Here are some more questions answered
This might have been slightly touched on, but how is the faculty support at Touro? Do you feel like they really try to "hold your hand" first year? (Which i think is actually a good thing). In your experience, are faculty and staff approachable for any concerns (academic or personal?)
Faculty support is variable. Some faculty are superstars whereas others leave much to be desired. Nonetheless, all faculty are open to helping students in regards to learning the material. At least for the first year coursework, they baby you in the first block - biochem...after that, you kind of get hit in the face with how crazy med school can be. Essentially, you get about 3 weeks of being "handheld" and then when you enter your first anatomy block...you're kind of like "oh ****, this is real" kind of feeling. For my class, when we entered our musculoskeletal block which is right after biochem, our exam avg definitely dropped and that was a major wake-up call for us to pick up the pace of our learning the material. It was also difficult because we started doing anatomy lab and that was just an experience of figuring out how to balance our time. But, come the final exam - it was much better and I think people got on board with what they needed to do. Some took longer for sure...but i'd say the growing pains is worse during the Fall semester. Faculty and staff as a whole are approachable for all concerns. However, I like to take my personal concerns to the dedicated learning specialists at OASIS (which is our academic tutoring and counseling center). They are so nice and offer so much help to students who just need a little bit more help whether academic, personal, or a space where they can talk to someone. I used OASIS a lot my first year.
Do you guys have a standardized patient program?
We do. Our OSCE is done with standardized patients who come in from the community. They are instructed to evaluate our humanism, our clinical sills, physical exam diagnosis skills, etc. It's pretty realistic but we all know it's not lol. We also have simulated scenarios for the hospital setting too. We did intubations, CPR, managing cardiac arrhythmias. fluid overload...basically a lot of different cases and the case scenario simulations grow more and more intense as you progress through schooling. If you want to learn more, look up the Tang Center at TUNCOM.
P/F?
TUNCOM is P/F with an internal ranking. There is a GPA that the curriculum department calculates for the purpose of ranking you amongst your peers. Does this affect some people - sure, but the majority of people really don't care about it. The ACTUAL rank will appear on residency letters if you're in the top 25%. Otherwise, it will be reported on your residency letters as 2nd, 3rd, or 4th quartile.
Remediation policy?
So to talk about remediation, it's easier to first introduce you ways you can get dismissed (which rarely happens) or recommended for a leave of absence (LOA). There are two ways to get recommended for an academic leave of absence. 1) You fail 2 courses in a semester or 2) you fail 3 courses in a year. The only way scenario 2 can happen is if you fail 1 course in the fall semester and then 2 courses in the spring semester. What this tells us is you can continue with the year even if you fail 1 block each semester. Now if you do fail a block...you have to remediate. there are ways to approach this. if your overall grade in the class was <69.99% but >65%, you can remediate the exam during the following major break - example is if you fail a fall semester class with the prior noted percentage, you can take the remediation exam during the winter session, and if you pass, you simply move on. if you score below a 65 in the overall class grade...you are forced to take the remediation exam during the summer - so you have to wait all the way at the end of the year to take an exam you failed in Fall semester. If you fail a course regardless of your percentage in spring semester...you will be forced to take the remediation exam in the Summer. In the case you failed two blocks during the year and need to retake both in the summer, the exams will be 2 weeks apart (so basically a month). Remediation exams are just smaller exams of the same types of questions as the actual block exam. Failing a remediation exam is grounds for forced LOA. When you do an LOA...you enter with the incoming Fall class. Like I mentioned before...dismissal is rare.
How's the overall culture of the program, is the admin very stringent or chill, and do you find the student body to be more relaxed or cutthroat?
I would say because there are different programs at Touro Nevada...the culture is very relaxed and chill. No one is overtly cutthroat. We share all of our Anki decks and for every lecture given at Touro, we have Anki decks aligned with boards and in-house material...so you never have to make your own cards unless you want to, then go for it. Hardly anyone I know gatekeeps information. We share B&B, Amboss, Uworld, BRS, Sketchy, and Pathoma...basically, EVERYTHING is and will be shared from the personalities and culture of my personal class. Admin will vary. Some will be strict others chill. But the common ground they have is, they listen. Their call to action may be slow but I can only attribute that to some form of politics that are played with admin and the higher-ups. We all live in a warehouse...lol so the culture is really just us going to school and struggling LOL.
