This is neat. In the promo you can see a certificate or diploma in Cuddy's office from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They offer a pre-med program and different health care administration degrees, but it doesn't look like they have a medical school or courses in endocrinology. Their pre-medicine program is an undergraduate program; their College of Health Sciences seems to specialize in sports medicine / occupational therapy but I loved reading that their pre-med program offers courses in diagnostic medicine. So either Cuddy went there as an undergrad to prepare for medical school at the University of Michigan, took a degree in health care administration, or TPTB made something up (like Columbia's School of Oncolgy). First Michigan, now Wisconsin... looks like Cuddy is from the Great Lakes region. I love learning about Cuddy.

Since Cuddy said she was "still an undergrad" when she "knew" House at Michigan, I'd go with a post-grad degree in administration.

Dammit, is there any way Cuddy could have completed and endocrinology specialization and post-grad degree and still be Dean of Medicine at 32 without a Time Turner?! Stupid timeline.

Except that residents have crazy, crazy schedules. Shifts up to 30 hours, 80 hours per week, etc. And those "limitations" were not in place when she did her residency. Back then, residents often worked 100 hours per week. She would not have been able to ensure she could be in class enough to actually pass the class.

This is Cuddy we're talking about -- TPTB have characterized as someone for whom if she wants something, she's going to go out and get it. If she wanted to be an administrator at her young age, then dagnabbit, she was going to do it. Maybe that could be why a lot of her medical knowledge is academic now. Not only because she's been an administrator for over a decade, but also because that's what her focus was on back then. Then again, didn't it seem at the beginning of the series that she was much more involved in the medicine than she is now? I re-watched Maternity a couple weeks back, and, wow, she was really on her game. I wish we could see that Cuddy more often.

Doesn't matter how ambitious she is. Hospitals schedule their residents for when they need/want them, and they don't generally work around the residents' personal lives. Especially back when Cuddy was doing her residency. Residency is like having two full-time jobs. She would not have had the time to commit to a course. She said she graduated med school at 25. I would speculate she then did a 3-year residency in internal medicine (taking her to 28 years old), then a 2-year fellowship in endocrinology (which is a subspecialty of internal medicine), which would take her to 30. At that point, upon passing her boards and getting a hospital job with more reasonable hours, she would have had time to work on a degree in health-care admin. And then she got her big admin job at 32. It works.

Humpty Dumpty: Cuddy: I graduated medical school at 25, pissed off that I was second in my class. Chief of Medicine at 32. Second youngest ever, first woman. She probably either skipped a grade in elementary school or she finished college in three years. (I know several people who did this. They just took more than the normal amount of classes each semester, in addition to having college credit for getting a 4 or 5 on AP exams in high school.)

What bothers me is her becoming Dean of Medicine after practicing medicine for only a couple of years. Maybe that's why she didn't see a problem with making an intensivist a full-fledged surgeon...

Perhaps she or her parents knew someone or knew someone who knew someone. Coupled with the degree in health care admin... a sweet job at a young age. It happens. A LOT. It's all who you know and how you work those connections. Of course it's ridiculous even in that context, but this is tv. And on tv, we want sexy, young characters. :)

From the Creative Types thread: Just out of curiosity, how much difference would it make on the show if Cuddy is in love with House as opposed to she isn't? To me, it makes a hell of a lot of difference. I have no problem believing that Cuddy has deep affection or that she loves House as a friend, as a nemesis, as a genius. But there is a vast difference being loving someone and being "in love" with someone. If she was secretly "in love" with him for years, without acting on it, she'd be pathetic. Worse than Cameron's crush by a long shot.