ive heard a lot of negative back-lash from the students there (1st -3rd years) about the new curriculum. Can anyone testify to this? ive been hearing stories that the step 1 scores were dramatically lower for the current 3rd years, issues with professors being cold/standoff-ish/generally unavailable for help, disorganization, bad board prep, etc. I have many friends there in all 3 of those classes and many of them have said that the new curriculum is causing a lot of people to be "left behind" so to speak, and the overall attitude among students has been becoming more increasingly negative because of it. kinda scary to hear good friends of mine, who are extremely gifted students, tell me that they hate med school and that they kinda wish they went somewhere else... any current students have thoughts on this?
The COMLEX I pass rate for this past year was lower than expected, even for being the first class through the new curriculum. Of course there will be a drop right after a significant change. Those in charge are actively making adjustments to move in the right direction. They've already eliminated a course for the M2 second semester and put a semester-long board prep class in its place, as well as making the semester end earlier so we have more dedicated study time. The M2 spring semester is not finalized yet for this year.
Many (most?) schools have a policy in place that you can't take step 1 until you make some minimum score on the COMSAE (COMLEX version of NBME). Last year, OSU did not have this policy (this is important to realize) and several students went ahead and took the real thing without doing well on the COMSAE. Not sure what they thought would happen, but the results weren't good. Although that can't be blamed on the school, OSU has now placed a minimum COMSAE score of 451 before you can take step 1. Along those lines, every class has its own personality makeup and, for whatever reason, apparently some in the 2017 class did not realize the gravity of the COMLEX and did not study for it like they should have.
When you get to med school, you'll realize very quickly that
the thing med students do best is complain. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Not a single one of the professors wants to see a student fail. Will you like every professor's lecture style? No. But they give you the info you need to know. No matter what school you go to, there will be things you are expected to know for step 1 that you will not have gotten in class. It's still your responsibility to know it. That's what UFAP and Googlepedia are for. Don't complain about it, just do it.
I don't know how a new curriculum could have people 'left behind' vs the old curriculum, I really don't know what to say to that. If anything, they are annoyingly adamant about students not being left behind. I'd be wary of listening to the current MS1 class--first thing they hear when the get to campus at the beginning of med school is how bad the COMLEX pass rate was so everything they do here must be wrong. Not exactly starting off on the right foot. They actually booed a professor last week when he explained how they were
slightly rearranging their schedule that actually makes things much better for them. That's not acceptable behavior towards our professors.
The curriculum committee is extremely open to listening to students' concerns and actually making changes to address them. They've made many already and will continue to. There's a risk of being the first class through a new curriculum, the members of the class of 2017 took that risk and, believe it or not, most are doing just fine.
/shots fired