I haven't posted here in awhile, but thought I would add to this discussion...
I interviewed with one of the people who is responsible for dealing specifically with the probation issue. He said the main problem was the curriculum - lack of cohesiveness between subjects, lack of communication between professors, and in general the curriculum deemed not up to par in terms of preclinical training. He didn't try to B.S. that it was all about lounge space, but he definitely said there is a lot to be done.
I guess my point is this. I went to GW thinking it was my top choice - overall, I felt the students there to be there because "this was the best school that accepted me." The public health opportunities are amazing, no doubt, but I would never pay the second highest med school tuition in the country for a curriculum that leaves much to be desired.
Edit: just thought I'd add - I withdrew from the waitlist the day after I was placed on it, so I REALLY have no stake in this. This isn't a plea so I can get a spot.
As a current student, I feel like I need to chime in here.
I don't know who you talked to, but the only curriculum type of problems that have been brought up to the students (in our multiple meetings with the deans) were:
1. The wording of course objectives
2. Oversight from the Dean's office. Monitoring student hours, etc.
The objectives have been fixed (or so the deans say) and believe me, they're monitoring our hours very closely now. Like daily. So that will definitely be in compliance too.
Also of note, GW's board scores have consistently been above the national mean. Only slightly above for the past few years, granted, but we're still certainly learning medicine just fine at GW and the LCME specifically commented that residency programs reported GW's graduates did well in their programs. I know that it is annoying that the report isn't public, but apparently this is an LCME rule, not GW's.
As for the ICM course...yeah, it wasn't the most organized, but they are working on that too. Our class filled our surveys for every lecture given. Some were very good, others not so good. I think the biggest difference with this course versus the others is that it's all clinicians lecturing since it's not a basic science class, and there's definitely varying levels of teaching ability among clinicians, as I'm sure everyone knows. FYI, ICM = Intro to Clinical Medicine and is sort of a transition class between the basic science years and the clinical years, and is taken in the second half of second year. It also helps go over some of the management principles tested on the boards. Anyways, as far as I know, this particular class had nothing to do with the probation at all.
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