Burning Questions for Upcoming Webinar--IllinoisCOM

[DoctorDean]

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So we at IllinoisCOM at the Chicago School are preparing for our first live webinar soon, and we've been thinking about what questions potential applicants might like to have answered up front. I would love to hear some of those burning questions from applicants (doesn't have to be to our school--just applicants in general) so we can maybe handle the most common ones efficiently. I'm not looking to answer them on this venue, just take some of the good ones back to our team and have good answers ready to go. To recap, we are a newly preaccredited COM in downtown Chicago, taking applicants for the inaugural class next year. Here's more info if you want to look us up first:

The Illinois College of Osteopathic Medicine at The Chicago School

Experience a medical education that addresses the connection between physical and mental health. IllinoisCOM prepares exceptional physicians for the future of medicine.

www.thechicagoschool.edu

 

[Obnoxious Dad]

So we at IllinoisCOM at the Chicago School are preparing for our first live webinar soon, and we've been thinking about what questions potential applicants might like to have answered up front. I would love to hear some of those burning questions from applicants (doesn't have to be to our school--just applicants in general) so we can maybe handle the most common ones efficiently. I'm not looking to answer them on this venue, just take some of the good ones back to our team and have good answers ready to go. To recap, we are a newly preaccredited COM in downtown Chicago, taking applicants for the inaugural class next year. Here's more info if you want to look us up first:

The Illinois College of Osteopathic Medicine at The Chicago School

Experience a medical education that addresses the connection between physical and mental health. IllinoisCOM prepares exceptional physicians for the future of medicine.

www.thechicagoschool.edu

Let me offer you some advice about admissions.

In the last couple of years, the average MCAT score among osteopathic medical school matriculants has been declining and there is a significant body of anecdotal evidence on SDN that the attrition rate at some new osteopathic medical schools has been a nightmare. See this:

https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aacom.org%2Fdocs%2Fdefault-source%2Fresearch-reports%2Fapplicant-and-matriculant-average-mcat-2016-2024.xlsx%3Fsfvrsn%3D4fbf4377_9&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK

I would suggest that you heavily weight MCAT scores and the rigor of the applicants' respective undergraduate majors and colleges and refrain from taking the undergraduate transcript of every applicant at face value. In my opinion, an applicant with a 505 on the MCAT and a 3.3 in physics from Carleton or a 3.2 in chemical engineering from Purdue has a better chance of succeeding in medical school than someone with a 499 MCAT score and 4.0 in the humanities from a college with low admission standards. To flourish your new medical school needs students who can handle medical science. It doesn't need art historians.

I would also suggest that you keep the tuition as low as possible. If you want good applicants, let them know that they can pay off their loans in short order. Go out to Erie, PA and ask Dr. Ferretti at LECOM how the school keeps growing with the lowest tuition in the country. I suspect that they are merciless cost cutters and the savings get passed on to the students. Because your school will be in a city with a high cost of living, you need to tighten the screws on your costs and the students' tuition.

 

[DoctorDean]

Thanks for the advice!

 

[DoctorDean]

I think a question many applicants would find helpful is what the road ahead looks like once you are in medical school. There are a few big things like preparing for board exams and building a strong residency application, but it would be great to hear the full picture from moving to the city as a potential out of state student to what the pre-clinical and clinical years are like. As a follow up I would also like to know how the school plans to support students throughout that journey so they have the best chance to succeed.

great thoughts and I'll be sure to bring them to the team! Thanks!

 

[Goro]

Based upon my experience, FAQs are:
What sorts of community outreach do you have?
What research opportunities are available?
What sort of mentoring is available?
Where are rotation sites? How often will students have to move? Do you have enough sites/slots to handle all of your clinical students?
Do you provide any assistance in finding housing?
How will you help struggling students?
How will you be preparing students to pass Boards?
Will you use shelf exams, or Faculty-written ones?
Is the curriculum P/F? If not, what's the grading schema (FYI, the vast majority of med schools have gone to a P/F format, at least for the pre-clinical years).
What support do you have to prevent burnout and how to deal with stress.
Are lectures required? Do you use team-based learning formats? Are lectures recorded?
Do you have an actual or digital cadaver lab?

FYI: because you're a new school, you are most likely to have a class where the majority of students matriculate because you're they're only choice. And that's NOT due to location, but because they couldn't get accepted anywhere else. Thus, these are going to, for the most part, struggling students. Note Dad's citations above. You really will need a well-supported student learning center (and not just tutors), AND a good mental health counseling center.

Just look at what KS"com" has done, and do the opposite.

 

[wysdoc]

@DoctorDean
It would help to put up a link to your live webinar here, and also on the SDN applicant thread here: 2025-2026 IllinoisCOM at The Chicago School

 

[DoctorDean]

@DoctorDean
It would help to put up a link to your live webinar here, and also on the SDN applicant thread here: 2025-2026 IllinoisCOM at The Chicago School

This is the registration link, if anyone would like to sign up. We have about 700 signed up now and our limit is 1000 if anyone else is interested!

Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board...

tcsedsystem.zoom.us

 

[Napolitano17]

This is the registration link, if anyone would like to sign up. We have about 700 signed up now and our limit is 1000 if anyone else is interested!

Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board...

tcsedsystem.zoom.us

Hey I have just applied will you guys be hosting another webinar soon? If not, was the last webinar recorded? I would like to have more info on the school, thanks!