Hey everybody - I'm a second year at SOMA at the Brooklyn campus. I got an email from admissions asking if I would answer a prospective student's questions. I ended up writing a lot and thought it might be useful to post my response here. First are the student's questions, and following each question is my response.
1) First off, tell me about yourself. Where are you from? What made you choose ATSU-SOMA? Why DO?(some biographical information omitted)...The hospitals I volunteered at all had DO's and MD's, of course, and I always felt comfortable around them and in fact found most of the DO's very easy to get along with. I just felt comfortable around them. With that in mind, I just wanted to be a physician, so I added DO schools to the list of MD schools I was applying to. Another plus was that ATSU made a presentation to my undergrad and explained about a new school that was opening up - SOMA. I liked what I heard from the beginning - early clinical experience, working with the underserved, and a new pedagogic approach - the clinical presentation model. The more I found out, the more I liked. I didn't make any final decisions after interviews, however. I interviewed at PCOM, Midwestern-Chicago, Midwestern-AZCOM, and of course SOMA. I was accepted at all of these places, and to be honest had the hardest time choosing between SOMA - where everything was new, and CCOM and PCOM, where everything was very traditional and rock-solid, time tested, etc. In the end, I decided that I would do better at SOMA, and took the plunge.
I am very happy with my decision, although I know that CCOM and PCOM are great schools and that I would probably have been very happy there as well. 1st year is a bear to get through at SOMA, but this 2nd year I have had quite a bit of freedom - of course most of the presentations are over the internet, so you decide when/how to do them. In addition, I do 8 hours of clinic/hospital work each week, 4 at my "clinical home" in the CHC, and 4 at the hospital in various specialties.
2) Part of the reason I am interested in ATSU-SOMA is to go to _________ for my 2nd-4th year. How much control do I have over where I go? They will explain the selection process to you in your interview, and it may change by the time you get there. It's basically a mini-match process - you rank the sites and it goes into a lottery, much like the process at KCOM. At SOMA, however, the CHC's (Community Health Centers - where you will be for year two) also have a say. If you have a relationship with one of the CHC's before you start year one, and they like you, they will be able to tell the administration in Mesa, who can step in ahead of the lottery and give you a spot at that CHC. So while there are no guarantees - and you shouldn't come to SOMA unless you are comfortable with the idea of not ending up at your number one spot - you can do a LOT to get to where you want to go.
3) As ATSU-SOMA is a non-traditional program, I am concerned about how well the school prepares you for boards, especially doing your 2nd year at a community health center. Do you find you are prepared?I feel like board-prep wise, no matter where you go, you are going to have to learn medicine on your own. I personally think that SOMA's approach to doing this has facilitated that for me. Some people might find, however, that a more traditional curriculum works better for them.
Let me make an analogy that may help you decide what kind of learner you are - the boards and medical knowledge in general in this analogy are represented by a painting, a work of art. The approach that most schools have (traditionally) is to give you small pieces of the painting one at a time - like a puzzle. For example - the first puzzle pieces you might get might be anatomy and biochemistry. The small part of the painting that is on these pieces is perfectly in focus - but you only get to see a part of the whole painting. As you go through classes, adding puzzle pieces - microbiology, pathology, endocrinology, etc, you gradually get to see the big, clinical picture.
SOMA's approach to this "medical painting" is to do away with the puzzle pieces, and to show you the whole painting at once. Of course it would be impossible to do so in the fullest level of detail, so while you do see the whole picture, there is a lot of detail missing. You get the idea of the painting - the clinical picture - but it isn't completely in focus at first. So you have an idea of where you are going, but at the same time, you have to be comfortable not knowing all the details for a while. Then, the more modules you do, and as you enter clinic in second year, the big picture slowly comes more into focus until you fill in the blanks with those details.
So you can see that some people might be more comfortable with one scenario or the other. You really have to decide which kind of person you are - do you need all the details right away, and are comfortable not knowing where you are headed with the details (traditional schools), or do you need to at least have a vague idea of the "big picture" before you embark on learning all of the details of said picture? (SOMA) Right now, I am at the point where a lot of things are coming together, and my picture is becoming more and more focused, and it is very satisfying.
4) Going along with question 3, I am interested in the effectiveness of distance education. How is that structured, and do you feel like you are learning the material you need to? Do you find your clinical experience to be a good compliment to your education?I love distance learning. We definitely do have all the resources we need. We get powerpoints and video lectures, and have assigned readings - and you end up looking stuff up a lot online/in board review books. That's really all you need, if not more than you need. I love going to study at coffee shops, or our classroom, or at the NY public library in Manhattan. I also love studying whenever I want - my wife and I had a son this second year, and the flexibility with class has been immensely helpful.
As far as the structure - I'll use my week this week as a sample.
Monday - we met together and got a mini-lecture in person about this weeks' topics, for example, this week we are talking about lymphadenopathy and splenomegaly. So our learning facilitator talked about how he approaches these things clinically, and some of the basic science behind them. Then, we had the rest of the day to study - some of us from BK did some board prep together. I did some of this weeks' powerpoints later that night.
Tuesday - I studied more powerpoints in the morning before heading out to my clinical home for 4 hours in the afternoon. Today, I saw cases of urinary frequency, HIV, Diabetes, Hypertension, and just routine physical exams. This is all stuff that I learned last year or earlier this year - so it was a great review of that stuff. Not every day in the clinic is going to be perfect - whenever we have a patient with a rash or other derm problem, it is difficult, since we haven't done or Dermatology unit yet. And you also realize how much you have forgotten from year one (yikes) But I am getting more comfortable with patients and am getting much better with exam skills. I like my medical home.
