I am not trying to put down the curriculum, I just trying to understand it, so please don't take any offense to my comments. I would greatly appreciate your feedback though. Because you probably understand a lot more about this than me.
With ATSU-SOMA it hard for me to understand that you can learn all of your second year academics in a clinic, maybe I just not comprehending what exactly you do you second year, besides just starting clinical rotations early. My fear is what if you end up in a clinic with not much going on, how are you going to learn all that pathology and pharmacology you are supposed to know the second year?
My reply was actually to AdemTD's comment about ATSU-SOMA, I wasn't offended at all by anything you or he/she said, I was just trying to point out that to dismiss a school without closely investigating the curriculum would be foolish.
Obviously, you do want to take a closer look though, so I'll try to answer your questions as best as I can. Bear with me as I'm still an M-0, so while I can't share real life medical student experience, I can share what I have found through researching the school and visiting the Mesa and Brooklyn campuses. And like I said, it's not for everyone. A lot of people love it, and a lot of people are really turned off by it - it really depends on your learning style and personality.
Year one is 11 months long. This gives you more time to take care of some of the second year stuff before you head out to the clinical sites. Also, the curriculum is system-based, so you are learning pathology and pharmacology from day one, along with anatomy, physiology, biochem, and other standard first year fare.
Year two is a hybrid between clinicals and the remaining systems that you didn't cover in year one. Each Community Health Center has about 10 students from each class. I am told that second years are spending about 60% of their time in class and 40% of the time doing clinical work.
There are 3-4 PhD's/MD/DO's that are ATSU-SOMA faculty at each CHC. Second year classes are taught by these doctors, through podcasts sent from Mesa, and through a computer system that the school developed to deliver lectures to the students. I watched as one of the second years put a lecture on 2X fast forward during parts of the lecture that he understood well, and then slowed it down and rewound it for parts that he needed to understand better. You have time spent in a live forum with the professors from Mesa every week to ask and answer questions. And of course there is small group learning with your cohorts at the CHC, and self study on your own.
The second year students are taking their Step 1 boards right now, so we'll see how all of this is working out for them. I can't help but feel that I will do better on the boards with SOMA's learning style.
One thing that SOMA is weak on (I think, although it could proabably be done if you wanted to bad enough) is laboratory research. I'm sure that there will be as many opportunities for research there compared to other schools. (although no DO school is KNOWN for having a stellar research program, research has got to be even harder at SOMA, given the moving around and the fact that you will be at a clinic, not at a univeristy with the appropriate facilities for lab work.)
That said, I think there will actually be great opportunities for research in Public Health at the clinics, given the patient populations and the physicians that work there.
