SonOfPaget
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- Dec 25, 2020
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Current M2 on winter break. Just made this account for ultimate anonymity. I will say that the curriculum changes year-to-year quite a bit based on student feedback, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. Current M1s would likely be a better source of guidance, as they are in the Step 1 P/F state of mind whereas M2s are still taking a scored Step 1, which may change our experience.
Overall, culture is fine. It isn't competitive at all considering years 1 and 2 are true P/F. You just need to pass the blocks, which the overwhelming majority of the class does. Part of your grade comes from professionalism and weekly quizzes, but the lion's share of the grading comes from the block exam, which is quite doable, especially considering we are given 1 entire free week to prep for it. Students are friendly with each other, though COVID has limited our interactions a bit. Many students are roommates and live together. We still have Zoom class, about 2-3 mandatory sessions per week with another 3-4 non-mandatory sessions. Then there are also 3-4 independent learning sessions that don't have lectures and you are expected to learn on your own. Overall, the workload is very manageable if you are self-motivated. It helps to use Anki since the material moves so quick week-to-week. Rarely does material from one week rely on prior weeks' material.
Grading starts years 3-4 on a H/HP/P/F system, which is similar to most schools that still have graded clinical rotations. Part of your grade comes from the shelf exam and the other part comes from written evals. Like I said, I don't know too much since I'm still an M2.
I don't know much about AOA since if you pass all your blocks years 1-2, you are on the same standing as everyone else. You don't get a better rank if you do better on those exams. The true difference maker will be clinical rotation grades and Step 1 scores. Will be different for y'all, obviously.
As for residency matching, I think the school matches pretty well, at least for Chicago. The match list is online. You can see that a good chunk of people are matching very competitive residencies, with the rest being pretty strongly middle-of-the-road. I think the Chicago campus, which has about 180 people, matched something like 10 people to ortho last year, which is insane. But feel free to peruse that list over the past few years to get an idea of what people get into.
I can answer some more questions later since I'll be lying around before our class starts prepping for the boards in the spring.
