Alternate curricula

[jmugele]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Let's start a thread about school's that have interesting/different ways of structuring their curricula. I really like schools that give students more flexibility in how they arrange their classes. So far the schools I've seen that have really interesting curricula are Stanford, U Rochester, Harvard and Yale. Does anyone have any experience with these? Opinions? Know of other schools?

 

[adoggie]

Let's start a thread about school's that have interesting/different ways of structuring their curricula. I really like schools that give students more flexibility in how they arrange their classes. So far the schools I've seen that have really interesting curricula are Stanford, U Rochester, Harvard and Yale. Does anyone have any experience with these? Opinions? Know of other schools?

I know the Stanford and Yale systems are similar, but what's different about Harvard and URochester?

 

[jmugele]

I know the Stanford and Yale systems are similar, but what's different about Harvard and URochester?

Rochester curriculum is described here: http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd/CA/dh/Index.html

Harvard curriculum is described here:
http://www.hms.harvard.edu/md/curric.html

I don't know as much about Harvard's, but it looks like you join one of a few societies when entering and those societies follow different curriculum paths. But if anyone has personal experience, I'd love to know about it.

 

[ghgi8]

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=141185

 

[uclabruin2003]

CCLCM has an innovative program. its all PBL...one of the very few schools to offer entirely only PBL for all students. In addition, research and clinical practice is tightly integrated across all years and esp the first two years.

 

[jmugele]

A lot of schools do partial or all PBL, right? Which are those?

Other schools offer flexible curriculum -- give you 5 years to complete an MD and let you pick some of the courses you want to take -- even to take some from other graduate programs. I'm thinking specifically of Stanford, but I'm sure there are others.

 

[Scarletbegonias]

The University of North Dakota has a different curriculum. The component that makes it unique is what they refer to as patient-centered learning, which I have heard is similar to problem-based learning. In fact the are one of the 8 medical colleges to be surveyed by a committee that is researching medical education in the 21st century. The other colleges announced to be surveyed so far are University of California-SF, Mayo, and one other that I can't remember. I couldn't find an article that talks about it, but heard it first and from the Dean of the University of North Dakota School of Medicine this past weekend. If anyone else knows what I'm talking about or knows where I can get an article or online info about it, I 'd love to know.

 

[ribbi_j]

penn state has the humanities mixed into their curriculum - plus a required research project for everyone. I thought that those were both noteworthy.

vermont [jerks rejected me a couple weeks after my interview] was unique with their amazing utilization of technology into their learning. plus they start rotations their second year after taking the boards earlier than anywhere else.

MCW was unique that they have completely disregarded the trend towards small group work and pbl - you're in lecture 8-5 every day it seemed.

Mizzou had an amazing amount of free time every day - lots of PBL and according to the students a ridiculous amount of do what you want time.

WashU still wants you to go to the library and look stuff up from the books. and pay for your copies if I remember correctly.

 

[Larsitron]

I know that U Rochester's curriculum (the "double helix") really appealed to me and I was beyond stoked when I got accepted there. They're the ones that I see doing a lot of different stuff, but gradually and methodically so no one feels like a lab rat to test curriculum changes on.