2021-2022 University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine (UNECOM)

Getting into Med School is Hard? Not with BeMo.
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bananorama said:
I'll repost the earlier reply that was deleted by Gyngyn because he wants all of us to sit around holding hands and sing Kumbaya.
Schools love students with this mentality, they're like sheep who don't squirm when they're slaughtered.
Just remember- cult members defend their crazy organizations all the time, and domestic abuse victims will often defend their partner even after they've had their teeth knocked out.
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bananorama said:
PART 2/2
They'll also lie straight-up to your face and accuse you of "unprofessionalism" as a way to silence any criticism. To make sure I wasn't being paranoid I asked a long-time professor if that's what they do, their answer was "absolutely."
Case in point- why is the school so friggin expensive? It's actually pretty simple. 20% of the tuition goes to support the undergraduate school, and another 20% goes to the Pharmacy school which has been hemorrhaging money since it opened, but UNE doesn't want to close it since it would be seen as a bad look for them. So the students quite literally pay the price for the school's pride. I've been shown the spreadsheets, and noticed it diverged significantly from an explanation of how the money was broken down in an email sent to students a few months ago. Get a forensic accountant digging around in there and who knows what they would find. Honestly if it came out someone was embezzling I wouldn't be surprised.
Ostensibly there is a student board (I forget the technical name of it), basically a student council where some students give feedback to the school for them to change- several of them resigned because it was plainly obvious that it was all for show and the school would just do it wants to do. There will always be teacher's pets at any school though, and some sycophants did remain and continue to stroke the school's collective ego.
There's something pretty similar wherein once a month the Dean would come and students could give her feedback, but the audience shrank very quickly after she just shot down everything (called her Dr. No lol), at one point a couple of other students challenged her on something she said- been too long, I forget the specifics- but basically here is the conversation paraphrased:
"hey so we asked around and several people said your reasoning is wrong and makes no sense and we're completely right"
"No that's not true"
"So.... everyone is lying but you?"
"You're simply mistaken"
"On what?"
"I'll discuss it with you later if you want"
"We're here now and we've done our homework, what specifically are you referring to?"
"This isn't the place right now, but just know you're wrong" (they weren't).
That's how this school operates. If gaslighting was a sport, this place would be like Michael Phelps. These people will try to sell you bag of dogs*** all while insisting it's cookies n' cream, and get offended when you refuse to play along.
Here's another fun tale: In my first year the school advertised that "attendance is not mandatory"*******
*except whenever you have a new professor (which is a LOT- this isn't like undergrad)
**concept mapping is mandatory
***if the professor just wants mandatory attendance, then it's mandatory.
****CPC's are mandatory
*****this only applies to the first year, did we not mention that? :)
Christ I could have gotten a PhD with the amount of time I spent doing the pointless extra stuff they require students to attend.
Oh, and the school loves to play fast-and-loose with definitions. While second-year lectures weren't *technically* mandatory, you would lose points off your final grade for missing lectures. Every point counts in med school, so in practice, yeah they were mandatory for all intents and purposes (but it allows the school to advertise that attendance is not technically mandatory- a very big factor for many students, including me).
Second-years were pretty pissed that they had to attend this crap, so in a surprise to no one except UNE administration they stopped coming to lectures so they could use tried-and-true boards prep that actually helps and covers what they need to know at home. But how did they verify attendance, you ask? Well at one point they used old-fashioned narcs, but eventually switched to using online quizzes (not clickers like high school/undergrad, you just needed an internet connection). A code to the quiz was given in class, you log in on a computer and answer a couple questions. Again, in a surprise to no one except UNE administration students in lecture would just text the code to their peers, allowing them to take it at home without being present. Seriously UNE, how did you not see this coming a mile away???!!!
Anyway, eventually admins wised up as they noticed almost everyone was taking quizzes while the room was half-full. One of the few professors who knew what was happening commented that a more appropriate way of handling this would have been to call a meeting and essentially say "Guys, we know what you're doing. Stop it."
But no, the school wanted their damn Perry Mason "gotcha" moment so they rigged it to know who was really there and who wasn't, catching their hands in the digital cookie jar. Now, this resulted in a flag of academic dishonesty for half the friggin class. So what to do?
Well, they can't realistically kick out half the class (though I have it on good authority several old-school admins did indeed want to do this), so then it was proposed that all the absent students sign a document acknowledging what they did, and if nothing else happened they would be given a clean reference letter and it would be expunged.
Fortunately one of these student's parents is an attorney and had the good sense to realize documents like this have a mysterious way of growing legs and walking off and threatened to sue, so eventually the school basically just gave up on it.
