Choosing a school to attend

[chkntony]

Hi all,

Recently, I was accepted to 2 D.O schools. (WVSOM, touro-NY) and an interview on 11/11 LECOM-erie. I'm having real hard time making up my mind where to go, especially touro-NY is only giving me 2 weeks to make a deposit.

I really liked WVSOM when I visited, students, faculties, facilities, etc..
But one downside for me was location. It was nothing like where I grew up. very quite, limited settings, etc

But for touro-NY, its NYC! however its new school, don't know many about this school...

How did you all choose where to attend? What is Really important in choosing schools based on your experience?

Do you have any facts/opinions on these 2 schools that I got accepted?

Thank you,

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[DdrumbumD]

Go somewhere where you know you will be able to study and focus. As far as the first two years go, the same books are used to study from (Robbins, Netter, Costanzo) so less important maybe look into the clinical rotation sites. Third year rotations are huge and where you do them can impact you significantly. Might want to also see where previous students from that school matched.
In the end, will you be miserable in wv? If so, it'll be really hard to focus on studying.

There are pros and cons to all schools (as well as a forum named "pros and cons of your do school")

Hope this helps

 

[Bacchus]

This is hard bc Touro has a reputation for horrible rotations but WVSOM is extremely expensive. I think, despite the financial burden, I would go to WVSOM. If you're accepted to LECOM, I would probably end up there.

 

[obamacaresux]

How you perform in medical school is dependent on how motivated you are to excel regardless of the school. With that said, I ran into a WVSOM kid on the interview trail yesterday and he said he couldn't wait to leave the school because the town was way too small. I'm from a big city and I would do NY even if the education is sub-par. Rock your pre-clinical exams, boards, and clinical evaluations and you'll get a great residency.

 

[Tekar]

You have to ask yourself where you are willing to spend 4 years of your life. Medical school is medical school.. you'll stare at slides and textbooks for the next two years. Lecturers will be good, lecturers will be bad, OMM will be good, OMM will be bad, etc. etc. etc. You have to want to LIVE some place because 4 years is a very long time.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

Hi all,

Recently, I was accepted to 2 D.O schools. (WVSOM, touro-NY) and an interview on 11/11 LECOM-erie. I'm having real hard time making up my mind where to go, especially touro-NY is only giving me 2 weeks to make a deposit.

I really liked WVSOM when I visited, students, faculties, facilities, etc..
But one downside for me was location. It was nothing like where I grew up. very quite, limited settings, etc

But for touro-NY, its NYC! however its new school, don't know many about this school...

How did you all choose where to attend? What is Really important in choosing schools based on your experience?

Do you have any facts/opinions on these 2 schools that I got accepted?

Thank you,

As someone said above...if those were my options, I think I'd be hoping I got into LECOM.

WVSOM is decent enough as a medical school, but if you're OOS it's insanely expensive. I'm not so keen on Touro NY either; their rotations are said to be terrible, the administration is tyrannical and seems to be making a number of very questionable decisions (firing all the black faculty members? Wtf?), its location (Harlem) isn't so hot, etc.

LECOM isn't perfect either (mandatory attendance sucks, as does the fact that you can't drink water at exams or in the building altogether, etc) but it is quite affordable and has solid rotations and match lists.

PS: Quality of life is a big deal in med school, and a lot of that boils down to how much leeway the administration gives its students to manage their lives (read: studying) themselves. I picked a school that didn't have mandatory attendance for that specific reason, and I'm sure I'd be miserable if I'd ended up at a school that did. In my view, your top considerations when picking a med school should be cost, rotation quality, curriculum choices (is PBL available? Is attendance mandatory?), whether you'll be able to live near family and/or close friends and perhaps match list quality.

I wouldn't fret much about "location" unless it played into one of the above issues.

 

[BobBarker]

Lecom. Well established, good board scores, better rotations, costs 50% less.
200k with the juice running at 6.8% isn't a joke.

 

[SmokD]

This is hard bc Touro has a reputation for horrible rotations but WVSOM is extremely expensive. I think, despite the financial burden, I would go to WVSOM. If you're accepted to LECOM, I would probably end up there.

