For those of you that have been to UAB, especially those currently attending, what is the school like? Specifically, how is the library, classroom setting, and any place people study.
Also, for those that have seen south, how are the same places in comparison. I know south's library and classrooms are ok (like a 6.5/10)
We just finished Fun 1 and I'm still a little brain-drained, but I'll try my best to answer. The library? It's the same quality as any other med school I imagine. No better and no worse than any of the other med schools ranked around it. I don't study there, but that's a personal preference.
In class, we're all in the same lecture hall. All 188 of us. We have a lot of professors (mostly PhDs since we're still in the preclinical years) and for Fun 1, we were in class from 8-12 and 1-3, 8-12, or 9-12 and 1-3. In the afternoons, we had Intro to Clinical Medicine once a week and lab once or twice a week from 3-5. Even though there are "assigned" readings with each lecture for the day, we are able to get all of our information from the lecture slides (pretty detailed most of the time), from transcriptions of what the professor said during that lecture block, and from an MP3 file of the professor. There are multiple ways that the information is made available to you because everyone studies differently which brings me to my next point.
Where do people study, you ask? Wherever the hell they want. There's the Lister Hill Library, Volker Hall, your apartment/house, coffee shops, a park bench, etc. What matters is that YOU are learning the material in whatever way makes sense to you and that YOU are passing. Med school is all about independent study and no one will tell you about the #1 place to study and the #1 source to use because it's all in the eye of the beholder. In fact, from what I've been told by MS3/4s and current doctors, the preclinical education at all med schools is the same. Whether it's Harvard or Florida State. Med schools differ in the quality of their clerkships during clinical years, the quality of their facilities and their patient populations, etc. So things that don't really matter until your 3rd year. This is why when you come to interview (if you haven't already), your questions should be more focused on what 3rd and 4th year are like and less on the preclinical stuff.
My final comments: med school is hard. Not the individual concepts most of the time, but the sheer volume of the stuff we are held accountable for. It's ridiculous and it only increases as time goes by. I didn't really get it when older med students and doctors told me how brutal it would be in the time between getting accepted and actually starting, but now I do. But hey, if med school was easy, then everyone and their mother would be a doctor, right?
