Without endorsing any part of this comment dealing with events which have yet to take place, I congratulate user 75th who receives many Bayes points for this:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/bfo/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/6aih

Hermione is dead. Hermione Granger is doomed to die horribly. Hermione Granger will very soon die, and die horribly, dramatically, grotesquely, and utterly.

Fare thee well, Hermione Jean Granger. You escaped death once, at a cost of twice and a half your hero's capital. There is nothing remaining. There is no escape. You were saved once, by the will of your hero and the will of your enemy. You were offered a final escape, but like the heroine you are, you refused. Now only death awaits you. No savior hath the savior, least of all you. You will die horribly, and Harry Potter will watch, and Harry Potter will crack open and fall apart and explode, but even he in all his desperation and fury will not be able to save you. You are the cord binding Harry Potter to the Light, and you will be cut, and your blood, spilled by the hand of your enemy, will usher in Hell on Earth, rendered by the hand of your hero.

Goodbye, Hermione. May the peace and goodness you represent last not one second longer than you do.

When I first saw this comment, it was downvoted to... I forget, -6 or something. Going by the percentage score, at least 11 people downvoted it. From the replies, some people didn't like the tone of apparent certainty with which 75th spoke. Sounded uppity to them, I guess. It was at +3 before I linked to it on /r/HPMOR.

I wanted to say something at the time about that, and how penalizing people for sounding certain or uppity or above-the-status-you-assign-them can potentially lead you to ignore people who are actually competent, but at the time all I could say was "Why are people downvoting this? It's a testable prediction" whereupon it climbed up to above 0.

Everyone who downvoted 75th or agreed with the downvotes at the time, please take note. Speaking in a tone of what seems-to-you like inappropriate certainty does not always indicate that someone is arrogant. Sometimes they have seen something you have not.

Arline Feynman was one of those for whom the penicillin came a little too late.

I'm teaching some classes for a test prep company in a town 2 hours away. They're paying me fairly for my expenses and travel time, but it still feels like kind of a waste-- it's like 20 hours a week! Of course most productive things cannot safely be done while driving, but listening is a notable exception.

Can anyone recommend some good educational podcasts, or other free downloadable audio that will make me better in some way? I'm working on learning Spanish, so that seems like a good place to start.

Perhaps one of the schools has someone on the faculty with experience in that area, and could mentor you. If I may inquire, how did Ohio State confuse you?

Congratulations! I also received it (thanks not the least to your posts). I wonder how many other LWers participate and who else (if anybody) got their invitations.

To me it then appears you have two (clear) paths in line with your preferences. Your emotional preference, what makes you happy, sounds like helping people in person (fuzzies). Your intellectual preference, goal, or ambition, could be paraphrased as, "Benefit to the highest possible positive degree the greatest number of people." Your ideal profession will meet somewhere between the optimal courses for each of these two preferences.
I list these to avoid misunderstanding.

The first course is the one you're pursuing - get an MD, work with patients to be happy, and donate to efficient high-utility charities in order to live with yourself. If the difference in cost will really only come out to 30-60k $US, you will be able to live with your husband while attending UF, UF is more prestigious, would cause you less worry, and if matriculating to UF makes you happier - then by all means attend UF! I'd be quite certain about the numbers, though.

The second course isn't unique to medical professionals, but they do have special skills which can be of unique use. Go to a developing country and solve medical problems in highly replicable and efficient manners. This course probably meets your two preferences with the least amount of compromise.

If you're unfamiliar with Paul Farmer, he went (still goes, maybe) to Haiti and tried to solve their medical problems - he had some success, but unfortunately the biggest problem with Haiti was governmental infrastructure, without which impact cannot be sustained.

The second course would involve you using medical expertise to solve medical problems, and acquiring either additional knowledge or a partner with knowledge of how to establish infrastructure sufficient to sustain your solution. The final step involves writing Project Evaluations on your endeavours so that others can replicate them in wide and varied locales - this is how you make an impact.

Not knowing anything about your husband, the above reasoning assumes he doesn't have any impact upon the decision.

Although the FIU is new, its curriculum seems to fit the old Flexner I mold. I cannot tell the state of UF's program from the site.

Research options at FIU appear limited, but if you have an interest in one among those available, this concern does not hold.

What do you want to pursue in a medical career? Research? Patient Care? Whatever earns the most money?

To find the necessary information if the answer is:

• Research - Visit the school and investigate the status of its research department. Learn about ongoing studies, the attention ratios of the Principal Investigator to Junior Investigator to students, and the amount of freedom allowed in pursuing research interests.

• Patient Care - Ask existing students of all years what their curriculum has been, and how much time they have spent with patients. Flexner I involves two years of study, then two years of practical application; Flexner II (an informal moniker) isn't a set system as individual schools are slowly implementing and trying new and different things, but generally differs from Flexner I - for example, involving patient care as part of the first two years.

• Money - There are many avenues to approach this. Naturally the more prestige your school has the better, as that will help determine the quality of your first post; however, with enough research publications you can make your own prestige, and research will always be a value marker. Your alma mater on the other hand matters less and less as time passes and jobs accumulate.

Interesting.

Right now I'd be leaning towards UF if I were you, I think, since my intuition is that $30-60K isn't much debt relative to what physicians typically make. But have you thought about using instacalc.com or some other spreadsheet to actually tally up all the numbers related to fees, cost of living, expected career earnings, time value of money/disconting, etc.?

Congratulations on getting admitted to medical school, btw.

A good residency match would position me well for a fellowship in a competitive field.

Do competitive fields tend to be the highest-paying? I would have assumed that the fields where there were more people going in to them than spots available had relatively low pay due to supply and demand, and the highest pay was to be found by going in to a field that was somehow difficult, boring, or distasteful in a way that discouraged people from entering it.

I'm suggesting that you spend some time writing down what your third options are. Seems like a good thing to do in general. I don't know what your third options are or how they compare to medical school, so I can't say anything about that.