I wouldn't say horrible rotations. The 3rd and 4th year classes all say that they are taught well on rotations, and that they are happy with them. They're just pissed the rotations aren't in NYC, which they were told they would be. Honestly, this isn't really the school's fault. Harlem Hospital was supposed to be our University Hospital, but we got outbid by Caribbean schools. The school ended up having to scramble to rotation sites.

 

[pianoman511]

You have to ask yourself where you are willing to spend 4 years of your life. Medical school is medical school.. you'll stare at slides and textbooks for the next two years. Lecturers will be good, lecturers will be bad, OMM will be good, OMM will be bad, etc. etc. etc. You have to want to LIVE some place because 4 years is a very long time.

Remember, you're only going to be there for 2 years. Many of my friends ended up right back home for rotations, in fact many are living at home right now doing their 3rd and 4th year rotations. Medical school is really just a stepping stone to residency (something I heard recently...which is really the truth). With that in mind, go where you feel like you can learn the best (to do well on Step I) and even though it shouldn't be your #1 concern, look at cost of attendance as well - tuition is important, but cost of living in a given area should also be a factor.

 

[w a n g]

TUCOM-NY is new, untested, and I dont have any idea where they rotate.
WVSOM is ridic expensive but has good rankings in primary care focus.
LECOM erie is cheap and cold, but established with decent matches.

I'd say LECOM at this point.

 

[DocEspana]

TUCOM-NY is new, untested, and I dont have any idea where they rotate.
WVSOM is ridic expensive but has good rankings in primary care focus.
LECOM erie is cheap and cold, but established with decent matches.

I'd say LECOM at this point.

I'll lay out our rotation sites. Our third years have to spend most of their time in one of the 'tracks'. I'll list those below because i know them intimately by now. The fourth years have some additional hospitals in brooklyn/queens and westchester county that are reserved just for our 4th year students, but for the most part the school gives us massive freedom to go anywhere our fourth year (as all schools should) and the 'reserved' schools are just so you have a fall-back provided by the school if youre too lazy to get electives on your own.

1) St. John's Episcopal in Queens (can choose to also go to 2)
2) Staten Island University in SI (can choose to also go to 1)
3) North Jersey I (Trinitas and Jersey City Hospitals)
4) North Jersey II (Palisades, Holy Name and Englewood Hospitals)
5) Wilson Medical Center in Binghamton ('extra' spots, everyone who goes here elects to go here)
6) Some hospital in Utica that escapes me (same thing, this is 'extra' spots for people who wish to go upstate. no one is forced here).

the whole big thing with us getting a bad rotations rap is because we were going to have a university hospital and that deal was in place until late 2008 when St. George went ahead and purchased every public hospital in NYC. Oops. So all the schools in NYC had hundreds of displaced students. We had all of our eggs in one basket with Harlem Hospital, so we had to scramble with the 2011 and, to some degree, the 2012 class. Those two classes who had been excited to go to Harlem hospital were unhappy (understandably) but decided to torch the schools rep as much as possible on here because of it.

The reality is that you'll be hard pressed to find any DO school where 100% of the students can go to hospitals that are within 45 minutes of the school (would have been 30, but the ferry to SI makes that one take 45 minutes to get to). All the Jersey schools are literally right across the hudson river from manhattan and the Queens and SI options are major AOA residency locations for the more competitive ones (derm, optho, surgery up the wazoo)

so lets take all this uncertainty about our rotations clear out. Our core rotations are more than good and our 4th years are back in manhattan hospitals once their 3rd year cores 30 minutes away have been handled. Stick to our real pros and cons. We're a new school, there are enough things to criticize with certainty. The rotations are not them though.

 

[wannabeOBGYN]

I'll lay out our rotation sites. Our third years have to spend most of their time in one of the 'tracks'. I'll list those below because i know them intimately by now. The fourth years have some additional hospitals in brooklyn/queens and westchester county that are reserved just for our 4th year students, but for the most part the school gives us massive freedom to go anywhere our fourth year (as all schools should) and the 'reserved' schools are just so you have a fall-back provided by the school if youre too lazy to get electives on your own.

