For anyone worried about this being a new school, I want to shatter that worry right now.
I am an MS-1 here, and I am blown away at how well our curriculum was chosen, how well the faculty were chosen, and also my fellow students.
My girlfriend goes to a prestigious medical school in Michigan, and after she came down and visited she is 100% convinced that she should have come here.
The three most valuable resources in our class are our faculty, lecture/tested material, and our fellow students.
1) Most of our faculty's full time jobs is to teach, they do some research but not much. That means they don't have any other motive to be here other than they like to teach, and they do. Yeah there's a couple professors that are dry, but there are very few, I can only think of two. But overall, our faculty love us, and we love them. They always want to go the extra mile to help us learn, and always leave their doors open for us.
2) Our material is a notch above the most. I interviewed at University of Washington last year a supposed very good MD school, where I did my undergrad, and I found out that their board scores the last couple years were actually below the national average. Keep in mind this is a really competitive school, with many extremely intelligent people there. Why didn't they do well? They weren't taught right, and now they completely revamped their curriculum to change it. Our school howeever, is completely based off helping us succeed on boards. From the material in lecture to the style/type of test we do, it's getting us ready, and follows First Aid very well. I bring this up because if you want to do get into a competetive residency program, screw prestige, and go with the school with the better curriculum, whether it's CUSOM or somewhere else. A killer board score means astronomically more than what school you went to. Always. And also, our first set of board takers just took theirs this summer, and they killed it. We had a 94% pass rate, which is unheard of for a new school. My girlfriend's school gives a course pack with no pictures, no slides, just words, and they are tested on it. It's not gonna prepare her enough for boards, and she will have to study much harder than me when she gets there (we're gonna try and work out a transfer. 🙂...)
3) Even though I have only been here two months, I feel like I grew up here because of how many friends I have made and people I know that I can rely on. CUSOM really handpicks people based off their personality and willingness to work hard, and less off grades. Yes, you have to show them that you can handle med school, but if you have a good GPA or MCAT (not necessarily both, unless you were a philosophy major or something else really easy), you have shown them you can do handle it. If you are one of those cut throat my way before everyone else pre-med kids, you will not be accepted here. You won't. This school wants students who help each other. Med school is hard enough as it is, and we have to band together to get through it, not climb over top of each other. My girlfriend has almost no one to stud with and no one shares any material because they are so concerned with doing better than their fellow student, which is ridiculous.
Anyway, I love this school, and I would not want to go anywhere else that I interviewed. For those of you that are doubting whether you did everything right, you probably did. It's hard to get into medical school, and there is absolutely zero shame in not getting in the first time around. You guys still have a lot of hope, and if you need any advice for reapplying or looking better for the next year or interviewing or whatever you can IM me your situation.
Any questions you have about CUSOM I am happy to answer, either on this thread or via IM.
Good luck everyone!
-Mat