Is TUNCOM affiliated to any Residency program?
- If you mean affiliated to suggest preference for TUN students for residency programs - no. However, because many hospitals in Las Vegas see only two types of med students really, that being UNLV and TUNCOM, we tend to saturate the primary care areas of the Las Vegas Valley. If you're interested in family med, internal med, peds, or emergency med, there have been little issues with students matching into those fields in Las Vegas. If you're thinking Ortho or Radiology, we actually have a good relationship with a few hospitals here from what I am told. I also have heard from a recent grad who presented last year that anesthesia in Las Vegas favors Nevada residents, but I am not sure if he was suggesting actual Nevada residents or Nevada medical students. If you're interested in ENT, Derm, or neurosurg, you're definitely out of luck since there are little to no resources to figuring out or navigating those competitive specialties.
Rotation sites list. Are the sites assigned randomly or fcfs?
- I don't have access to the official rotation site list but I know all hospitals and clinics are open for TUN students to rotate at. You get a top 3 preference which the clinical education department tries to ensure you get 2/3 of the preferred sites that you want and then the 7 other sites are essentially randomized for which site you get. All core rotations are in the Las Vegas Valley unless you choose to do an out-of-state rotation which you need to coordinate 6 months in advance to your approximate start date.
Recommendations on the apartments? Looking for recently built ones
- I'm not the greatest person to ask regarding apartments since I decided to live in a home since there are many options to rent out a room in houses with PAs, DOs, OTs, etc. In terms of apartments, 80 on Gibosn is really popular, Dream apartments is also close by - these apartments are also noted on your acceptance package too. I can't say for sure which ones are newly built but from my observation and seeing different apartments my classmates are in, they seem to be pretty well-maintained and nice inside.
This might have been slightly touched on, but how is the faculty support at Touro? Do you feel like they really try to "hold your hand" first year? (Which i think is actually a good thing). In your experience, are faculty and staff approachable for any concerns (academic or personal?)
Faculty support is variable. Some faculty are superstars whereas others leave much to be desired. Nonetheless, all faculty are open to helping students in regards to learning the material. At least for the first year coursework, they baby you in the first block - biochem...after that, you kind of get hit in the face with how crazy med school can be. Essentially, you get about 3 weeks of being "handheld" and then when you enter your first anatomy block...you're kind of like "oh ****, this is real" kind of feeling. For my class, when we entered our musculoskeletal block which is right after biochem, our exam avg definitely dropped and that was a major wake-up call for us to pick up the pace of our learning the material. It was also difficult because we started doing anatomy lab and that was just an experience of figuring out how to balance our time. But, come the final exam - it was much better and I think people got on board with what they needed to do. Some took longer for sure...but i'd say the growing pains is worse during the Fall semester. Faculty and staff as a whole are approachable for all concerns. However, I like to take my personal concerns to the dedicated learning specialists at OASIS (which is our academic tutoring and counseling center). They are so nice and offer so much help to students who just need a little bit more help whether academic, personal, or a space where they can talk to someone. I used OASIS a lot my first year.
Do you guys have a standardized patient program?
We do. Our OSCE is done with standardized patients who come in from the community. They are instructed to evaluate our humanism, our clinical sills, physical exam diagnosis skills, etc. It's pretty realistic but we all know it's not lol. We also have simulated scenarios for the hospital setting too. We did intubations, CPR, managing cardiac arrhythmias. fluid overload...basically a lot of different cases and the case scenario simulations grow more and more intense as you progress through schooling. If you want to learn more, look up the Tang Center at TUNCOM.
P/F?
