Ooooh Okay, thanks for clearing that up for me. If I may ask, how is your experience so far? Liking it? Not really? Good professors/doctors? Other students are friendly/ good personalities? And what made you decide to go to Ross?
They recently changed a LOOOT of stuff this semester and made 1st term much easier with the spreading out of anatomy over 3 semesters instead of it all just in 1. I think it had to do with the fact that they accepted even less competitive than normal applicants last semester with a class size of 420 which is a historical high and 180 people failed and have to remediate or have gotten kicked out. 180 isn't an official number but it's what we've heard through the grapevine. Typically 1st semester failure rate is around 20-30% so it was a shock for the school I'm sure.
I can talk a little bit about the first-semester curriculum changes as I am a first-semester student at Ross and my class is the first cohort to be introduced to this new formatting. Again, the semester just started, so I can't give you much info, but I'll tell you what i know up to this point. Take things with a grain of salt if you must.
With the reduction of anatomy content and spreading it over multiple semesters, they have introduced a new thing that is part of our grade. It is called Formative Assessments, which is their fancy way of calling it a quiz and then a class meeting to discuss the quiz. Basically, every single weekend with the exception of the weekend leading up to a mini (aka exams), we have a quiz (10-11 questions) that we do. There are 10 quizzes and 10 review sessions of the quiz. We get 1 point for doing 30% or higher on the quizzes and another point for attending these 2 hour review sessions. Overall, you need 12 points for the 1 point part of that category or 16 points for 2 points in that category.
Now onto Mini aka midterms. We have 1 Mock Mini aka Mini 0 and 3 Minis that count for our grade. Mini 0 is a mock mini exam that probably most first semester in the past have taken or somewhat close to it. It doesn't count for our grade and it's a way for us to assess/adjust our studying techniques/habits. Because we have a mini 0, the rest of the mini exams are weighted more for our grade. Each one is upwards of like 21% or so and there are 3 of them. Final is like 30%? anatomy, we have one practical (compared to like 3-4 in the past) and that is 5%. Formative Assessment is 2% of our grade. Besides that, traditionally in the past, Semester 1 had anatomy for their first mini, but we dont have anatomy til week 5 or 6 and onwards, which means it will be for our Mini 2. I'm not sure if there are any clinical portion changes. From the looks of it, there seems to not be any, but I will have to see.
Also, I'm not sure if it's for upper semesters or not, but at least in first semester, Ross has taken out mpel from our grade calculation. Now, we only have to meet the minimum passing score (MPS), which is basically your class average cumulative percentage/scores. However, due to the change in our curriculum, the score needed to move onto the accelerated (4 semester) track has been
increased to 75% for new students (idk about repeaters). I believe in the past, you needed a 70% to move to the 4-semester track and a 75% if you're repeating. Otherwise, you will be in the standard track which is 5 semesters here on the island. MPS will vary, and I heard it will never go above 70%. In the past, MPS has hovered around 65%-67%. We will see what is the MPS of my class will be. I would assume higher due to the curriculum changes.
What Gambino said is right, they are really trying hard to help us pass. They assigned us first semester with a faculty mentor to track our progress from Mini 0 to the final. We have to meet with our faculty mentor every so often. I heard they did this in the past as well
Overall the new changes seem promising thus far, but I won't have a real opinion on it until this semester is over. lmk if you got any other questions!