did an away at irvine (did not interview so no conflict of interest here lol) & honestly I'd easily choose colorado. Only reason to pick irvine would be if you had a burning desire to be in SoCal. Otherwise there's a ton of driving, packed schedules with lots of boring skin checks/follow ups, lack of diversity in both pt demographics and pathology. just overall the most uninteresting rotation I went on. Thought alot of ppl were weird too
<<also a PGY-1, I also did an away at CO and didn't get an interview, despite this I'm not salty still think it's an amazing program, Colorado >>> UCI, really strong clinicals, strong surgery, strong basic science, strong peds derm, tons of VA autonomy, chair is really nice, residents were cool, everything is in a central location with minimal driving, facilities are gorgeous especially the VA, location/Denver is great - can't say anything bad about it // on that note... can't recommend Colorado for an away rotation, because less than half of the rotators get interviews
UCI chair is leaving...
PGY-1 here. Colorado>UCI, unless you need to be in SoCal. I did an away last year at Colorado and unfortunately didn't get an interview, but when I was there, all the residents and faculty were so incredibly happy. Happiest program I've seen yet.