Also I snuck in and sat in on a lunchtime meeting between the dean and the second-years after this went down, and the dean made it allllllll about her, and how this affects her, and makes everything so hard for her, and you know she's really the victim in all this, blah blah blah. Jesus, you see this kind of psychological manipulation in abusive relationships, not in medical education.
Out of this came something of a mixed blessing for us, the class below them. We no longer had the quiz system for our second year butttttttt as one last "yeah well **** you" the school would no longer record lectures. This had the intent of trying to make lectures mandatory in practice YET AGAIN but thankfully a few students would audio record them and post them online allowing us to mostly follow along. Still couldn't tell what they were highlighting/drawing on-screen though.
Oh, the dean tried to say they couldn't record lectures because of a "contract issue" with the software company they used. lmao, she really thinks we're all dumb enough to believe that.
I knew one student so fed up with all this he was seriously a hair's breadth away from transferring to the Caribbean, willing to accept everything that comes with it to get away from this administration. To quote Chris Rock: "I don't agree with it, but I understand why." To those still in undergrad who don't realize how terrible Caribbean schools are- you have to have to have an almost unfathomably awful experience in order to even consider this, and they did.
The school always acts so disheartened about the poor lecture attendance without ever pondering why so few attend those crappy wastes of time.
Honestly the only thing they care about is their reputation. A couple years ago the Dean sent out an email to not broadcast negative opinions of the school on SDN because she knows it's the only place this s***hole receives any honest feedback. Someone then posted that email to SDN and hooooooo boi was she pissed and then sent out another email to not post emails. That email was also posted lol. Her only concern was that it might drive potential students away along with their delicious tuition money.
Something else I want to comment on- this applies for most if not all DO schools, but "other schools do crappy stuff too" is a sign of deeply embedded systemic issues and is not a valid defense.
Preamble: there are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Most schools like to brag about their school's pass-rate. All of them somehow seem to claim that their rates are above average (which is mathematically impossible lol but whatevs). However, these rates can be extremely deceptive. Why? The majority of schools, including UNECOM, require you to make a certain score on a practice COMLEX in order for you to take it (this is not like the MCAT, your school has to approve you to take your board exams) and this minimum score varies between schools. Why does this matter? If 12% of the class doesn't meet this standard then not all of the students are actually taking their board exam, which totally messes with the sampling. Say you have a class of 100 with a 96% percent pass rate. On the surface this sounds great- only 4 people out of 100 failed! But wait a sec, turns out 12 of them weren't even eligible to take it.... so that was really 96% out of 88. Let's be generous and round up; only 3 out of those 88 failed. Effectively this means 85% either failed or were woefully underprepared. Doesn't sound so good anymore does it? Saved this for last because it's not UNECOM-specific but they love to brag about their pass rate and you should bear this in mind. If you're at an interview and they mention their pass rate, ask how many were eligible to sit on the most recent cycle. If it's single digits then that's pretty good. If it's double digits or they pretend to not remember, this is a huge red flag and you should abandon ship imo.
While I'm on the subject, match rates can also be very deceptive. DO schools favor pumping out primary care docs and the simple fact is it's much easier to match primary care than other specialties like surgery, which is more common at MD schools in general as well as some DO schools (UNECOM is VERY focused on primary care, even for a DO school). So a high match rate isn't necessarily impressive when the bulk of students are applying to fields wherein you could fail your freaking board exams and still match. Again, not necessarily a UNECOM-specific issue but they certainly like bragging about their match rates while hoping you ignore the nuanced context of these statistics.
If you have questions, please ask them on this thread as I would prefer as much to be in public as possible because they try to bury this stuff. I haven't seen this in a while but used to notice positive comments defending the school from accounts that were only a few hours old and only posted stuff un UNE forums to defend it. Doesn't take a genius to realize they're UNECOM faculty posing as students with dummy accounts (and it was confirmed to me that yes, they do this). Someone from the school even tried to doxx me to shut me up- not kidding. Most pre-meds ignore stuff like this, somehow thinking they have a better understanding of schools than the actual students. Don't make my mistake, folks. If you end up going here consider yourself warned.
I imagine the school has already seen this post and is trying to think of some technicality to get it taken down. Sound paranoid? A faculty member confirmed that they do precisely that, and I even know who does most of it, but name-dropping will get this taken down.
Man, I intended to write a few sentences but then years of pent-up fury unleashed itself on my keyboard and now I'm doing my best James Fenimore Cooper impersonation. Gonna have some whiskey now.
PS It takes a special kind of person to know all these things and still attend.
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You aren't even in medical school anymore or even medicine. I read your other posts on your last account. You tell anyone and everyone to not go into medicine. We get it you hate it, but there are a lot of us that dont. This is an exciting time for a lot of us and yes most of us would take an acceptance anywhere if it meant we are going to be physicians. So please just stop dude.
 
