Could some current students speak on the pros and cons they've encountered so far? How is the quality of professors? How is communication between students and the school? And for any 2nd years, with 6ish months till the school's first try at boards, how do you and your class feel?
Could someone also explain what a typical day looks like for a first year student?
I loved everything I heard and saw at the interview but would like to get a more honest opinions if possible.
I'm an OMS-1, so I've only been here for 3 months, but so far, I like it here, and I don't regret choosing this school over KCOM.
Pros:
- Lots and lots of support from the community, and surrounding hospitals.
- GMEs getting newly accredited in the state with our support.
- Lots and lots of rotation sites already (compared to other new schools)
- The school is not for profit compared to other new schools which allowed us to be eligible for federal loans.
- Experienced professors coming from KCU, KCOM, LMU-DCOM, and other medical schools.
- New Helix curriculum allowing us to go over the entire pre-clinical materials 3 times in different settings with a focus on what's important for boards accompanied with a Team-based learning approach.
- Ultrasound introduced to our curriculum giving us a good head start for clinical rotations and residency. One of the few schools to have this.
- Hands on clinical skills course, FOPC, from the start. Again good head start for clinical years and residency.
- Exam are made of board style questions and timed similarly to boards as well which allows us to get use to the boards early.
- Kaplan board review course paid by the school in second year.
- Entire 3rd floor dedicated to ongoing research by our current faculty members that students can participate in during their summer break. You have to apply for it during your second semester, and you get a $2000 stipend if you get accepted.
- Very experienced and recognized dean. Ex-CEO of the AOA.
- Apartments on campus available for students.
- Discounts for ARCOM students at many different locations around Fort Smith.
- Mercy clinic on campus available for students to get regular checkups, or get some clinical experience as well.
- Mercy Hospital and Sparks health system partnership with ARCOM allowing us to have great clinical rotations right here in the Fort Smith area.
Cons:
- Construction going on for the new building that's gonna house the other health programs and anatomy lab upstairs sometimes cause noises during class. That's only for the OMS-1 lecture hall though. The OMS-2 lecture hall is soundproof. But this problem should be fixed during Christmas break. Our Lecture Hall should be soundproof by the time you guys come here.
- If you don't like mandatory lectures and dress code, then that might be something to consider as well. I don't mind either of them though. I actually enjoy our lectures, and like I said we have experienced professors that aren't boring to listen to for 1 or 2 hours. Also BECOM lectures aren't mandatory if you stay above 70% average for the whole semester.
- ARCOM is a new school, so it's not all gonna be perfect. They are still figuring some things out, and faculty and staff are all ears for suggestions from us students. Good thing is most hiccups have been taken care of by the current OMS-2's suggestions from last year, and hopefully by the time you guys are here everything will be smooth.
- No board scores yet obviously, so we hope our current second years will be killing it next year.
About the quality of our professors, like I said before our professors are very experienced with many years of teaching under their belt from other medical schools, so I know that they are very qualified and know what they need to teach us.
I feel like the communication between us and the school is fair. The admins are open to suggestions, and our faculty have an open door policy, so you can drop by their office anytime. We get lots and lots of emails, so you always have to keep an eye on that, so you don't miss anything important.
I'll let a second year answer that part.
A typical day here start at 9am, and we have lectures all the way to 12pm (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday). We have anatomy lab once a week, and it goes from 1pm to 4pm (group A on Mondays and group B on Wednesdays). OMM lab also once a week, and it goes from 1pm to 3pm if you're group A and from 3pm to 5pm if you're group B. On Thursdays we got our clinical skills course, FOPC, and we got one lecture from 7am to 8am, then group A goes to lab from 8am to 10am, and group B from 10am to 12pm. As you can see we only have two late days and 3 days we get done by 12pm on a typical week. But sometimes we get TBL (team based learning) sessions incorporated into this schedule as well maybe once or twice a month. Plus, our anatomy course is 16 weeks, so it ends mid November, and around that same time we'll also be starting a new class, IBC, which is mostly made of TBL sessions. That brief period where Anatomy intersects with IBC is when our schedule is the most packed, but it's only 2 weeks, and as soon we're done with that last anatomy exam, we go back to a less packed schedule again.
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