Case Western SOM Class of 2010

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Hey everyone, I randomly stumbled upon "The Unofficial CWRU-SOM Survival Guide" website tonight. Made by Case Med students, it looks awesome - details apartment hunting, furniture stores, restaurants, case facilities, festivals, churches, etc. Basically, all the important details about being new in Cleveland (and to Case) =)

http://home.cwru.edu/~bdc11/index.html

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geekOCD said:
Hey everyone, I randomly stumbled upon "The Unofficial CWRU-SOM Survival Guide" website tonight. Made by Case Med students, it looks awesome - details apartment hunting, furniture stores, restaurants, case facilities, festivals, churches, etc. Basically, all the important details about being new in Cleveland (and to Case) =)

http://home.cwru.edu/~bdc11/index.html
Thanks a lot for posting that, geek. :thumbup:
 
Does anyone have access to an academic calendar? When does orientation begin?
 
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I imagine it'll be similiar to the cleveland clinic's schedule from last year (since they started in july, and now we'll be starting in july too). Their orientation last year was July 5-8 w/ classes starting July 11th.
 
geekOCD said:
Yup, it's Saturday but no idea about the time. It's not even listed (the time) in our 2nd look agendas.

Doc Opera is at 7pm. I'm a current first year who went to 2nd Look last year. The weekend was awesome and convinced me to come to Case when I thought I was going to go to my state school. Doc Opera was very entertaining and looked like a lot of fun....thus this year I'm in it. :) Hope you all enjoy the weekend!
 
jellybelly7 said:
Doc Opera is at 7pm. I'm a current first year who went to 2nd Look last year. The weekend was awesome and convinced me to come to Case when I thought I was going to go to my state school. Doc Opera was very entertaining and looked like a lot of fun....thus this year I'm in it. :) Hope you all enjoy the weekend!

Jellybelly... thanks for posting! I was wondering if you could elaborate a lil on what specifically made you change from your state school to Case? I'm anticipating that I will have to face a similar scenario.
 
To everyone who went: how was second look?
 
I'm tired from the weekend, but I'll bite and talk about it. I really enjoyed 2nd Look (and so did most people I talked to). I thought they presented the school, the new curriculum, and The Vision (essentially Dean Horowitz' vision) extremely well. All of the current students I talked to loved the school and were extremely cool people. Oh, and Doc Opera absolutely rocked and I was blown away by how well it was run and how much creativity was involved (essentially they adapted ~15 songs and created the same number of short skits that were totally original and often really amusing). Although I still have serious concerns about the weather (who doesn't?), I found that I really liked the neighborhoods around Case (Coventry, Shaker Heights, Little Italy) and a lot of other prospective students agreed with me that we ended up liking cleveland a lot more than we thought we would (given how much smack people talk about it). The new curriculum looks exciting, they're going to be sending us links to the website where they've put ALL the details on it (like day to day, week to week for the whole year). That said, it'll be like 75% small groups (~10 students and a prof) so that's a concern since no one really knows if they'll like small groups till they do it. The major issue on everyone's mind, I think, was the implementation of the vision - we're the guinea pig class, basically, and that worries people. Lastly, I enjoyed meeting the many non-trads there (married couples, people who've taken several years off, etc.) and really like that case seems to be very welcoming to "bent-arrows" (although I'm not one, I don't want to only be around folks just as immature as me *grin*). I think I'll stop there before this becomes huge, but I've got plenty more to say - so if you've got any questions, let 'em fly & also I'm sure I'll chime in once other people post about their 2nd look experience.
 
Glad you liked oc opera.
seriously though, its like freakish, it snowed last doc opera too and it hadn't snowed in weeks! and its probably not going to snow again.. so bizzare
 
Yeah, did they move 2nd look earlier this year to avoid the blizzard that hit last year? B/c they were definitely sad that we still got snow this 2nd look.
 
As soon as everyone left on sunday, it was a beautiful sunny warm day in cleveland. Very weird.
 
Does anybody know if Case is giving us laptops?
 
Daichi Katase said:
As soon as everyone left on sunday, it was a beautiful sunny warm day in cleveland. Very weird.
Really? That's crazy. It's beautiful here in FL, too. I'm thinking I could have weather like this all winter long if I stay here.... :smuggrin:

OK, so I need some advice from those of you who are northerners, in Cleveland or any other northern city that plows like that. I have a RWD small pick-up truck. It is approximately five years old, but it only has 16,000 miles on it, and it's paid for. I have had no mechanical problems with it. So for all of these reasons, I'm very reluctant to buy a new one and take on more payments. My parents, however, are urging me to sell it and buy a 4WD vehicle if I move up north. Do you guys think that's necessary? Is RWD unsafe in the winter?
 
