...But I really have heard medical/dental school is like elementary or high school all over again.
This is true for a lot of places.^ When you put a lot of young people in a new city where they know basically nobody, that'll happen.
Podiatry school is pretty intense and you will be with the same group of people for 4 years. A lot of people in the class will not only study, but also hang out with, date, etc with students from the pod class/school. As you can guess, that makes for some good and also some problems. I even go to a school that has a huge number of undergrad and other grad students (many allied health), yet most of the pod students seem to hang out just with mainly just other pods. You definetely want to be friendly to everyone who acts that way to you, but try not to get caught up in the gossip, cliques, and drama which will likely evolve.
My advice would be to try to find a reasonably diverse group of friends and activities while in pod school for reasons of both networking and sanity. If you are a good and hard working student, you won't have a ton of social time or be too concerned about being Mr. Popular anyways, but you can mix it up as far as who you hang out with. Even if you go to a free-standing pod school, make friends at the gym, the nearby university libraries, the coffee shop, etc as well as just in pod class. I like meeting fellow allied health students (PA, nursing, pre-med, etc) and sharing experiences. Many of them have little idea what a podiatry education is like, and I also get to learn about their classes, rotations, job duties, etc. Things may get a bit stagnant if you are going to class, studying, socializing, dating, etc all with the same small group of pod people all of the time.
I appreciate your posts wiskers. Sometimes I think we go/went to the same school.
I enjoy his posts too.^ Pre-pods need to take the stuff he says with a sizable grain of salt since it is overly pessimistic and candid, but, as a pod student with a sense of humor, some of the stuff is just plain funny.