Wednesday - I'll go to Labor and Delivery in the hospital tomorrow morning from 7-12. We do morning report, where the residents talk about the status of patients they had since yesterday/last night, and where the attending physicians ask the residents/medical students questions related to the cases - again, since we already did Genitourinary, this is all a review of material that I learned earlier this year. In L&D I've mostly observed C-sections. Again, it is hit or miss - some of my classmates have helped to deliver babies/placentas, etc, but it seems like most of the days that I go no one is having babies, haha. After the hospital, I'll go study more powerpoints from this week.
Thursday - Powerpoint study in the morning, then in the afternoon we'll have "small group" with our learning facilitator. We get 4 cases early in the week that relate to that week's powerpoints/topic. So this week's cases are a variety of patients presenting with lymphadenopathy and splenectomy. In small group we discuss how we would diagnose the patients, and the facilitator reveals more and more details about the patient - lab results, clinical exam results, etc. I usually like small group. After it is over I'll do more powerpoints.
Friday - Osteopathic Principles and Practice - DO stuff - from 9-12/12:30. After that - more powerpoint study time.
Saturday - 1/2 day for family time, the other 1/2 will be board study/review of the week's powerpoints.
Sunday - 1/2 day of family time, the other 1/2 will be board study/preview of next week's topics.
5) In general, what do you dislike and like about the school?Hopefully from all of the above you can get an idea of what I like about the school - the autonomy, independent study time, ability to shape your own education but with enough structure that guides you along and provides direction, great supportive faculty, plus being with patients during year two.
Here's what I dislike -
There are a LOT of Caribbean medical students here in NYC. While you can definitely get a great education, many attending physicians are tired of working with so many students. I have had a few simply tell me that they were too busy to work with students that day. I doubt this would happen at a University-affiliated hospital.
Another thing - not all the physicians understand why a 2nd year is in their office/OR. Some get it and are great teachers, and give you opportunities to do procedures. Others kind of treat you like a premed shadow and you end up just standing in the corner. I think it is mostly because the hospital here is so huge that some of the physicians aren't familiar with our school's 2nd year clinical experience model, even though they probably received an email or were supposed to have heard about us in some meeting or another. I think as our program gets more well known, that they will get more and more used to having us 2nd years around.
On the other hand, the fact that there are so many Carib. students can be to our advantage as SOMA students, since we are here in the same hospital for 3 years, whereas the Caribbean students hospital hop around NYC, and the whole country for that matter. So we have a lot more time to get to know the attendings, build relationships, etc. A lot of the physicians that are familiar with our program have really taken us under their wing and consider us SOMA students "their" medical students. They like that we are here for all three years. When applying to residencies here at Lutheran hospital, you have a great advantage, as you have been here for so long. There are surgery, OB/GYN, IM, and family medicine residencies here. It would be surprising if a Brooklyn SOMA student with at least an average application wasn't given an interview after applying to one of the Lutheran residencies.
I also get tired of having to explain where our school is and why it is in Arizona, etc. And what a DO is.
6) Do you feel like you share camaraderie with your peers, both from Arizona and Brooklyn? During year one, I had made a few really close study buddies, and got along well enough with most of my classmates. The whole class shared notes, study materials, etc. I felt comfortable asking almost anyone for help.
When we saw the final list of who was going to NYC during first year, I didn't have high hopes for the group, haha. None of us really hung out with each other, and we all had pretty different personalities. I didn't doubt that we would be congenial to each other, but didn't really expect much more than a professional relationship. However, it has turned out to be very different than what I expected - we all go out to eat in Manhattan or downtown BK at least once a month, and have all become very close. When my son was born, all the NYC classmates gave my wife and me a very generous gift - we were really touched. We've also been celebrating each of the classmates' birthdays by going out to eat. I definitely feel at least comfortable with each of my NYC classmates, and feel very close to most of them. It has been very pleasantly surprising.
I think any group of people going through something very difficult together can either band together and help each other or go for each others' throats. For what it's worth, I feel like the NYC learning facilitators did a great job of encouraging us to get together outside of class and to just be friends. At the beginning of the year, we toured all of the CHC's here in the Lutheran system and ate out a lot, on SOMA's dime. We also had the assignment of going on a scavenger hunt in Manhattan as a group and taking pictures, which started out as an assignment, something we had to do, but ended up being really fun. We also have a required Community Health Lecture series once a month which the upperclassmen also attend, which has been a great way of asking them for advice, and meeting with our third year assigned mentors.
Most of us from NYC are going to the AMSA's national conference in Washington DC this April and are looking forward to seeing some classmates from the other sites as well.
7) Lastly, any advise for my interview?For the interview - it's cliche - but just be yourself. They like you on paper, they just want to get to know you now. Be nice - be interested in your interviewers, ask questions about them, what they do, their areas of specialty/research, etc. I felt like my interview, anyway, was very relaxed.
The admissions philosophy was to help you be as comfortable as possible, because they know it's hard to really be you if you're all nervous. I know you know this already, too, but really emphasize any experience you've had with Community Health Centers. That is what we are all about, after all.
If you're asked an ethical situation, don't be afraid to take sides, if you have one, but be sure to show them that you understand both sides of the issue. And have an answer to "Why DO" and "Why SOMA."
