class size?

[wendywellesley]

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i'm applying next cycle.
the schools that i think i have a shot at have fairly large class sizes >150. this makes me a bit nervous. does anyone have any opinions on this, how does this effect learning? how are labs effected by large classes? are there 20 people/ per cadavar? (i've been looking forward to anatomy lab since I was like 5).
i'm looking for a school with a close-knit community, students that help each other and know each other and i'm afraid that a big class might not offer that.
i'm thinking about schools like NYMC, downstate, upstate, drexel, finch, etc.

any thoughts?
thanks!

 

[leechy]

Class size has also been figuring into my med school considerations, but more from a social perspective. Med schools are already smaller than high school classes... from my perspective, larger is better. Not sure how this affects education... I can imagine those in smaller classes getting a lot more attention.

 

[fielight]

the class sizes are pretty meaningless for the 1st two years... by the time you get to med school, you should already be well accustomed to independent studying (which is what you'll do most of the time, regardless of whether you go to class or not because of the enormous volume of material). a lot of the med schools now (at least mine) use web-based discussion forums where you can post questions and the professors will answer. the professors also have office hours, and while they might not be as free as in undergrad, they will still help. plus, the schools have the Curriculum office and other departments that can assist you in whatever way possible (they realize that med school is a lifestyle, and a very strenuous one too, and so offer a lot of support).

labs are generally split into classes of 20-30. whether or not you will see a friendly, helpful student body depends on the students... some schools have students that are more friendly, some are more competitive.

if the school you're looking into have actual dissection (vs. computer anatomy), it won't be 20 people per cadaver. usually, it's 4-5 students in a group (check with the school and they'll tell you)... unfortunately, there was this whole mess-up at my school, so we now have 8 people per cadaver (difficult for sure, but not impossible for learning). good luck with anatomy in the future... it's a great experience, but is also a lot to handle.

 

[jetskigirl]

Everywhere that I've interviewed has had 4-6 people to cadaver. Mayo has 40 students and has 10 cadavers, Georgetown has 182 students and 48 cadavers.

My concern with class size would be lectures, people may be less likely to participate with over 200 other people in the class as they would with say 50. However, most of the schools have pretty comperable class sizes. I don't think anything from 120 to 180 students is going to differ much.

Also, look into how often the school uses small group learning and how large those groups are. At some schools, this is very significant. Spending 10 hours a week with 7 other people may be more helpful than the whole time with 39 other people.

 

[Neuronix]

I think the more important things to consider are the resources for the students the school has.

Is the lecture hall nice or cramped? For example, the Penn lecture halls may be up on their technology, but they're small and you really have no leg room or room for your notes. My friend at Temple (with a larger class size) says its even worse there. Meanwhile, Penn's business school, law school, and several other med schools (such as Duke or Rochester) actually have reasonably nice lecture halls. What does that say about how much the school cares about teaching?

Someone also mentioned about cadavers. Any more than 4 students per cadaver shows a complete lack of respect for training on the part of the medical school IMO. Further, for anatomy will you actually have a locker room or will you be stuck changing in the hallways?

Then when you get to clinics, will there be so many students that some will be required to rotate several hours from the medical school? Some of the Philly schools with large class sizes are notorious for sending their medical students far far away for rotations because they just don't have the facilities to handle them. That's difficult if you go to one of the schools in the city and don't have a car (and as Penn's fin aid department is happy to remind you, fin aid doesn't factor in you needing a car for rotations!).

These are just a few examples--there's many more I'm forgetting to list. So when evaulating a medical school don't look at class size, but try to find some OBJECTIVE measures of how well the school is handling its class. That means don't ask things like "Is a small or large class size better?" or "Do you think the class size here is too big?" because your cheerleading ambassadors at the medical school you're visiting will be happy to put meaningless spin on the subject for you.