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Canweskipthispart? said:
You aren't even in medical school anymore or even medicine. I read your other posts on your last account. You tell anyone and everyone to not go into medicine. We get it you hate it, but there are a lot of us that dont. This is an exciting time for a lot of us and yes most of us would take an acceptance anywhere if it meant we are going to be physicians. So please just stop dude.
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Yeah I just wanna see when the decisions are coming in for the September interviews, not this lol. Imagine posting so much and not once being able to take some sort of accountability for why you dropped out of med school.
Good luck to everyone that has had an interview or is waiting for one, we’re gonna do great!
 
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II yesterday morning. Completed end of August.
 
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Has anyone who interviewed on 9/14 received a decision yet? I know the Admissions rep. said decisions are usually made within 4 weeks. Thanks in advance! And good luck to the interviewees!
 
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shungiku11 said:
Has anyone who interviewed on 9/14 received a decision yet? I know the Admissions rep. said decisions are usually made within 4 weeks. Thanks in advance! And good luck to the interviewees!
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I know a current student who said they interviewed around now of their application year and heard back right around Thanksgiving.
 
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Hey all, after my interview i sent thank you letters via email and got no response whether it was received. Should I follow up, or leave it? It has been 4 business days since I sent it. I just want to make sure my interviewers got my thank you letters but I don't want to be a nag.
 
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justkeepswimming28 said:
Hey all, after my interview i sent thank you letters via email and got no response whether it was received. Should I follow up, or leave it? It has been 4 business days since I sent it. I just want to make sure my interviewers got my thank you letters but I don't want to be a nag.
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I got a response like 4 days after, but it's common not to get an answer from the interviewers.
 
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Is it a closed interview? I have mine on Tuesday and I don't know how to prep! Any help would be very much appreciated!
 
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NikeDunks said:
Is it a closed interview? I have mine on Tuesday and I don't know how to prep! Any help would be very much appreciated!
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I think they look at it, but I did not really get any specific questions about my experiences. I brought up whatever I was comfortable with and I think they asked me a lot of “what if-“ questions
 
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NikeDunks said:
Is it a closed interview? I have mine on Tuesday and I don't know how to prep! Any help would be very much appreciated!
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It was open file interview for me. They asked me about my specific experiences both in and outside university. I used quizlet and sdn interview q's to practice. I'd definitely go over what you're interested in about unecom and have questions prepared for the interview. They really do stress the point of "fit".
 
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does anyone know what the first year curriculum breakdown is? Like how much are each exam worth...what you need to pass etc?
 
shungiku11 said:
It was open file interview for me. They asked me about my specific experiences both in and outside university. I used quizlet and sdn interview q's to practice. I'd definitely go over what you're interested in about unecom and have questions prepared for the interview. They really do stress the point of "fit".
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I actually second this I now remember them asking questions to figure out if I was a good fit
 
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It was a conversation. I told them about myself and it branched off from there.
 
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shungiku11 said:
Has anyone who interviewed on 9/14 received a decision yet? I know the Admissions rep. said decisions are usually made within 4 weeks. Thanks in advance! And good luck to the interviewees!
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Hey, I interviewed 9/16. Have not heard back.
 
anybody was complete on 7/23 and heard back?
 
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Any recent IIs for people complete in July?
 
Anyone have any idea of when their pre-matriculation requirements checklist would be sent out? Do we have to accept their offer before they send it to us?
 
If you get an offer, how long do you have to accept and how much is the deposit?
 
How long is UNECOM’s interview? i received an II for a time of 10:30 AM. I might have to work a night shift for my job at 2 PM. Would it be feasible that this might work?
 
paisleysoul said:
How long is UNECOM’s interview? i received an II for a time of 10:30 AM. I might have to work a night shift for my job at 2 PM. Would it be feasible that this might work?
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The interview itself lasts about 30 minutes. I think they have you log on 20 minutes early before your login time to do a computer check/chat with current students and other student interviewees. So you'd wrap up at around 11 am and after that, you are free to go or you can hang around and chat in breakout rooms with current students and other interviewees again if you'd like to, but it's not required. Lots of people left for work. So you'd be done well before 2 pm
 
Is there anyone else who interviewed the last week of September still waiting for a decision?
 
Have most people received their II on tuesdays? Or do they send them out any day of the week?
 
anyone who interviewed in october hear back yet?
 
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