2017-2018 Pennsylvania State University

Started by Lucca
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No Joke!! I called and found out I applied to a program that doesn’t exist anymore… don’t know if that explains my months of silence.
 
GliaLimitans said:
What. the. ****. Which program? How on earth does that happen?
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It was on my primary. . . I was verified on 06/02 so I think I just applied before they caught it. I called and the admissions staff were verified confused. I hope this didn't unnecessarily waste 80$ or however much this school was. . .
 
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meddm said:
11 weeks since my interview and still no news...anyone know when the committee will meet next?? Very tempted to call admissions and ask what my status is
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Onto my 16th week post early November interview. They tend to release decisions end/beg of every month. Hoping to hear back within the next week or so.
 
gollyg said:
Close, but no cigar! Here in Hershey we have problem based learning MWF from 8-10am. We are assigned two cases on Mondays where we formulate our own learning objectives from the cases in small groups to go home and research. We do one case on Wednesday and one case on Friday. The official LOs are released on our curriculum website after each case, but our facilitators and the cases themselves often do a good job at getting us to ask the right questions. On Tuesdays we have our humanities course (small group and large group) from 10-12pm. On Thursdays we have our systems of health science course from 10-12pm. The other two hours of MTWThF are didactic lectures. Sprinkled into the weeks are our patient navigation experience (part of systems where we work with nurse care managers and social workers to help patients overcome obstacles to accessing care and to see patients beyond a clinic setting by doing home visits and such), patient as teachers (part of humanities where we are assigned a patient with a life-long illness to just meet with and learn how their disease affects their lives), clinical skills group to learn history taking and of course, clinical skills. With this we also have afternoons where we are with our clinical skills advisors for on-the-wards/in-the-clinic patient encounters to work on our physical exam and history taking, and some random mandatory sessions for different things every once in a while. It is of worthy mention that the College of Medicine just bumped up our “weekly commitments” from 28 to 34 hours per week like a month ago, but trust me when I say that there is plenty of time for “self directed study”. A few weeks so far in the first year have been crazy packed but most of my weeks have been nicely scheduled. Also just figured I should mention that every week we have a formative quiz due on Sunday night to reinforce key concepts from the week (and to sometimes teach you some stuff!). I’ve enjoyed the curriculum so far!
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Hi! Thank you so much for all this information! I was wondering how do you feel about PBL classes bc it seems like there is more PBL class time than traditional? Also are both PBL and traditional lectures mandatory?
 
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trying2bdoc said:
Hi! Thank you so much for all this information! I was wondering how do you feel about PBL classes bc it seems like there is more PBL class time than traditional? Also are both PBL and traditional lectures mandatory?
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Haha yes I can get how you would think that. Each week we have 6 hours of PBL in the classroom and 10 hours of didactic lecture. For every hour of lecture they say you “should” spend about 2 hours reviewing it/making a studying product. Researching for one PBL case take people about 3-4 hours I would say (some less some more). I really enjoy PBLs because it reinforces your learning and gets you reading and organizing information how you want to think about it rather than just a lecturer who decides how she/he formats things (which could be poor or okay!). It can be a pain to put in the time to do good research (especially if you have an extremely busy week with lots of other commitments), but you are in a small group so you don’t always need to do everything and if you are crunched for time and/or lazy one case you can definitely slack off... but that is on you because it is your learning and knowledge that may be missing out. Do you have any other questions on that? It is definitely something I did not have before medical school but it keeps me engaged.

Oh, almost forgot. PBL is mandatory. 100% of didactic lectures are not, but many (maybe a little more than half) of our humanities and systems lectures are and their respective small groups are always mandatory. Very convoluted way of saying that most mornings you have to be on campus for at least 2 hours.
 
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gollyg said:
Haha yes I can get how you would think that. Each week we have 6 hours of PBL in the classroom and 10 hours of didactic lecture. For every hour of lecture they say you “should” spend about 2 hours reviewing it/making a studying product. Researching for one PBL case take people about 3-4 hours I would say (some less some more). I really enjoy PBLs because it reinforces your learning and gets you reading and organizing information how you want to think about it rather than just a lecturer who decides how she/he formats things (which could be poor or okay!). It can be a pain to put in the time to do good research (especially if you have an extremely busy week with lots of other commitments), but you are in a small group so you don’t always need to do everything and if you are crunched for time and/or lazy one case you can definitely slack off... but that is on you because it is your learning and knowledge that may be missing out. Do you have any other questions on that? It is definitely something I did not have before medical school but it keeps me engaged.

Oh, almost forgot. PBL is mandatory. 100% of didactic lectures are not, but many (maybe a little more than half) of our humanities and systems lectures are and their respective small groups are always mandatory. Very convoluted way of saying that most mornings you have to be on campus for at least 2 hours.
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Thanks for the info! And so is there only 1 pbl case per week then and then we discuss the other 2 pbl classes of the week? Also even with the PBL, is it usually a 8-12pm schedule on most days? Do you feel like compared to other medical schools you are in required class time a lot more often?
 
II this morning, previously silent since being complete at the end of July. There are two faculty interviews scheduled from 9-11 am, are they an hour each???!

Edit: Also, it went to my spam folder. I check it every day, luckily, but this is the first med school communication that's gone to spam for me, so make sure you're checking yours!
 
GliaLimitans said:
II this morning, previously silent since being complete at the end of July. There are two faculty interviews scheduled from 9-11 am, are they an hour each???!

Edit: Also, it went to my spam folder. I check it every day, luckily, but this is the first med school communication that's gone to spam for me, so make sure you're checking yours!
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Mine were 45 min each! Left some time for traveling to and from each
 
GliaLimitans said:
II this morning, previously silent since being complete at the end of July. There are two faculty interviews scheduled from 9-11 am, are they an hour each???!

Edit: Also, it went to my spam folder. I check it every day, luckily, but this is the first med school communication that's gone to spam for me, so make sure you're checking yours!
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Both of my interviews were actually over an hour, haha. I was late to the presentation at 11! Go with the flow. Definitely the longest interviews I've had this cycle.
 
Are people being rejected or accepted after post-interview holds, or are people on post-interview holds pretty much not getting anything until after April 30th?
 
Anyone knows what the chances are of getting in with II on March 26th, I don't want to spend the money for traveling only to be on an alternate list
 
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robe-pr said:
OMG just accepted by email right now. Interviewed 01/03. First acceptance this cycle and couldn’t be more thankful!
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The_Free_Elf said:
ACCEPTED!!!!! I’m shaking right now haha can’t believe it! Ahhh:soexcited: interviewed 01/12, OOS
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Congrats to both of you guys/gals!! That's amazing 🙂 And that's a pretty timely reply from them. I interviewed in mid-December, so I'm hoping to hear back from them soon.
 
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