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[bobsazeema]

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[drwoofs]

The infamous @gyngyn gave some very good reason as to why everyone should avoid Northstate for med school. I would probably avoid them for an SMP as well. So Temple by a long shot!

May I ask why your GPA is?

 

[GrapesofRath]

Temple by a mile.

90% of people in Temple's program have gotten the GPA needed for acceptance into their MD school. Close to 10% of people who start medical school wont become doctors by comparison. There comes a point where you have to accept the risks that are inherent with medical school and life in general. 90% odds are about as good as you can ask for especially in something like this. The program is designed for you succeed and get into Temple, not to weed you out. They dont want people doing this program and not getting into Temple. This isnt a close call at all.

 

[gyngyn]

Temple. You'll thank me later.

 

[wagonwheel23]

Temple!

Gyngyn has expertly explained on these forums why to avoid CNU. Additionally, I fell into a weird hole last night looking at the school on Google Maps. It's essentially an office park that in no way feels like a real university. #notcute

 

[Throwaway41785]

Title says it all. I'm conflicted between California Northstate and Temple's SMP. Temple has a conditional linkage. If I get a 3.6 in the program, I get to move on to their medical school. However, it is another year of tuition and if I don't hit that 3.6, I'd be done for... At the same time, I'm concerned about the quality of education/reputation of Northstate, especially with it's for-profit status. Any opinions or insight?

The reality is that most residency directors outside of SDN don't actually know much about CNU enough to form an opinion besides that it is a new school. RD's aren't researching the nitty gritty about each new school, for-profit or not. At CNU, you will be rotating through respected hospital systems such as Kaiser Permanente and Dignity Health, and be under the guidance of experienced faculty including the former dean of UC Davis medical school and a former residency director from UC Davis. When it comes time to apply to residency you will be evaluated no differently than any other graduate of a new US MD medical school.

You have been accepted to medical school and I suggest you take your acceptance and run with it. If there's anything I'm cynical about in the premed game, it's the existence of SMP's where you'll essentially be taking an extra year of medical school at the cost of a full year's tuition without any guarantees of acceptance to a US MD at the end of it. School's like Rocky Vista or CNU get a lot of heat for their tax status, but no one bats an eye at the nationwide SMP racket.

Is CNU perfect? No. In fact, if you had gotten into any other US MD school I would recommend against attending. However, you should realize that the interests of the adcoms posting on this website are not the same as yours as a medical school applicant. Take the acceptance, and let the LCME worry about any wrinkles that need to be ironed out.

 

[DrMidlife]

There are more choices than these 2. With a Temple SMP acceptance, that means you're at around 3.4+ and your MCAT is at least 30/510. I assume you're in California.

If you take the Temple path or the CN path, you're paying over $300k for med school. If you'll be borrowing most of that, you should consider building up another shot at the UCs. Think about doing a rigorous traditional masters with pubs, at a UC, and reapply afterwards. Usually when I suggest such a thing, people get really offended, my god you'd WASTE more years as a premed instead of picking a sure thing? MADNESS!!! Oh yeah? Well having pubs in hand when you start med school is a major advantage that pays off when you start trying for residencies. A rigorous masters with pubs plus a decent cuGPA plus decent letters from your grad school PI plus maybe a couple more MCAT points on a retake plus a couple more years of maturity is going to make your next UC interview round a completely different experience. And then you take on a lot less debt, with a lot more leverage for residency. Without having to move cross country or sell your soul.

Just think about it. You have time.

Temple is by far the better option if your family is paying your way. Perfectly good school. Crap Philly neighborhood, but otherwise good.

My problem with CN, aside from the total lack of ethical practices with financial aid, is the same problem I have with the Carib schools. The students who do fine in school will do fine in the match and will be fine. The students on the left half of the bell curve are not going to get any help, are at risk of failing out, are at risk of doing poorly on the boards, and are at risk of matching poorly. You can make no assumptions about which half of the bell curve you'll land on. I suggest that you can make no assumptions about CN getting things right in its first couple of classes - clearly the idea of staffing up to do right by their students is not a priority. CN is different from established USMD and DO schools, where faculty and staff take responsibility for applying best practices to student success. More or less.

BTW, having rotation sites is just a basic LCME requirement. It doesn't mean you have a well-known clinical department chair who can/will use his/her contacts on your behalf. It just means that the basic requirements for being a med school are preliminarily okay. By contrast, a med school that has its own hospital is generally going to set you up for a more predictable 3rd year and a more successful 4th year because the clinical faculty are academic professionals instead of community faculty. Sometimes community faculty are amazing teachers and mentors, but it's not their job to pave your career path.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Throwaway41785]

There are more choices than these 2. With a Temple SMP acceptance, that means you're at around 3.4+ and your MCAT is at least 30/510. I assume you're in California.

If you take the Temple path or the CN path, you're paying over $300k for med school. If you'll be borrowing most of that, you should consider building up another shot at the UCs. Think about doing a rigorous traditional masters with pubs, at a UC, and reapply afterwards. Usually when I suggest such a thing, people get really offended, my god you'd WASTE more years as a premed instead of picking a sure thing? MADNESS!!! Oh yeah? Well having pubs in hand when you start med school is a major advantage that pays off when you start trying for residencies. A rigorous masters with pubs plus a decent cuGPA plus decent letters from your grad school PI plus maybe a couple more MCAT points on a retake plus a couple more years of maturity is going to make your next UC interview round a completely different experience. And then you take on a lot less debt, with a lot more leverage for residency. Without having to move cross country or sell your soul.

Just think about it. You have time.

