For some reason, I aways thought they meant the same thing. Anyway, I would just like some perspectives on the school (i.e. curriculum, grading, match list, living in Ohio, etc.).
lol, this could be a very long conversation. I'll start short & you can flesh it out w/ further questions if you want. Starting with the easy quick things...
Grading - pure P/F, no ranking. An essay per week (short answers, your choice out of 2 topics, not graded but reviewed by your small group facilitator). Tests every 3 months. Pretty much as relaxed of a system as you could get in med school (w/ maybe the exception of yale or something).
Match List - umm...I've always been told it's good, tons of folks in rads, derm, etc. I'm not planning on going into those specialties, but there's plenty of folks going into the specialties I'm interested in. Long story short, I don't worry about our reputation or our match list, every one I've spoken to from current students to residents to physicians knows and respects Case.
Living in Cleveland - the last thing my student interviewer at Case told me, as I pestered him with questions about cleveland, was "PLEASE do not choose not to come here because of cleveland; trust me that it's really not that bad, you'll be totally fine." In the end I listened to his advice and I'm glad I did since I'm finding that I actually like cleveland. It's a small city, so yes, it's annoying that there aren't many restaurants open after 10/11pm...but it's easy to get around, it's diverse, cheap!, there are good restaurants, it's actually a very green pretty city once you're outside of the inner city, more than enough to do given your time constraints.The weather's even been pretty decent this year,which is often what freaks people out the most regarding coming to cleveland. From talking to fourth years, they say that everyone always says they're "definitely" leaving cleveland/ohio for residency when they first arrive, and then a huge proportion end up staying because it's a pretty decent city to live in and there's amazing clinical resources (i.e. all of our hospitals rock).
Curriculum - I saved this for the last b/c it could take a while, and now this is already so long... We're only in class from 8-12pm four days a week (thurs. off). It's 50% small group (case based) and 50% lecture or medium group (basically a smaller lecture that's potentially more interactive b/c it's a smaller group per lecturer/expert). The controversial part is small group (8-9 students + facilitator), so I'll talk about that but ask about another aspect if you want. Small group is def. an adjustment for everyone...it's a different way of learning and forces you to do a lot more active work (looking up the pathophysiology of a disease, its treatment, the underlying normal physiology, etc.) as opposed to passively memorizing a syllabus. Small group forces you to work as a group, teach & learn from eachother, learn to use the online databases that clinicians use to find info., etc. Basically, small group has its cons - it can be frustrating either b/c you're annoyed w/ your group or just annoyed b/c you feel you're doing a lot of work on your own as opposed to getting a nice easy lecture or because sometimes you hit on things in small group that you haven't hit in lecture yet so you're lacking a foundation. It also has its pros - you learn the material better from all the active learning (both your research and sharing it w/ your group), you become an expert at using the online medical/diagnostic databases that clinicians use EVERY day, you become comfy working in teams which is how a lot of medicine is practiced today, and most importantly you become comfy looking up material you have to know and teaching yourself which is how the rest of your medical career (residency + post) will be. There is a minority group in my class who hate small group but most ppl I know have either always liked it or have eventually realized that it is working for them. It's a basic pro/con equation, if the "pros" of small group don't do anything for you, the cons will be paramount for you. If the pros work for you - if you feel you are learning better and are learning long-term skills, then the cons won't amount to more than the occasional bitch session with your friends. I'll stop there b/c this is a book, but feel free to ask any follow-up questions.