TUNCOM is P/F with an internal ranking. There is a GPA that the curriculum department calculates for the purpose of ranking you amongst your peers. Does this affect some people - sure, but the majority of people really don't care about it. The ACTUAL rank will appear on residency letters if you're in the top 25%. Otherwise, it will be reported on your residency letters as 2nd, 3rd, or 4th quartile.
Remediation policy?
So to talk about remediation, it's easier to first introduce you ways you can get dismissed (which rarely happens) or recommended for a leave of absence (LOA). There are two ways to get recommended for an academic leave of absence. 1) You fail 2 courses in a semester or 2) you fail 3 courses in a year. The only way scenario 2 can happen is if you fail 1 course in the fall semester and then 2 courses in the spring semester. What this tells us is you can continue with the year even if you fail 1 block each semester. Now if you do fail a block...you have to remediate. there are ways to approach this. if your overall grade in the class was <69.99% but >65%, you can remediate the exam during the following major break - example is if you fail a fall semester class with the prior noted percentage, you can take the remediation exam during the winter session, and if you pass, you simply move on. if you score below a 65 in the overall class grade...you are forced to take the remediation exam during the summer - so you have to wait all the way at the end of the year to take an exam you failed in Fall semester. If you fail a course regardless of your percentage in spring semester...you will be forced to take the remediation exam in the Summer. In the case you failed two blocks during the year and need to retake both in the summer, the exams will be 2 weeks apart (so basically a month). Remediation exams are just smaller exams of the same types of questions as the actual block exam. Failing a remediation exam is grounds for forced LOA. When you do an LOA...you enter with the incoming Fall class. Like I mentioned before...dismissal is rare.
How's the overall culture of the program, is the admin very stringent or chill, and do you find the student body to be more relaxed or cutthroat?
I would say because there are different programs at Touro Nevada...the culture is very relaxed and chill. No one is overtly cutthroat. We share all of our Anki decks and for every lecture given at Touro, we have Anki decks aligned with boards and in-house material...so you never have to make your own cards unless you want to, then go for it. Hardly anyone I know gatekeeps information. We share B&B, Amboss, Uworld, BRS, Sketchy, and Pathoma...basically, EVERYTHING is and will be shared from the personalities and culture of my personal class. Admin will vary. Some will be strict others chill. But the common ground they have is, they listen. Their call to action may be slow but I can only attribute that to some form of politics that are played with admin and the higher-ups. We all live in a warehouse...lol so the culture is really just us going to school and struggling LOL.
Is TUNCOM affiliated to any Residency program?
- If you mean affiliated to suggest preference for TUN students for residency programs - no. However, because many hospitals in Las Vegas see only two types of med students really, that being UNLV and TUNCOM, we tend to saturate the primary care areas of the Las Vegas Valley. If you're interested in family med, internal med, peds, or emergency med, there have been little issues with students matching into those fields in Las Vegas. If you're thinking Ortho or Radiology, we actually have a good relationship with a few hospitals here from what I am told. I also have heard from a recent grad who presented last year that anesthesia in Las Vegas favors Nevada residents, but I am not sure if he was suggesting actual Nevada residents or Nevada medical students. If you're interested in ENT, Derm, or neurosurg, you're definitely out of luck since there are little to no resources to figuring out or navigating those competitive specialties.
Rotation sites list. Are the sites assigned randomly or fcfs?
- I don't have access to the official rotation site list but I know all hospitals and clinics are open for TUN students to rotate at. You get a top 3 preference which the clinical education department tries to ensure you get 2/3 of the preferred sites that you want and then the 7 other sites are essentially randomized for which site you get. All core rotations are in the Las Vegas Valley unless you choose to do an out-of-state rotation which you need to coordinate 6 months in advance to your approximate start date.
Recommendations on the apartments? Looking for recently built ones
- I'm not the greatest person to ask regarding apartments since I decided to live in a home since there are many options to rent out a room in houses with PAs, DOs, OTs, etc. In terms of apartments, 80 on Gibosn is really popular, Dream apartments is also close by - these apartments are also noted on your acceptance package too. I can't say for sure which ones are newly built but from my observation and seeing different apartments my classmates are in, they seem to be pretty well-maintained and nice inside.