Temple is by far the better option if your family is paying your way. Perfectly good school. Crap Philly neighborhood, but otherwise good.

My problem with CN, aside from the total lack of ethical practices with financial aid, is the same problem I have with the Carib schools. The students who do fine in school will do fine in the match and will be fine. The students on the left half of the bell curve are not going to get any help, are at risk of failing out, are at risk of doing poorly on the boards, and are at risk of matching poorly. You can make no assumptions about which half of the bell curve you'll land on. I suggest that you can make no assumptions about CN getting things right in its first couple of classes - clearly the idea of staffing up to do right by their students is not a priority. CN is different from established USMD and DO schools, where faculty and staff take responsibility for applying best practices to student success. More or less.

BTW, having rotation sites is just a basic LCME requirement. It doesn't mean you have a well-known clinical department chair who can/will use his/her contacts on your behalf. It just means that the basic requirements for being a med school are preliminarily okay. By contrast, a med school that has its own hospital is generally going to set you up for a more predictable 3rd year and a more successful 4th year because the clinical faculty are academic professionals instead of community faculty. Sometimes community faculty are amazing teachers and mentors, but it's not their job to pave your career path.

Best of luck to you.

There are 2 major differences between CNU and Caribbean medical schools that you are overlooking.

1) CNU is accredited by the LCME which would not look kindly on attrition rates like those seen in the Caribbean. Nothing is less profitable for CNU than losing accreditation, so it is not in their interest to accept students who can't hack it in medical school.

2) CNU's student body is much more competitive than those in Caribbean Medical schools. It's inaugural class has an average MCAT of 32.2 and average GPA of 3.48. Those stats are higher than many established US allopathic medical schools, never mind any DO schools or Caribbean schools. With a average MCAT greater than the average US MD school, their students will do just fine on the boards.

 

[hopefulERdoc251]

So my question is that in the event that OP somehow becomes marginally short of getting that 3.6 and was required to apply on his own, how would it look that he was accepted but then declined? Would the same problems surface at Temple even if he made the 3.6 gpa cut because wouldn't he have to formally file an AMCAS application?

 

[GnomeBeGone]

Your options are well presented, so I will only add the following points....

My problem with CN, aside from the total lack of ethical practices with financial aid, is the same problem I have with the Carib schools. The students who do fine in school will do fine in the match and will be fine. The students on the left half of the bell curve are not going to get any help, are at risk of failing out, are at risk of doing poorly on the boards, and are at risk of matching poorly. You can make no assumptions about which half of the bell curve you'll land on.

A good friend of mine here has (unfortunately) repeatedly fallen below the rest of the class. You can rest assured that they are devoting significant resources to these students from lots of 1:1 hours with faculty to paid peer tutors. I know the faculty are (optionally/mandatorily depending on the individual circumstance) devising summer work/review sessions for these individuals to ensure that they are adequately prepared for M2 / do not fall hopelessly behind in content mastery for USMLE.

As stated above, LCME is unforgiving of student attrition, so if you trust nothing else, trust that Northstate knows better than to let these students struggle and fail.
Or, from another perspective : The net cost of providing academic support (when the school already employs academic success faculty/staff) is minimal compared to losing a student's tuition dollars. Even the business office shouldn't struggle with this concept.

BTW, having rotation sites is just a basic LCME requirement. It doesn't mean you have a well-known clinical department chair who can/will use his/her contacts on your behalf. It just means that the basic requirements for being a med school are preliminarily okay.

If anything, clerkships are an area where I have the fewest doubts that things will be done well and with students' interests in mind for several reasons :

• The MD directing phase B/C of the curriculum is a very no nonsense guy who used to hunt down bad Docs for the CA state medical board. He's definitely got an 'over-my-dead-body' mentality when it comes to sub-standard physicians being anywhere near the public.
• I count two core clerkships where there are current students whose parents are doctors that applied successfully for leading roles. While they may not be seasoned clerkship guru's (yet), they are well assisted and have unquestionable interest in fully leveraging their connections to design the best overall clerkship experience. (Students select their clerkship tract by lottery).
• We have two former residency directors among our faculty (and no, these aren't people Dean Silva called out of retirement). They know the residency end-game well and I am sure that they have no intention of being the face of a failing training program.
• Like anywhere else, the local community has been highly supportive of having a new medical school to serve their area. The community faculty arguably have more incentive to invest in CNU students' training than the students currently piped in from distant (though well-established) medical schools, seeing as many CNU students are from here and want to stay here.
• Schools can say whatever they want about how good their preclinical curriculum is (To be honest, the differences are about as profound as putting on a different colored hat with how tightly schools adhere to LCME standards) --> however, clerkships must be done well because our clinical abilities will be readily discernible by our program directors come residency or during away rotations. These interactions will shape the ultimate success or failure of current/future CNUCOM students far more than the opinions on SDN about for-profit medical education.
  
  --> And to that end, I will say this: If you come here, you need to have confidence in your own abilities. You can be a mediocre student at an established medical school and probably get by with an okay Match on reputation. You will not have that luxury if you are a lousy student at CNU. However, given the inherent leniency of a (H) P/F grading system, you will have more time to "find your way" at CNU compared to Temple (where you could so much as sneeze and ruin a 3.6 since it is a 1 year program), as long as you adapt quickly enough to score well on step 1 and carry that energy into your clinical rotations. The way I see it, you have two questions to ask yourself: Will I have my act together from day one? and... Do I want to wait another year in order to get into a school with a better reputation? If you answered yes to both questions, choose Temple. If not, I'll see you in the fall.