Reviews of Rosalind Franklin University (University)

Gabriel, Jr. Murphy

Ok keep all options open within driving range of the base and the va medical center and lake forest hospital..

Michael Davis

This place is a nightmare. It's located in a horrible area. The parking lots are impossible to navigate. Unorganized mess. Your pretty much certain to wind up on the property of the VA hospital with clearly abandoned buildings on a series of thin roads that aren't maintained. You could end up driving right past the place and towards the Navy Base. The buildings are a maze of signs pointed in every direction. If your lucky on a week day, your not shown by sandwich board signs the back of the building which your now walking a quarter-mile to find an entrance that will let you in. Fun in the snow. The staff is completely useless in giving you directions. Mostly walking around rubbing their faces to avoid eye contact. If you get help your more or less lead around a dark series of stairs and dark hallways. With as much glass as there is on this building they don't seem to have windows. I've been on this campus many times and it gets worse as it expands. More buildings with no more parking.

huynh le

(Translated by Google) This is a prestigious school of biomedical in the US, But do not know how many people in Vietnam have been studying at this school, how many of them come back to Vietnam? (Original) Đây là một trường học danh tiếng về y sinh học tại Mỹ, Nhưng không biết ở Việt nam có bao nhiêu người đã & đang học tại trường này, bao nhiêu trong số họ về lại VN?

Kalpit Shah

I am a PhD student in Department of Physiology & Biophysics and would like to affirm that I couldn't be happier elsewhere. As I joined the lab in second year, after rotations, my mentor gave me opportunity to design my own project and gave me time to prove that project was feasible. He is extremely encouraging and promotes me at every conferences we attend. He has trained me to be critical of hypothesis and to trust in data over hypothesis. Furthermore, he admires that I try to take up leadership position at school. Department of Physiology & Biophysics also places special emphasis on students training and gives opportunity to its students to teach physiology to small group of medical students, which has helped me to understand art of teaching. I have found over 4 years of my stay at RFUMS that most professors are approachable and are willing to share their lab equipments and reagents which is of a great help, as sometimes we have to do experiments which our lab is not set up to do.

Lance Presser

As a recent graduate from the PhD program at RFUMS (2012), I can say that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone interested in a PhD. Podiatry, and the College of Health Professions 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.