HELLOOO I am a current upper class student at touro middletown. I was browsing this thread because it's been pretty quiet at the hospital tonight and I wanted to see what rumors people are spreading about touro
. I saw that a couple of you have been desperately looking for insight from current students.
1) Clinical sites:
I can't speak about harlem, but the clinical sites at middletown are pretty amazing. We have a close affiliation with ORMC, which has 6 residency programs: family, internal, emergency, surgery, psych, and a TRI program (transitional intern year). EM and psych have already successfully gotten ACGME accreditation, and the rest are likely to follow by the end of this or next year. Early access to residents and program directors is really helpful because it trains you to perform on your 4th year audition rotations, it's a lot easier and quicker to get letters of rec from program directors, and you can be involved in research with residents as early as your 1st year since the hospital is just a minutes away. Other hospitals with a good amount of acute pathology include St. Lukes in Newburgh, Nyack hospital, and St. Joseph's in Syracuse. If you're looking for more outpatient oriented rural sites, options include Horizon Medical Group with offices throughout orange county and neighboring counties. There is a lottery system where students rank the sites that they want, and in general, most people get the sites that they want.
2) Flipped classroom:
Not all classes at touro are created equally. For the better lecturers, I watched all of their videos. For others, I studied off the powerpoint. On-campus clicker sessions test the material in the pre-assigned videos. Unless they changed this recently, attendance accounts for 10% of your final grade in each class, and your attendance grade is determined by your clicker grade score. Grades for most classes are curved up. If you attend zero clicker sessions, you could still potentially score higher than a 90%. People like to complain about having to attend clicker sessions, but it's really not that bad. I would estimate that you'd be in class/labs for 20 hours per week.
3) Middletown area:
Middletown was not my first choice, but I was so glad to end up here. The faculty are amazing, they go above and beyond with extra curricular groups, and they are always accessible during office hours. The town isn't anything fancy, but it's been improving gradually every year. There are now 2 breweries in town, there is a mall with a round 1 arcade and new cinema. Also, you are only 45 minutes away from New Paltz, 45 minutes away from Poughkeepsie, about 2-3 hours away from the Adirondacks, and about 2 hours away from NYC. Some of the best outdoor attractions on this side of the US are a short drive away. If Middletown isn't for you, you could move to Goshen, a very cute nearby town with lots of restaurants just 10-15 minutes away.
4) General cons about touro: Yes, it's pretty expensive, but still on par with most DO schools. Sometimes administration is a little dis-organized. We had a full year where there was no dining hall because of a fall out between the school and the dining services company owner. If classes are rescheduled due to weather, technical difficulties, etc., there is no regard for any pre-existing commitments you may have made. Yes, while the old hospital is quite large, only a portion of the old hospital is occupied by touro. There are plans to start clinics in the rest of the old hospital, but this has been put on hold for whatever reason, unrelated to the school. The dorm rooms were old patient rooms, but they have been completely renovated so I wouldn't say that it's disturbing or gross or whatever to live in those rooms. If you pay a little extra, you could get a slightly larger room with a double bed and they are quite nice. It is not required to live in the dorms ever.
Feel free to reply or PM me if you still have any questions.