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QofQuimica said:
OK, so I need some advice from those of you who are northerners, in Cleveland or any other northern city that plows like that. I have a RWD small pick-up truck. It is approximately five years old, but it only has 16,000 miles on it, and it's paid for. I have had no mechanical problems with it. So for all of these reasons, I'm very reluctant to buy a new one and take on more payments. My parents, however, are urging me to sell it and buy a 4WD vehicle if I move up north. Do you guys think that's necessary? Is RWD unsafe in the winter?
1. No, RWD is fun in the winter. Especially in pickups. To discover why, wait until the first good snow, and drive very slowly and very carefully to a deserted parking lot (school parking lots tend to work well, assuming school was canceled). If the lot hasn't been plowed, you're in luck! Half an hour in this playpen of snow and you'll be a winter-driving pro!

2. For safety: put some weight in the back of your truck (I think you have a cat, fill 'er up w/ cheap kitty litter bags). Gives extra traction to the back wheels. May also want to get some "winter" tires if you find you could use more traction. Some places have "winter driving lessons" you can take, but I bet there's a few students in your class who would love to teach you some basic skills anyways. Oh, and I'd recommend a thermometer in your car, so you know if it's below freezing or not. "Black ice" is my biggest winter fear, as it looks like smooth blacktop but is really a mini ice rink. If you know something wet may have frozen the night before, you'll be able to watch out for it. Luckily, the insane amount of salting road crews tend to do in cities negates this as a real concern, but I'm used to country roads.

3. Luckily, you'll be an M1 next year, not an M3. Unless you plan on driving to school every day, you'll be able to wholly skip driving on any days that may scare you. You will be able to slowly acclimate to the sensation of driving on slippery stuff. And really, anyone can manage if you just half (or more) your usual driving speed, start breaking WELL in advance of intersections, and go very slowly through turns.

Overall, things that help you drive in winter:
AWD, winter tires, a non-white car, anti-lock brakes, manual transmission. But none of them are necessities, for Ohio at least.
 
Wow, second look was so much better than I could have imagined. My biggest sticking point about the school is the weather; besides that, I love everything about it and thought they sold the school incredibly well. I'm willing to bet there aren't too many schools where students drink with the deans and other faculty...that's probably what impressed me the most.
 
dajimmers said:
Overall, things that help you drive in winter:
AWD, winter tires, a non-white car, anti-lock brakes, manual transmission. But none of them are necessities, for Ohio at least.
Awesome, dajimmers, thanks. :thumbup: I have all of those except for the 4WD and the winter tires, but I can buy the latter Tires are much cheaper than buying an entire new car. :D

I don't know where I'll be living yet, and some of my schools are in cities where this won't even be a problem, but I figured it would be good to know ahead of time whether buying a new vehicle was a necessity for moving up north....
 
QofQuimica said:
Awesome, dajimmers, thanks. :thumbup: I have all of those except for the 4WD and the winter tires, but I can buy the latter Tires are much cheaper than buying an entire new car. :D

I don't know where I'll be living yet, and some of my schools are in cities where this won't even be a problem, but I figured it would be good to know ahead of time whether buying a new vehicle was a necessity for moving up north....

I have all season tires and my car has been fine for two years so far. They're good about plowing around these parts. And it's going to be Sunny and 51 degrees today :confused: They say, "dont like the weather in cleveland? wait a couple minutes"
 
Hoooba said:
Does anybody know if Case is giving us laptops?

Just to answer this - nope, they're not giving us laptops. They'll be sending us a link about this soon I think, but basically they have deals with three vendors (dell, apple, and they haven't worked out the third yet) for three specific models which they recommend. One's a mac (macbook?), one's a new dell laptop, and one's a tablet pc (they haven't chosen the vendor for this one yet). They said the recommended dell laptop w/ their discount will come out to be like $1600-1800. If you don't want to buy one of the recommended ones (like me), then they have a list of minimum required specs. Important specs I remember: at least 1.8ghz, 80gb hdd, and 1gb ram (so basically, fairly high-end). One cool thing is that they have a full microsoft license for case students, so you can download (for free) any microsoft packages (like windows, or office, or eventually, Vista) from case. Personally, I'm a gamer so I'm debating keeping my desktop system which I built and getting an ultralight 12" laptop OR selling my desktop and getting a full featured gaming laptop.
 
If you get a Dell, you can get it serviced by BIT which will save you loads of hassles if it breaks (remember the skit with the laptops at Doc Opera?). Ive had about eight of my rubber legs replaced and my entire LCD replaced (overnight too). At a school where you are pretty much symbiotic with your laptop, it is nice to know you can get it fixed on site same day.
(I'd contact BIT to confirm this though)
 
Camel said:
Jellybelly... thanks for posting! I was wondering if you could elaborate a lil on what specifically made you change from your state school to Case? I'm anticipating that I will have to face a similar scenario.

