The class of 2009 had approximately 90% on time graduation. If I'm not wrong for our class 2010, the rate is >90%. Most of us were done with all the clinical requirements by graduation (May 15th). I believe at this point, there are only a couple of us still in clinic finishing up.
And to answer the OP question, the cons of attending USC are
1. The thing that everybody dreads about; the cost. It's going to cost you quite a bit to go to this school as everybody already knows. I owe about 400k right now and to be honest, I'm really really worried about it. However, if you can get the military scholarship that'd help a lot since they pay the whole tuition plus you get a monthly stipend. Either that or you can select the IBR (Income-based repayment) plan after you graduate. With this type of plan, you pay back the loans according to the amount that you make. If you additional info on this, try this
http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/IBRPlan.jsp
2. PBL. To be honest, a lot of us (class of 2010) hated PBL. For me personally, I really hated PBL. Don't get me wrong, PBL is good to a certain extent. However, I believe that with the PBL systems you're going to get "gaps" in your knowledge on a certain subject. I don't believe that your peer, someone with a similar amount of knowledge as you, after reading a few pages on a certain subject will become an expert and will be able to teach all that he/she learned to the whole group.
3. Competency exams. The exams are no joke as many of the current USC students in this forum will confirm it. The criteria here at USC is mush harsher than those you will see in boards such as WREB. To break it down, you have to do
-3 perio comps (a sophomore, junior, and senior),
-5 composite comps,
-2 amalgam comps (you will realize that nobody nowadays wants to do amalgam as our class struggled to find patient to fulfill this requirement. However, the administration saw the problem and allowed us to take that on mounted extracted teeth)
-3 cast preparation comps (preparing a tooth for a crown - this is the area that many of us struggled to get the right patient as there are specific criteria for the tooth to qualify)
-3 cementation comps (cementing the crowns)
4. # of clinical requirements. This used to be a huge problem for the class of '07 & '08. This was when we had that 19% on time graduation because they had way too many requirements. However for class of '09 and our class, they did lower the # significantly (note the on-time graduation rate here: 90% & >90%). However, comparing to other school the # of the clinical requirements is still relatively high. Correct me if I'm wrong but UCLA only requires about 8-9 crowns. We have to do a minimum of 20.
5. Problem getting a chair. It's true for our class. We had to fight pretty hard for those. We have about 160 chairs available that's divided into disciplines such as data collection, treatment planning, perio, endo and so on. Every morning, at exactly 7:30 we have to sign on to our online account and whoever gets there fast will get the chair. Keep in mind that both junior and senior classes will try to schedule those 160 chairs. There are about 180 students per class. Minus those that have class, or rotations I'm guessing there are about 250 students fighting for 160 chairs. So yes, it does get difficult trying to get a chair. However, before I graduated I've heard that it was getting easier scheduling a chair (any USC senior out there that can confirm this?)
With all this, most of our class and the '09 were able to finish on time. For me, I was done with all the comps exams by the Summer trimester going into my senior year. And I was done with most (99%) of my requirements by my Fall trimester of senior year. Having said that, there were a lot of my classmates that were still struggling till the last day. And there were also a lot of my classmates that were able to finish with everything way before I did. It really depends on how lucky you are in getting a good case/patient. As some people that pointed this out previously in this forum that a lot of faculty at USC are *******s. Yes, it is true, however there are also some great faculty that are really patient and willing to teach. I have to admit, there were days that I wanted to beat the **** out of some USC faculty for being a jerk. There were days that I had to apologize for what I didn't do, there were also days that faculty f*cked up the case and put the blame on your shoulder but I guess that's a part of dental school or any school for that matters. With all that being said, I do feel very confident in my clinical skills as we were rigorously trained. Of course, there are areas that I wish the school would have placed more emphasis but then again life's not perfect right?
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