their students talked to me and behind my back, you would think they were my boss ! They sport an attitude unbecoming of a student. It is what it is — a last chance medical and graduate program.
To summarize, I would not recommend this workplace to anyone because of the admin. Also: The Chicago Medical School’s accredidation is currently on probation by the LCME. I have no doubt it is because of negligence on the part of their administration. This is a black eye to anyone associated with this university. As a school, Rosalind Franklin is a (very) small player in the science and medical fields. It is NOT well known. They have suffered scandals in the past especially with two recent suspensions of their accredidation.
It seems to me that Rosalind Franklin admin staff are extremely dispassionate about anything and everything, for the most part along with their students. They are too busy patting themselves on their backs for trivial achievements. They don’t really seem to care for acting reputably. It wouldn’t surprise me if they get their accredidation suspended again and again.
If you want an example of good school — look at Northwestern or UIC ! No comparison to the major schools. I always advised anyone to attend a major university where they will receive the best training and have the best logistical support. Also: overall people in admin positions have horrible attitudes.

As a recent graduate from the PhD program at RFUMS (2012), I can say that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone interested in an MD or PhD. Path Assist, Phys Assist, Podiatry, etc. on the other hand, seem to do quite well.
Since 2004, the Medical School has been put on probation twice by the main accrediting body of U.S. and Canadian med schools, the LCME. The current president and CEO maintained his title and position after the first probation period, and the school again sank into probation in 2013. The school does have a decent matching record, and continues to put out a lot of stellar MD’s, however I believe that it is due to quality students and teaching, in spite of the administrations failings.
The graduate school is a whole other issue where very few faculty have funding available, but they still keep accepting students even though there are very few spaces available. One of the most important things I tell potential PhD candidates is to identify a mentor and start a correspondence before applying to a graduate school. With an interdisciplinary program like RFUMS, it may look like there are a lot of options for faculty mentors, but once you get there, you are told that they aren’t taking students due to money or space constraints. I was lucky as I was one of the first class of interdisciplinary students 6 years ago, but it has consistently gotten worse as the funding situation has declined nationwide.
One of the other issues that has been ignored is the graduate schools overall lack of concern for students after they graduate. The school has an alumni association for each of the other schools (Podiatry, Health Professions, Medical), but does not track or organize graduates of the PhD program. This significantly limits the networking available to graduates, but it also speaks to the lack of concern the school exhibits. Without adequate tracking of PhD alumni, there is no way to determine how successful they are at training students, and empirically I would say RFUMS isn’t very successful at training PhDs.
Teaching opportunities for graduate students and post-​docs are limited, and historically have been frowned upon by faculty. There are also very few solid ties to the local pharmaceutical companies in the area and no one that I am aware of has been able to secure a position at one of these companies following completion of their PhD.
Personally, I had a lot of bad experiences as a PhD, but despite a lot of frustration, and attempts to help with strategic planning, very few of these issues have changed or been resolved to satisfaction in my opinion, and resolution, if any is embarrassingly slow.

This school is actually well known around the country– and students do quite well getting residencies and jobs in the future.
I was concerned about this issue because the school went through some changes– notably a name change– Chicago Medical School /​Finch University to Chicago medical school/​RFUMS which can make it difficult. There was some talk about how the school was on probation below– ONLY due to funding issues/​the faculty not doing enough research, etc.
I would even add that this was not even the case in the graduate school (where you would expect the research to be taking place), and where there is actually a lot of research going on. The clinical psychology PhD program is also fairly well known for training strong clinicians who have gone on to complete residencies, post-​docs and obtain jobs at places like Brown, Yale, UCLA, UCSD, Northwestern, etc.
I have also heard great things about the PA program.

As a fourth year student at Chicago Medical School, part of RFUMS, I feel I have a really good perspective on the medical school portion of the university.
Generally speaking the school is one of the smaller schools in the greater Chicago area. There about 5 – 6 medical schools
in Chicagoland. The main campus is up north close to the Wisconsin
border in North Chicago, IL.
The school was founded as a medical school for the Jewish due to the Jewish quota that many other medical schools had imposed at the time.
Eventually the school gained AMA accreditation and became a fully functional medical school. The school still retains strong Jewish roots and faculty.
As a school, though considered one of the smaller schools, it
does generally well. Each medical school class size is usually around 180. In terms of strengths, the school is known to have strong board scores and a competitive match list. Many students match into very competitive specialties every year and score very well on national board exams.
The major weaknesses are the lack of resources than other schools in certain specialties like anesthesia or orthopedic surgery. Unfortunately in those specialties, the school does not have a strong connection with any well known departments so it can be harder to get into those specialties but students do it every year and generally do it well.
The rumor that the school lost accreditation entirely untrue. The school was put on probation but the board hired a new administration that has turned the university around and is off probation and fully accredited.
The accreditation issue had to do with funding as previously the
university was mostly funded by the med students when it used to have
one of the highest tuitions in the country at $ 35,000/year.
The administration instituted a tuition freeze and as many other medical schools have dramatically increased their tuition including many in the Chicago area, the school is average in tuition compared other private medical schools.
Other issues are, that the school do not have its own hospital though many students have not found that to be an issue and generally enjoy rotating at a variety of urban and community hospitals for the experience.
The students are all generally friendly though it varies from class to
class. The atmosphere on the main campus is generally very quiet as the medical students are very busying studying. Though it is located in North Chicago, IL, the medical students only stay there for the first 2 years of training. North Chicago is 40 miles from Chicago but is a very suburban area and good for the intense studying that is needed during the first two years but it has enough distractions when one needs them on breaks. Six Flags Great America is practically next door along with a huge outlet mall (Gurnee Mills).
During years 3 and 4, the students move down to the main city of Chicago for clinical rotations and that is when many have more time to spend
exploring the city but also working hard at many hospitals. As you can
guess, Chicago is a great city.
If you’re wondering if you get a solid education at CMS? Yes
definitely. Some of our students are phenomenal and absolutely break
the board exams and become accepted at the best residencies in the
country at Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago etc. Generally
speaking education across medical schools is very uniform. It is more
about you as a student and what you make of it. That is more true for
medical school than really any education.