What do you love about NYITCOM, specifically the Long Island campus? It seems Long Island has more opportunity with additional degree programs (Global Health Certificate, various M.S. degrees). Is specialization encouraged there? It seems like the focus for the Arkansas campus is for primary care who would then practice in that area. This seems less of an emphasis for the Long Island campus. What is the learning environment like in Long Island? Do you feel supported? Lots of questions, there's only so much you can get from a website, thanks!
Love is a strong word but I can tell you what I've appreciated during my time here:
Professors: The professors here are actually pretty great. Most of them are happy to have you come chat with them about topics they teach, their specialty, etc. You can also get involved in research easily if that's your bag. It's pretty easy to go all of your first 2 years without interacting with the professors outside of lab, but if you want to most are happy to involve students in their teaching/projects/research.
Culture: I have a positive impression of whatever you could call our school's culture. There's so many of us that there's not really one pervasive culture in the student body. You have your laid back friendly people, you have your irritating gunners, and you have everyone in between. The friendly people are far more numerous though, students are usually super happy to share resources and help each other out. It's very easy to feel welcome and in your element here. It's also very easy to not get involved at all and just show up when you have to. It's up to you!
Outreach opportunities/clubs: There are so so so many of these. You name the specialty, there is probably an interest group that does some outreach. We have the student run health clinic that gives free healthcare to underserved communities over in Central Islip. We have Rock-Steady Boxing through the Parkinson's clinic. There's a million opportunities.
Overall happiness: I think it's a miracle any school accepted me, so I'm always more than happy to be here. There are a thousand irritations you can find during medical school, make no doubt it's a terribly stressful experience at times. The key thing is to keep the irritations in perspective, and in my perspective there are many many worse places to go to medical school than here. I've got a good set of supportive friends, I found a great niche for myself in the student body, and I entered 3rd year feeling very prepared, which NYITCOM no doubt had a part in. It's not a perfect school by any means (more admins than I can count, constant curriculum changes are annoying) but you can do so much worse.
As far as specialty goes, the OW campus doesn't really push any in particular, I know people who are interested in pretty much every specialty and I think that diversity is reflected in our match list.
The learning environment is somewhat what you make of it. You can go to lecture and be surrounded by people who learn like you, or go hang out in the Silent Study room all day, or just come to campus as minimally as possible. Having optional lecture is a godsend, as it gives you a lot of free time to study in a way that works for you. I found by the end of first year I liked to teach myself using a variety of resources so I ditched lecture and taught myself everything, just occasionally perused the slides from lecture to make sure I was covering everything I needed to know for exams. I appreciate the school gives us latitude to study in such a way (unlike somewhere like LECOM with mandatory lecture). The school is also pretty responsive to requested changes in the curriculum by the student body. It should be noted the curriculum is being changed and COVID is going to further reconfigure things so I can't speak much to how it will look.
I've never needed much in the way of support from the school so I can't really speak to it. Apparently the academic enrichment specialists, the professionals whose job is to help struggling students, are excellent but I've never needed to go see them. The admin who is our point person for residency applications is also excellent, so you get plenty of support in that area.
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