1) St. John's Episcopal in Queens (can choose to also go to 2)
2) Staten Island University in SI (can choose to also go to 1)
3) North Jersey I (Trinitas and Jersey City Hospitals)
4) North Jersey II (Palisades, Holy Name and Englewood Hospitals)
5) Wilson Medical Center in Binghamton ('extra' spots, everyone who goes here elects to go here)
6) Some hospital in Utica that escapes me (same thing, this is 'extra' spots for people who wish to go upstate. no one is forced here).

the whole big thing with us getting a bad rotations rap is because we were going to have a university hospital and that deal was in place until late 2008 when St. George went ahead and purchased every public hospital in NYC. Oops. So all the schools in NYC had hundreds of displaced students. We had all of our eggs in one basket with Harlem Hospital, so we had to scramble with the 2011 and, to some degree, the 2012 class. Those two classes who had been excited to go to Harlem hospital were unhappy (understandably) but decided to torch the schools rep as much as possible on here because of it.

The reality is that you'll be hard pressed to find any DO school where 100% of the students can go to hospitals that are within 45 minutes of the school (would have been 30, but the ferry to SI makes that one take 45 minutes to get to). All the Jersey schools are literally right across the hudson river from manhattan and the Queens and SI options are major AOA residency locations for the more competitive ones (derm, optho, surgery up the wazoo)

so lets take all this uncertainty about our rotations clear out. Our core rotations are more than good and our 4th years are back in manhattan hospitals once their 3rd year cores 30 minutes away have been handled. Stick to our real pros and cons. We're a new school, there are enough things to criticize with certainty. The rotations are not them though.

Wow, that sucks that your school was forced out of the hospital. I mean, the school is RIGHT THERE, you'd think they'd have some rights over a foreign med school... at least split the spots down the middle or something, you know?

 

[DocEspana]

Wow, that sucks that your school was forced out of the hospital. I mean, the school is RIGHT THERE, you'd think they'd have some rights over a foreign med school... at least split the spots down the middle or something, you know?

Preaching to the choir, my man.

but we're not the only ones. We, being the new school, got hit the hardest. But all the NYC schools (Columbia, Cornell, Einstein, Downstate, NYMC) lost hospitals at the same time in spring 2009 when this happened. Only NYU, apparently, remained totally untouched. Its simply how money works, when these schools are paying $10 million a year to the hospitals, the 'freeloading' american students get booted.

 

[drctother]

I turned down Touro-NY acceptance for my Western acceptance. However, it was not for the reasons most people fear. I can guarantee you the rotation site problem will not be as bad as it is now....in 2 years (and even now it isnt as bad as some people make it out to be). They are working their ass off to get better sites and are making decent progress. Also keep in mind that their current faculty has a huge presence in the medical community in NY so having "connections" would not be a problem

Touro Pros:
New school, nice facilities, good faculty (bad ones got fired or left), NYC. ** THE GOAL OF THE SCHOOL** if you really want to give back to the under served community than Touro is for you. They have fantastic honest goals as far as im concerned

Touro Cons:
Cold winters, ghetto neighborhood (common exaggeration by many people on SDN. You are not gonna walk to class and get shot or robbed, im sorry but it doesnt happen. Students of all sizes walk to class daily and only one person has been reported to be robbed. My guess is probably some small white girl who got too comfortable and decided to walk at 1am by herself, just saying.)

 

[wannabeOBGYN]

Preaching to the choir, my man.

but we're not the only ones. We, being the new school, got hit the hardest. But all the NYC schools (Columbia, Cornell, Einstein, Downstate, NYMC) lost hospitals at the same time in spring 2009 when this happened. Only NYU, apparently, remained totally untouched. Its simply how money works, when these schools are paying $10 million a year to the hospitals, the 'freeloading' american students get booted.

Total garbage. A lot of people go to school in big cities like NYC not only because the schools are great but because you get great exposure in inner city hospitals. Maybe I'm wrong, but regardless of money schools IN a given area should have first choice... at least for a portion of available spots.

 

[Terpskins99]

TUCOM-NY is new, untested, and I dont have any idea where they rotate.
WVSOM is ridic expensive but has good rankings in primary care focus.
LECOM erie is cheap and cold, but established with decent matches.

