Hello Pre,
😱CCLCMer said:
It's P/F all five years. There are a lot of schools that are P/F the first two years, but then they grade you for the clinicals. (It's often honors/high pass/pass/marginal pass/fail, or some variant thereof.) Not here. It's all P/F the entire way through. Instead of grades, we have a complicated-to-explain portfolio system for our evaluations instead of grades. There are nine competencies which we are required to meet, and we collect evidence in the portfolios to show that we have done that. And just to clarify, our curriculum is not unstructured. It's just structured very differently compared to most other medical schools, including the UP.
We really don't overlap at all for the first two years. Case and CCF are two independent institutions that are about a mile away from one another. In the first two years, the UP students take their own classes at Case, and we take separate ones at CCF. After M2, we will all do our rotations at both facilities together. In other words, UP students can rotate here at CCF, and CCLCM students can rotate at Case's University Hospital or other hospitals. But we're on a different schedule than the UP students during our clinical years because of our research requirement, and it's not really accurate to say that we overlap with them much.
I'm not quite sure how to answer this question, seeing as I've only ever gone to one medical school. 😉 But my impression from speaking to friends at other schools and in the UP is that our workload is just as heavy as theirs is. It's just more uniform. What I mean is that we don't cram before tests, that kind of thing. It seems like a lot of my friends who have tests kind of go in fits and spurts. They'll do less for a few weeks, and then as the test gets closer, start studying like crazy. Then after the test, they ease up again until the next test starts coming up. Here the work is spread out more evenly since there are no tests to cram for. But we're reaching the end of our first block next week, and it does seem like this has been a particularly busy week because our research proposals are due tomorrow. I think that a lot of us are feeling a bit stressed about that and our research presentations next week.
what are the average mcat/gpa scores for admitted students to this program, as compared to cwru? And more importantly, what are the average step1 scores?
The admissions offices (Case and CCLCM) do not report separate averages for CCLCM students. So the only information that is released is the overall Case averages, which you can find in the MSAR.
Actually, if you're speaking strictly clinical, they two programs are identical. Obviously the research requirement isnt "clinical" per se. You cant tell if a student is from the college program or university program unless you ask them. If a college program student wanted to do all three "cores" in a row a la university program student, I suppose he/she could. Students from both schools have to go through the "new" clinical curriculum that the school just initiated. The only difference is that there is a year of research interspersed.
They overlap more during M3 versus in M1-M2, but they still aren't identical. Our curriculum is integrated the entire way through; it's never just clinical or just research. For example, our M3s continue taking coursework at CCF even while rotating, and they continue doing clinics even while doing research. I don't know if you guys in the UP take any classes as M3s, but if you do, they are separate from ours.
You're a M1.. you dont know that much yet 😛
Of course it is easy to tell the students apart. The University Program students are way hotter.
Really? We'll just have to try harder to raise our weirdness quotient, I guess. 😉
If you are interested in research and you think you might like this program, I think you should definitely apply. Like JDW said, you wouldn't be the only person with graduate training, or even the only PhD here. You could also contact the admissions office and ask them to put you in touch with one of the PhD students if you want to discuss it with them.
Right now, cold and wet. 😛 I don't know if I'd call University Circle a cultural mecca per se. But there ARE a lot of things you can do here, and I have to admit that I really don't take advantage of them nearly as much as I could or would like to. Offhand, there's an art museum, the Cleveland Orchestra, and a botanical garden. There's also a really awesome medical library on the Case campus that has a museum in it with exhibits about the history of medicine. The last time I went there (over the summer), they had a display on the history of contraceptives that was both scary and pretty neat. There are probably more things that I've forgotten, but there's a start anyway.
You're welcome. Good luck with your interview. 🙂
There is not any student housing at CCF, but there is student housing on the Case campus. I know of at least a few CCLCM students who live there. Most of us live off campus in one of the surrounding communities, like Cleveland Heights or Shaker Heights. There is also an area near Case called Little Italy with some great restaurants where some people live. I don't know what kind of traffic you're used to, but I guess if you come from a big city like NYC or LA, Cleveland won't seem so bad to you. 😉 I've talked about crime some in my blog, but basically the CCF campus has its own police force and it is pretty well policed. Case uses the University Circle police. Both campuses have escorts available to students at night. I think it is safe to walk around either campus or between them during the day, but I wouldn't suggest doing it at night. There is public transportation, but almost all of the CCLCM students drive. Basically there is a train (the RTA) and also a bus system. The parking situation here is typical city parking: expensive and scarce. The students who don't have cars walk, take the bus, bike, and/or get rides from other students who do have cars.
In answer to your first question, the lack of grades was one of the main reasons why I wanted to come here. No one has graduated yet from our program, so it's hard to know for sure how residency programs will react. Probably some will be more accepting than others. But I agree with JDW that LORs, research records, and board scores will matter the most and will allow us to be competitive applicants.
Case has its own police force as of 1-2 weeks ago, in addition to University Circle Police and Case Security guards. Basically the police coverage in the area doubled. Very happy about that.
That's great news. I had heard they were going to do that, but I didn't know they had started yet.
You can ask both admissions offices to call you in case an earlier date becomes available due to cancellation. But if you do this, then you will probably have to come out here twice, because the UP and CCLCM have separate admissions schedules and you probably won't be lucky enough to get two cancellations back to back like that. I think you should wait and come in January unless you don't mind coming to Cleveland twice. They won't fill the entire class before you get here. Last year, I interviewed at both programs in January too, and I was accepted to both. Some of my classmates interviewed even later (February). So even though the admissions here is rolling, there are still spots left for the people who interview later. 🙂
