Hey everyone, I am a current student at the Knoxville campus (now a second year). Most of what is listed here is not at all true in my experience and my experiences have been overall very positive (though of course no school is perfect). Our faculty (at least in Knoxville) are very good instructors, receptive to suggestions, and friendly. I'm happy to answer any specific questions you folks may have.
You’re a first year, you’ll get there. I thought the school was great when I started. Then the new wears off and you start to smell the Bull **** and you hate the place.
im a newly minted 4th year and we actually thought it was hilarious all the extra perks they gave the inaugural Knoxville class to cover up all the deficits you guys have to deal with. Like a free smoothie bar is gonna make up for the fact that there is basically a skeleton crew of faculty on campus.
a few things I will address to be fair:
dismissal topic: 100% false. when I was in pre-clinicals, 1 failure meant you remediate, 2 failures means you repeat the semester/year UNLESS they are in separate years and you just remediate again. 3 pre-clinical failures and you’re forced to withdraw from the program unless you can illustrate substantial life circumstances, which in my opinion is fair because they can’t just let you keep remediating and redoing years. It looks bad on them and there is no way you will match. Sucks but it’s true. Also I’d say about half my class failed a course at some point in the first two years.
The good news is 3rd year is a joke in comparison. Attending’s will always give you >90% evals as long as you show up, try ,and aren’t a complete douche bag to literally everyone on the team including patients. Also it goes without saying but don’t be stupid and read. Most attendings are personable and nice and young enough to remember what it’s like to be a med student. They also respect your time enough to send you home if nothing is going on. For example on IM if you came in around 7:30 rounded on your patients, wrote good notes, and could have an intelligent conversation about the patients then they would send you home by 2-3. Basically do that, pass the comats, and do the didactic stuff and you’re guaranteed to make the highest letter grade possible. You also have 3 attempts to pass the comats without redoing a rotation, which is unlikely since the only way you can fail a comat is by not studying all month.
Also, clinical admin at the main campus are helpful. Not always knowledgeable on every topic, but they want to help if you’re nice and friendly. That also includes the clinical dean, personable guy, nice, helpful, and he means well. But with any admin they aren’t your friends, at best he’s a relatable boss.
bad 3rd year comments: what they say about the sites are true. I’ll address that first. Most of the new sites are all rural hospitals in Kentucky. Blessing and a curse in my opinion. At my site we scrubbed every surgery, assisted every birth on L&D and even saw a lot of surprising pathology I wouldn’t expect in that area. Interacted with some residents too but it was sporadic. Overall I don’t have many complaints there, third year is what you make of it. You cant sit around do the bare minimum 2 patients/notes per day on IM and expect to learn as much as someone who’s rounding of 5-6 writing notes and seeing ED consults.
EPC stuff: personally I never had a “horrible” experience. The standardized patients were hit or miss, but I don’t agree with the “main guy” being bad. Frankly I liked him and found him personable and helpful. Blaming him for the course’s issues is like blaming an Army Sergeant for following a general’s orders. It’s not like he has much to work with considering the minimal resources the school puts into that department.
curriculum: it’s been said before (by me I’m pretty sure) but it’s bad. For every 1 lecture you have that is board relevant in second year, you’ll have another that isn’t. It’s all testable, and the schedule is poorly designed. This is evidenced by my class‘ comlex 1 performance. ~11% fail rate, up almost 5% from the previous year. They didn’t share the actual score with my class as a whole but the rumor from “well connected” classmates is it’s in the 480-500 range definitely lower from last year.
Blame the class above you comments: some of it is warranted, some isn’t. For example a few of my beloved classmates cheated on some exams towards the end of second year by having a smart person who studied write hard questions and answers down and hide them in the women’s bathroom under a toilet seat one of the professors found the cheat sheet but couldn’t find identify the perpetrators. So they cracked down on the first and second years HARD. But we did get you free Uworld and got them to drop Combank so it evens out. You’ll thank me when you go to take boards.
lawsuit: news to me. But once I left harrogate I try to stay out of all this ******ed drama. It’s not my business now, I just want my degree and to match into a reasonably decent program.
also it helps your mental state immensely to be out of the physical building, past boards and in the clinic. I was by no means a “great” student but I’ve excelled in the clinic and it’s important to understand that your pre-clinical grades and board scores do not define you. You may find that where pre-clinical was the bane of your existence, real clinical medicine may come to you naturally.
