I am a student at the Virginia campus. Go to the NYCOM.
Our clinical rotations coordinator (Sarah M.) has prevented many students this year and previous years from getting much needed sub-internships and away rotation by simply not submitting paperwork on time. She is known to strictly screen calls, and not respond to emails for weeks. This wouldn't be such a problem, but we very low board scores on average because the school has pooled its resources to opening many satellite campuses all around the states.
VCOM is not a close knit family like you would think. Almost all of the high-position holders and faculty are alumni and family members. This has nothing to do with students being close to the faculty or benefiting in any way. The students are the cash cows in this system.
Here are some reasons why not to go to VCOM:
1) Rotation coordinator (Sarah M.) is extremely lazy and slow to submit paperwork. Almost all of us have missed a great sub-intern or away rotation opportunity because she submitted weeks past the due dates. (last year's class had a very similar experience). When asked for updates, she usually doesn't respond to emails AT ALL (so i've heard). She has screened my calls multiple times despite being in the office for unknown reasons. Many of us are confused to find her out and about having lunch or "out of the office" during VCOM business hours while we miss deadlines for rotation paperwork.
2) Teachers are lazy: MANY of the tests are just copies from year to year. This means many students can just get 100% on tests by talking to past classes about where faculty get their questions. Our physiology professor last year (Dr. R) was the most notorious for this. He couldn't even pronounce many of the things he was trying to teach us, and would simple copy the entire test out of board review Q-banks. Other teachers simply pick up their 1000$ for the class, and pass out the answers in the first 5 minutes to their questions. Your quality of education is very poor. A couple of my friends actually failed COMLEX 1 due to not being prepared. Many others in the class have also, but most do not talk about it.
3) Faculty are extremely difficult to deal with. Crystal in particular, is always nasty to students. She will openly yell at some in front of the class, and has screamed at the class to shut up 5 or 6 times. Nobody knows why she hates everyone, but it makes for a very negative classroom experience.
4) There is a STRICT attendance policy and dress code. You have to dress up every day, and always need to show up. No studying at your own time or at home. No skipping the under-qualified teacher's lectures. You can miss up to 15% of the classes, but afterwards, you receive an automatic academic failure and have to re-mediate.
5) Big brother system. There were two students who were casually talking about what they didn't like about the school. They were overheard, and called into the office for disciplinary action. Please note that there were no unprofessional things being said.
6) Unprepared for boards. The curriculum doesn't really make you feel ready for boards at all. We are given over a month before board to buy expensive prep courses or independently study all of the things we were never taught.
7) Bias site selection process. I got a good site luckily, but your core rotation site will be selected based on your comments of why you want to go there and how much the faculty likes you. There is no way to earn or influence your placement besides sucking up to the faculty.
8) Be family medicine or GET OUT. We have required recruitment events where every single booth is family medicine. We only get 4 weeks of internal medicine (most schools have double that), and get 12 weeks of family medicine type training (rural / family / geriatrics etc). Be prepared to get trained on colds, cough, and hypertension for the majority of your clinical training, and to be less competitive than candidates who actually got a diversified training.
