There are annoying rules; admin is deluded in many ways. Sh** floats to the top generally, and that is present at LECOM, to the frequent frustration of students. However, I suspect LECOM is less bad than many or most other DO programs. Not only is it going to be 50-100k cheaper on average, but the potential to rotate at numerous hospitals that have residencies is superior to many DO schools. I came to LECOM due to its cheaper cost, ability to teach myself via PBL, and relatively good clinical rotations. I have experienced all of those things, as expected, but have classmates that have gotten unlucky and have not.
I did PBL. I would do it again. Sure, there is required attendance, group discussion faculty are hit or miss (more hit than miss in my experience), and you teach yourself a lot of the material- but I knew that going in. It is entirely what I signed up for. A lot of my classmates complain frequently about lack of support. You need to educate yourself going in about the support you will and will not get attending LECOM, or most DO schools for that matter. It is less support than MD schools on average. Should it be like that? Of course not. But it is, you're not going to change it, and boy will you be happier if you understand this ahead of time and focus on internally driven factors to get where you want to be. In my experience, non-traditional students who have experienced work in the real world usually tolerate LECOM better. They understand that the misery is temporary and will usually get them to where they'd like to be. Traditional students on average complain more, have a myopic view of focusing on non-modifiable external factors (ie LECOM's rules), and experience more emotional distress as a result. Not necessarily unreasonable that they do, but it serves limited useful purpose.
Pros of PBL at LECOM (some of these are diminished if you do LDP... I don't understand why anyone would force themselves to do 6-8hrs of lectures per day. Watching a lecture on 1x speed is misery. I struggle with procrastination and self-starting studying but PBL was STILL clearly so much better than LDP):
-Freedom to tailor education to your learning style
-Freedom to focus on studying for board exams for 2 years straight
-Less required attendance
-Less time on campus
-Less time interacting with faculty/admin
-Time to pursue your own extracurricular stuff (ie research)
Cons of LECOM preclinical:
-Limited resources for struggling students
-Actively harmful strategies for struggling students
-Actively harmful board prep courses/perspective from faculty/admin
-Very poor advising
-Lack of acknowledgement that we are adult learners
-OPP at one campus I hear is taught poorly/abusively
-Limited opportunities for networking/research (you have to be a go-getter to do this)
Pros of LECOM clinical:
-Some clinical sites are great. You rotate alongside MD students and have the full attending/resident/student type team experience
-Numerous clinical sites have affiliated residencies
-Some clinical deans are absolute treasures and go to bat for you with schedule changes, rotations, residency connections
-Likely above average clinical experience compared to other DO schools. My experience was very solid and I was not at a highly sought after hospital in the lottery system.
-NBME shelf exams (this is the MD school exam. Some DO schools use NBOME exams, which are objectively worse)
-Some degree of modifiability in your schedule, though this is likely very dependent on which clinical dean is at your site.
-Approaching-reasonable number of interview days in 4th year (not where it should be at, but improved from the past)
-I don't know where the BS of it sucking having to schedule your whole 4th year is coming from. I guess this is true (except for 3-4 that are scheduled for us) but if you are remotely competent you can just ask the med student coordinator at your home site for a doctor in whatever specialty, or directly ask attendings at your hospital, and it's very easy to setup. People that have issues with this are either at a very bad clinical site (see below) or are remarkably poorly organized. Also many DO schools have way more scheduling of rotations fall on the student- it's a relative strength of LECOM that we don't have to do as much of this and that when we do, there are many hospital systems where LECOM students rotate so it shouldn't be that stressful (hasn't been for me, and I'm not the most organized student).
-Relatively little paperwork during rotations/simple eval forms (I have seen students from other programs that have a lot more meaningless tracking to do).
-Proximity to the Midwest. Residencies care about what region you are coming from (maybe increasingly?) and LECOM is close by to a lot of programs in the Midwest and NE. This probably helps with getting interviews at a number of institutions.
Cons of LECOM clinical:
-Some sites have terrible rotations not befitting of a medical school. These are shameful. LECOM won't listen to feedback and students are helpless to fix this. LECOM is probably desperate for clinical sites because they're the biggest med school in the country so has a very high threshold for removing sites.
-Some sites have inadequate exposure to residencies and appropriately formatted clinical teams (ie you work directly with an attending the whole time).
-No anonymous reporting system (this goes for preclinical too)
-If you have a bad clinical dean you will have to tolerate all LECOM's rotation scheduling rules which are too strict and actively harmful to your residency goals.
-There are not enough interview day allowances
-Strict rules about time off that are very unreasonable in the context of personal or family emergencies
All in all, LECOM is paternalistic, frustrating, illogical, inexpensive, inconsistent, and I would absolutely go here again in the context of several other DO school acceptances. Always apply to MD schools your first cycle though. I believe its average student will experience a number of frustrations that would also be experienced at other DO schools, with the possibility of reaping pre-clinical and clinical benefits that are less common at other DO schools. There are also aspects of preclinical/clinical education that should not be present, are pathetic/indicative of greed and a non-responsive admin- if you're unlucky you will experience this disproportionately. Some students are shafted with their clinical sites; bad sites exist. But it hasn't been my experience, and classmates of mine have usually but not always had reasonably good clinical placements as well.
