In regards to the new curriculum, I’ll do my best to summarize it quickly. Basically, instead of doing the classic 2 year pre clinical / 2 year clinical setup, Miller has opted for a little over 1 year pre clinical and then starting rotations early in your MS2 year. The pre-clinical courses are set up Monday / Tuesday / Thursday / Friday mornings and are a combination of lectures and small group learning / discussion. Wednesday’s are off for “self-directed learning” where you can study, chill, or do whatever you want. The courses are 8 AM - 12 PM and focus on “symptom-based learning” as opposed to “system-based learning”. First, we learn about what the normal human body looks and acts like, and then we learn about a symptom and all the possible things it could mean. This style of learning comes from the way medicine actually works i.e. your patient won’t tell you “my lymphatic system is bothering me”, they’ll tell you about the symptoms they’re experiencing. The whole curriculum is kind of centered around that idea. In terms of assessments, every Monday we have a low-stakes, short quiz (in-house questions) that recaps the information from the week before in addition to anything we have learned in the past. Separately, we’ll have occasional exams (this part they haven’t really told us in detail yet) set up around inter-sessions that will give us more practice with NBME style questions. All of this follows the P/F grading scheme. Once we’re done with these courses, we’ll hop into our clerkships in second year (a year earlier than normal) and we’ll rotate based on the groups you see in that link that was shared above. In the winter of your third year, you’ll have dedicated time to study for and take Step (which for both of us will be pass fail). After that, you’ll soon enter Phase 3 where you have time to do away rotations, elective clerkships, research, etc. On top of this curriculum, every student is required to select either a dual-degree pathway (MD/MPH, MD/PhD must apply beforehand, MD/MBA, MD/JD, etc. apply after getting accepted) or a scholarly concentration (they give you a list and you pick one area of interest and you’ll then take some courses and do research in that specific field). The dual degrees and scholarly concentrations are intended to take up your afternoons, alongside your “Medicine as a Profession” courses, where you learn how to take a history, physical exam, learn about population health, etc. (This is once a week). All in all, the new curriculum is centered around the idea of learning clinically, which is especially beneficial with Step 1 being Pass/Fail and a greater emphasis on Step 2 scores. Hopefully this was clear, I tried to be as concise as possible while giving you guys some helpful insight. If you have any questions just reply and I’ll be happy to answer them whenever I have the time. Good luck to all of ya!