I'd say LECOM at this point.

Lecom. Well established, good board scores, better rotations, costs 50% less.
200k with the juice running at 6.8% isn't a joke.

Agreed. If you can land a spot at LECOM, jump on it. Lowest tuition among all the DO programs, and many of their 3rd year students rotate at solid sites throughout Pittsburgh.

WVSOM I hear is an ok program, but their tuition is borderline extortion.

TUCOM-NY I don't know much about. I do know that New York is having difficulty securing 3rd year core clerkship sites for any medical students. At present, this is primarily an issue that the carribean programs are having to deal with since there is an ongoing petition by the allopathic NY programs to prevent any non-US medical student from rotating at New York hospitals. As allopathic and osteopathic medical schools continue to increase their class size each year, the squeeze for 3rd year clerkship sites will be felt by everyone.

 

[DocEspana]

Total garbage. A lot of people go to school in big cities like NYC not only because the schools are great but because you get great exposure in inner city hospitals. Maybe I'm wrong, but regardless of money schools IN a given area should have first choice... at least for a portion of available spots.

Well I'm putting forward legislation to both Medical Society of the State of NY (MSSNY) and the AMA with the basic idea that LCME and AOA should assure that their schools have access to quality and local rotation options and then the remainder by given out to the other overseas schools.

Also the AMA is currently creating a legislation that, if everything passes, will require all american clinical rotations to come from AOA or LCME accredited schools regardless of nation of origin. Which would force the foreign schools to truly follow our accreditation steps. It wouldnt lose all of them, but it would greatly thin out their numbers as certain schools would fall off the map (smaller ones) and the larger ones would have to play fair to get accredited. No more being MD mills that enroll 1,000 students per year (thats St. George) The only real issue it would run into is that it would hurt the clinically rotating overseas students we do like (aka european students and indian students who only wish to to a month or two here)

 

[wannabeOBGYN]

Well I'm putting forward legislation to both Medical Society of the State of NY (MSSNY) and the AMA with the basic idea that LCME and AOA should assure that their schools have access to quality and local rotation options and then the remainder by given out to the other overseas schools.

Also the AMA is currently creating a legislation that, if everything passes, will require all american clinical rotations to come from AOA or LCME accredited schools regardless of nation of origin. Which would force the foreign schools to truly follow our accreditation steps. It wouldnt lose all of them, but it would greatly thin out their numbers as certain schools would fall off the map (smaller ones) and the larger ones would have to play fair to get accredited. No more being MD mills that enroll 1,000 students per year (thats St. George) The only real issue it would run into is that it would hurt the clinically rotating overseas students we do like (aka european students and indian students who only wish to to a month or two here)

That sounds like a good plan if it works out. I would think there could be some sort of differentiating clause between schools looking to set up core sites like St. George versus European or Indian students doing individual elective rotations.

 

[BKtomodachi]

TUCOM-NY I don't know much about. I do know that New York is having difficulty securing 3rd year core clerkship sites for any medical students. At present, this is primarily an issue that the carribean programs are having to deal with since there is an ongoing petition by the allopathic NY programs to prevent any non-US medical student from rotating at New York hospitals. As allopathic and osteopathic medical schools continue to increase their class size each year, the squeeze for 3rd year clerkship sites will be felt by everyone.

It is not likely that TouroNY will feel the squeeze of available core rotation spots anytime soon. The last number I have heard from the preclinical dean was that we have approximately 170 core rotation spots available for third-year students, and our class size is 135.

 

[DocEspana]

It is not likely that TouroNY will feel the squeeze of available core rotation spots anytime soon. The last number I have heard from the preclinical dean was that we have approximately 170 core rotation spots available for third-year students, and our class size is 135.

yea we have plenty of spots. Now we deal with the fun (well... it could be fun!) experience of trying to wiggle out of contracts at some places if "better" one (read as: manhattan) ever appear. But I've said it plenty of times: we have more spots than students and they're all very close to the school. The fact that we have none in the smallest county in america doesnt mean the others are far away at all.

 

[Everglide]

I would personally avoid WV at all costs due to it producing the most indebted graduates in the country.