My post was too long so I PM'ed you instead. If anyone else is interested in the response, PM me.
 
geekOCD said:
I'm tired from the weekend, but I'll bite and talk about it. I really enjoyed 2nd Look (and so did most people I talked to). I thought they presented the school, the new curriculum, and The Vision (essentially Dean Horowitz' vision) extremely well. All of the current students I talked to loved the school and were extremely cool people. Oh, and Doc Opera absolutely rocked and I was blown away by how well it was run and how much creativity was involved (essentially they adapted ~15 songs and created the same number of short skits that were totally original and often really amusing). Although I still have serious concerns about the weather (who doesn't?), I found that I really liked the neighborhoods around Case (Coventry, Shaker Heights, Little Italy) and a lot of other prospective students agreed with me that we ended up liking cleveland a lot more than we thought we would (given how much smack people talk about it). The new curriculum looks exciting, they're going to be sending us links to the website where they've put ALL the details on it (like day to day, week to week for the whole year). That said, it'll be like 75% small groups (~10 students and a prof) so that's a concern since no one really knows if they'll like small groups till they do it. The major issue on everyone's mind, I think, was the implementation of the vision - we're the guinea pig class, basically, and that worries people. Lastly, I enjoyed meeting the many non-trads there (married couples, people who've taken several years off, etc.) and really like that case seems to be very welcoming to "bent-arrows" (although I'm not one, I don't want to only be around folks just as immature as me *grin*). I think I'll stop there before this becomes huge, but I've got plenty more to say - so if you've got any questions, let 'em fly & also I'm sure I'll chime in once other people post about their 2nd look experience.

Ditto. It was a great time. It was also fun to meet you in the flesh, and Q too (even though she is one of those snooty Cleveland Clinic types.) I'm just kidding! We love you all... :love: And we'll be done a year earlier. :p
 
Yeah, twas good to meet you rob. I'm sorry that I didn't get to meet you, Q! And unfortunately, I'll probably be in the 5-year crowd (MD/MPH). I really hate taking that year off, but oh well.
 
robh said:
Ditto. It was a great time. It was also fun to meet you in the flesh, and Q too (even though she is one of those snooty Cleveland Clinic types.) I'm just kidding! We love you all... :love: And we'll be done a year earlier. :p
Hey, robh, I remember you! Aren't you some med school applicant's dad??? :smuggrin: Seriously, it was fun meeting you both. Stay in touch and let me know how things turn out.

geek, we might have met without knowing it. :idea: I was allegedly fraternizing with the Case people in the hotel lobby. :p
 
lol, Q, I'm pretty sure I didn't meet you - would've remembered the name. But that was a crazy mixer - so many people to meet and so much really good wine :) I did meet a bunch of clinic folks - I think I talked to clinic folks more than university folks almost - they seemed like a cool bunch.
 
geekOCD said:
lol, Q, I'm pretty sure I didn't meet you - would've remembered the name. But that was a crazy mixer - so many people to meet and so much really good wine :) I did meet a bunch of clinic folks - I think I talked to clinic folks more than university folks almost - they seemed like a cool bunch.
I don't think I told any of you guys who I was except robh. :smuggrin:
 
IAMS said:
Does anyone have access to an academic calendar? When does orientation begin?

I called the admissions office about a month ago asking when orientation begins and the lady told me July 10th. Pretty damn early.

Got my acceptance letter today :) So excited! I'll be there at CW unless my other top school takes me off their wait-list.
 
Yeah, orientation starts July 10th, white coat's July 16th, and classes start July 17th. There's more info. about the new curriculum (day by day) than you would EVER want to know on that website that they just emailed us. And congrats & welcome toolstar!
 
geekOCD said:
Yeah, orientation starts July 10th, white coat's July 16th, and classes start July 17th. There's more info. about the new curriculum (day by day) than you would EVER want to know on that website that they just emailed us. And congrats & welcome toolstar!

thanks :) can someone post the link you're talking about?
 
QofQuimica said:
Hey, robh, I remember you! Aren't you some med school applicant's dad??? :smuggrin:

Rumors that I have fathered a medical student, much less a current CWRU medical student are highly exaggerated! :laugh:
 
So anyone hear from Case regarding scholarships? If I'm not mistaken, the 28th was the day they'd decide (dunno if that means send decisions, call, or make decisions). I have class all day today so if anything does happen with me (which I doubt), I won't find out until after 9pm.
 
