I think just for the sake of time during interview day they can't really give you a super detailed explanation of the curriculum, at least now that it has changed and people have so many questions about it. The dean of admissions is a super nice person and does an excellent job but she has a lot to get to in a small window of time, so I understand how some stuff could get left out.
So about the curriculum. It has been a bumpy ride, but I would say that the faculty has been extremely receptive to feedback and right now in our second block (you'll know what this means in a bit), everyone is really happy with the quality of the resources and facilitation our sessions. It wasn't this way during the first block, but my classmates and I have been the trailblazers (euphemism sacrificial lamb) for so that your class and later classes can have a better experience. There's just no way of knowing how stuff is going to work out before it is actually implemented, so it stands to reason that there were some things that worked well and things that didn't work well. The growing pains were worked out on us so that you guys will have, in my opinion and the opinion of a lot of my classmates, a really awesome curriculum with the changes that were made.
Below is a copied and pasted description of the curriculum from the first block I gave to someone. Each block of the basic science curriculum is ten weeks long. The exam for each block is on one day and about 6 hours long, encompassing everything from the ten week period. We're currently on Christmas break between weeks 3 and 4 of Block B. DoCC (see below) has been replaced by dental morphology (waxing and stuff), which we have TThu 1:00-4:30.
So here is the simplest way I can describe the curriculum while not leaving anything out. There are three different Learning Communities, A, B, and C. They are mixed med and dent. All this determines is which days and times you have classes and activities that every student has, but not all students have simultaneously. The classes are as follows:
CoRE (basic sciences, i.e. what you expect school to entail)- MWF 10:00-11:50 are our Team Based Learning (TBL) session. This is where we have our Individual Readiness Assessment Tests (iRATs, or quizzes), and our Team Readiness Assessment Tests (tRATs, or group quizzes). There are 2-3 iRATs/tRATs per week, so most days you have CoRE you’ll be taking one. You come in and the iRAT is first, directly followed by the tRAT. You take the tRAT together and your group must come to a consensus and scratch off a scratch ticket. Your group is mixed between med and dent students, and is usually 2 dental and 5 med.. Full credit for the correct answer the first time, half credit the second time, and then no credit. After this, faculty will go over questions on which people struggled most, and field questions on them. For each given topic, the faculty member facilitating the discussion is a "content expert". Geneticists teach genetics, cardiologists teach cardio, so on and so forth. After this, we go into application exercises, which are ungraded and all teams answer as a group. These are supposed to use the concepts for the week and apply them to case based scenarios.
iRATs and tRATs are each 20% of your CoRE course grade, making up 40% with the end of block exam making up 60%. For all courses you need a 65% for the course to pass, not a 65 on the exam itself.
You’ll notice that we have about 6 hours per week in CoRE. This comes with the assumption that you spend time on your own learning the material before each session. In order to do this, we have required readings/videos called ReALMs. On the syllabus for each section, you’ll get objectives to help guide your reading of the ReALMs. This is where most of the mystery about the new curriculum comes in. I get a lot of "so are there really no lectures?" questions from people on here, and the answer is yes, there are no lectures. So I feel like you need to have a better picture of the resources you'll be using to guide your learning in lieu of lecture.
The ReALMs were a point of contention during Block A. For most topics, we were assigned only readings from a textbook. There were no, and still aren't any,powerpoint slides (except for review sessions that are held by faculty, which are helpful), and we don't have any lectures, so this was a big adjustment for all of us. Block B is a different story. Faculty was receptive and worked with us. We now have video "lectures" for the majority of topic covered so far, hence why all of us are absolutely loving Block B. Part of the reason why I think this is the case is because Block B is a lot of cardio, at least right now, with our sessions being facilitated by a cardiologist named Dr. Ryan, who is an absolutely fantastic teacher. This guy has his own video review series for USMLE Step 1 for med students, so he's great at making video lectures (think Chad from DAT videos but for more complex stuff). He's absolutely great, and his videos are so helpful. A lot of used his videos that aligned with the subjects in Block A because this guy gives a free subscription to his review videos to us students. This is very common among all students and it really is a more time efficient way to learn than simply reading the book. In Block B we still use his videos because they're relevant and helpful, but they're more supplementary now as opposed to Block A when they were a lifeline.
Vitals (biostats, epidemiology, public health type stuff)- Vitals is once per week, and the day and time depend on your learning community. Mine, for example, is M 3:00-5:00. You have an iRAT/tRAT each week. You have another group of seven for this, but it’s different from your group for CoRE. You are still assigned ReALMs and expect to come to class having done them. The ReALMs for this class always include a video lecture by the professor who runs the course, and in addition to the video there are journal articles.
FAB Lab- This is comprised of human cadaver lab, histology, radiology, and the virtual anatomy thing. You have cadaver lab and histology first, and then histology ends and gets replaced with radiology/virtual anatomy. My schedule is cadaver lab M 8:00-9:50, and histo/rad/virtual T 10:00-12:00.
You will be in a group of three or four that stays the same throughout the block. You will each share responsibilities with the cadaver, which is also shared between two other groups in the two other learning communities. So you do 1/3 of the cutting and fat trimming, but are responsible for knowing all the information so everyone comes into anatomy on their own time in order to come in and learn everything you’ll need to know for the practical. You have ReALMs to make sure you’re ready to go in knowing how to do the dissection and a list of structures to find, but again, most learning is done with the actual cadaver, not a textbook. They do send out answer keys for the histology, radiology, and virtual anatomy exercises for you to study before the exam.
DoCC- this is the class where you learn how to take patient histories, perform the physical exam, counsel patients on behavior change, all that type of stuff. Mine is W 1:00-4:00, and you’ll have an additional 2 hour time slot most weeks at varying times in order to go practice physical exam maneuvers on patient instructors and stuff like that. ReALMs are also provided, mostly video instruction of how to perform the procedures. This class is pretty fun. It's not too hard. Again, this is only for Block A. Med students continue with it but we leave for morphology.
The curriculum is tough, but you learn a ton. It's crazy to think how much you learn actually. Also, I feel like the best thing about it as that you do the learning on your own time (not your own pace, the pace is decided for you and it's very fast lol). Not having to constantly be in lecture is nice. You still need to study a ton, but you do it where/when you want to.
I hope this has helped clear up any confusion about what to expect. I apologize for not knowing what the curriculum is going to be like past this point; I just don't want to speculate about the future and give you information that is inaccurate.
I don't regret my decision to come here at all. I absolutely love it and if I had the opportunity to choose again I would make the same choice. The small class size and true P/F nature of the school are really both huge blessings. I can say that I am very good friends with at least 20 of the 49 kids in my class. Everyone knows everybody, and as cheesy as it sounded in the interview, we really are one big family. I've been over my DoCC professor's house for dinner as a group. We have class dinners pretty frequently (one kid in the class is a bomb cook, and not to toot my own horn but it's me), and we have class ski/rafting trips to Vermont. I would say "work hard play hard" would be a good mantra that describes our class. Nobody has an incentive to be shady or annoying when it comes to school; everyone works together and helps each other out because we're all friends and all want each other to succeed. Whenever there are a ton of readings for an upcoming TBL session, your TBL group will split up the readings into 7ths, with each individual person taking notes on their section and making a compilation for the whole group in order to save time. This wasn't something that we were told to do, it kind of just happened. Everyone really looks out for one another.
Dental school is going to be tough no matter where you go, but I can safely say I wouldn't rather be doing it with anyone else besides my classmates.
Feel free to reach out if you have any more questions you think would be helpful to make your final decision.