Letter about scholarships arrived today from Case. Well, guess I won't be attending Case :-( It's been short but fun here on the Case thread, good luck to you all! Perhaps I'll see you in a residency program someday :) Peace.
 
Hi everyone,
I was looking at the new Case curriculum - does anyone know the difference between "learning groups" and "interactive sessions"? Is it just small group lectures and PBL? Are the absolutely NO lectures next year? Thanks!
 
"learning groups" are the small groups, and "interactive sessions" are lectures or anything else (like the first block has a lot of small group activities in the city, which as a side note, look neat).

Edit: also, they told us that our curriculum would be about 75% small groups and 25% lecture.
 
geekOCD said:
"learning groups" are the small groups, and "interactive sessions" are lectures or anything else (like the first block has a lot of small group activities in the city, which as a side note, look neat).

Edit: also, they told us that our curriculum would be about 75% small groups and 25% lecture.

Thanks! So does small group = PBL? Or just a kind of interactive lecture section?

Also, I just got pulled off hold, is there anything I need to know about financial aid? Will they send me a packet, or do I have to go to their website? Thanks guys!
 
Based on the info they presented at second look, I think the small group sessions involve groups of 8-10 students and a faculty member working together in a small interactive group. Not a PBL-type case.
 
For the financial aid stuff, you can fill our your FAFSA now, and then they'll send you a packet with stuff to fill out and return to them. Also you can start working on your Need Access application, which they'll be wanting too. It's a bit of a pain (much more than the FAFSA, and it'll cost you $15.00). Hope that helps, congrats on the acceptance!
 
I wasn't able to make it to second-look weekend, where I'm sure they talked about housing, so I thought I'd post here - anyone looking for a roommate? Eileen in admissions only had a few names... I was surprised that more people hadn't contacted her about finding other students to live with.
 
rivers said:
I wasn't able to make it to second-look weekend, where I'm sure they talked about housing, so I thought I'd post here - anyone looking for a roommate? Eileen in admissions only had a few names... I was surprised that more people hadn't contacted her about finding other students to live with.

I'm looking for a roommate. I have yet to send in that paper though. I have a dog that will be coming out there with me, so maybe thats a minus for some (or a positive?). Maybe if more people post on here then we'll be able to save Eileen some work!
 
I've been debating the roommate question...definitely much cheaper but I'm also thinking of a big dog or a cat or two. I'm looking for a roommate who likes animals but ideally doesn't have any of their own (sorry prospero!) =) Oh, also, I'm planning on living easy walking-distance away b/c I may not have a car the first year, or at least for a few months. Additionally, besides craigslist (http://cleveland.craigslist.org/) which isn't too active, there's also a listing site just for the case community: http://cwru.oodle.com/ - good to check out for apartments/furniture/cars/etc.
 
well in case anyone's curious, i'm from seattle, a non-smoker that doesn't mind pets (have owned both dogs and cats in the past... prefer big dogs and fat cats that are as lazy as me), really laid-back but like to keep the house clean, i watch a LOT of ESPN, plays sports and piano, hope to host a poker night once in a while, like to get beers on weekends, and have lived with both guys and girls in the past so no preference there. i plan to have a car in cleveland but hope to live close enough to campus to walk. in terms of academic interests, am particularly interested in research and policy issues and hope to be pretty active in AMSA.
 
I was just checking out the Cleveland Clinic thread and they are saying that they have to withdraw all their other acceptances by April 15th... this isn't true for Case too is it??
 
rivers said:
well in case anyone's curious, i'm from seattle, a non-smoker that doesn't mind pets (have owned both dogs and cats in the past... prefer big dogs and fat cats that are as lazy as me), really laid-back but like to keep the house clean, i watch a LOT of ESPN, plays sports and piano, hope to host a poker night once in a while, like to get beers on weekends, and have lived with both guys and girls in the past so no preference there. i plan to have a car in cleveland but hope to live close enough to campus to walk. in terms of academic interests, am particularly interested in research and policy issues and hope to be pretty active in AMSA.


wow, you sound a hell of alot like me!
 
diosa428 said:
I was just checking out the Cleveland Clinic thread and they are saying that they have to withdraw all their other acceptances by April 15th... this isn't true for Case too is it??

Nope, not true for Case, no worries!
 
robh said:
Rumors that I have fathered a medical student, much less a current CWRU medical student are highly exaggerated! :laugh:

Hey Rob,

Did I sit in a van with you on the way to dinner and discuss taxes, charity, and government's proper role in society?

:) That was fun.
 
admissions said apps were up 60% this year so congrats to those accepted. you guys are in good company. i wonder if I wouldve gotten in this year :oops:
 
Wow, 60%? That's a huge increase.
 
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