KYCOM vs. NSUCOM

[crazy_cat_lady]

Hello all! I've gotten accepted to both KYCOM and NSUCOM. While I've been doing a lot of research about both schools, I feel like I need a little bit more help deciding where to go. My hang up is the rotation sites and getting the residency of my choice. I am not sure what area I'd like to go into just yet, but I'd like to have the opportunity to get into any area that will be best for me. Taking the environment (Mountains vs. Beach) out of the equation, does each school have equal opportunities to get their students into areas where they want to go? Thank you in advance for all the helpful pointers.

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[NecrotizingFasciitis]

NSUCOM heavily outweighs KYCOM in the comparison with regards to resources (especially research.)

 

[crazy_cat_lady]

Oh ok. Thanks. But what about the rotation sites and residency spots in 3rd and 4th years? Are they comparable or not?

 

[FutureD.O]

If freedom is what you value, I'd PROBABLY go to NSU (I don't know too much about NSU). KYCOM funnels you into primary care only giving you a few credit electives to make connections outside of primary care rotations.

I forgot what KYCOM's attendance policy is from my time interviewing there, but that is definitely something you should look into. Non mandatory attendance (with recorded lectures) is something I would put into the top 3 most important things to look for in a medical school knowing what I know now.

Also, don't lie to yourself. Go where you see yourself succeeding. But again take the attendance policies into strong consideration.

 

[NekoBeats]

I'm a current M4 at Nova. I'm going to copy/paste what I wrote in a separate thread last year. You can PM me if you have specific questions.

Curriculum: M1 year- multiple classes every semester and there are exams pretty much every week. Once in a while there will be a week without exams and it's the best thing ever. I won't lie- the exam schedule is hell, and I'm sure M1s can attest to that. The combination of the crazy exam schedule plus the sheer amount of material you're exposed to is enough to stress a lot of people out. Over the course of the year though, you'll learn to adapt and figure out how you study best. That's pretty much the point of M1 year anyway- figuring out how you study. Something kind of unusual that happened this year for the M1s was that their anatomy course got moved to spring semester. This was because NSU is re-vamping the anatomy lab after being sited by OSHA (https://www.osha.gov/newsrelease/reg4-20150316.html). The lab couldn't be updated on time for Fall, so the gross anatomy course got moved back. I assume that this won’t be an issue for future entering M1s and that after this year, anatomy will resume being offered in Fall semester.

Before the M1 summer session started, my class got an email saying that attendance for all classes is going to be mandatory. Until that point we probably only had 2 classes that we absolutely had to go to. With the new change in attendance policy, we would now have to swipe our ID cards within the first 10 minutes of every lecture hour for every class. If you missed a certain number of lectures by forgetting to swipe, or by arriving over 10 minutes late, you failed the class. We were pretty upset about it considering it was such short notice and our entire class clamored together to fight it. Administration eventually changed their minds apparently after realizing that our current auditoriums don’t even have enough outlets for students to charge their computers. After a lot of back and forth between administration and us, a compromise was eventually reached where only our OMM and Principles of Clinical Medicine lectures would become mandatory with a minimum of 70% attendance. The OMM and PCM lectures combined only took up 2-3 hours a week, so we were okay with that. They were also on the same day as mandatory labs, so we had to be on campus anyway. Lecture attendance for all the systems courses remained ‘highly encouraged’, but not mandatory.

M2 year is composed of 4 system blocks, each block consisting of 3-4 organ systems. The good thing with M2 year is that you go weeks without an exam. The trade-off is that the exams are high stakes: there's only one midterm and one final per system. Also, when it’s exam week, it’s crazy. All the system exams are lined up with midterms and finals for the other non-system classes so you get hit hard with tests. Over the course of days you could have 3-4 system finals + finals for non-system classes. Personally I thought M2 was worse than M1 year, at least in the beginning just because of the exams.

Something different from M1 year is the M2 Principles of Clinical Medicine 'lab'. You get broken up into small groups, each one lead by an attending. There are SPs that come in and one of the students is supposed to do the interview. Then you all discuss the case together and come up with 3 differentials and a plan for each one. It's kind of like PBL. At the end, everyone writes a SOAP note timed in under 10 minutes and turns it in for grading/critique. I liked PCM but when I compare it to how rotations actually are I think they could do a lot to improve the course. I guess for an M2 though, it's okay.

Class schedules for both M1 and M2 year are basically lecture from 8-3 or 5 on days with no lab. On days with labs, lectures are from 8-12 with labs from 1-5. Attendance is not mandatory for most courses and the ones where attendance is mandatory usually require a minimum 70% attendance rate, meaning you can still miss some lectures. Labs are mandatory with the exception of histo and neuroanatomy. Take all the attendance stuff with a grain of salt since a lot has changed over the past several years.

Location: The main campus is located in Davie. The nice thing is that there are a bunch of shops, grocery stores, banks, etc around the school. There are also some decent places to eat if you explore the surrounding areas. IMO, a car is pretty essential. If you ever need to 'escape' from school, studying, or classmates, the beach and downtown Las Olas are about 15-20 minutes away. And of course if you're willing to drive a little bit more and/or deal with traffic, Miami is about 35-40 minutes away.

Cost: Expensive. I don't have an exact figure on me but NSU is notoriously pricey. There's a survey somewhere out there by US News ranking the top medical schools where graduating students have the most debt. If I remember correctly NSU was in the top 5.

Faculty: M1- faculty is good, most are decent lecturers. The professors for some subjects, like biochem, teach under the College of Medical Sciences instead of the College of Osteopathic Medicine. This makes it hard for the COM to implement changes w/ regards to the course since they can't really do anything about it, at least that’s what we were told my M1 year. It’s not that big of a deal. Only a handful of the professors aren’t good at teaching, but they’re still brilliant. NSU has an open door policy where if you don’t understand a concept, you can always swing by the professor’s office to ask questions and get some clarification. All the professors are also pretty quick with email. I’ve never had a problem getting in touch with a professor or reaching out to them for help. Lots of the faculty members also do research. Most of the people I know that got involved in research projects actually met their PI through one of our M1 classes.

M2- Most, if not all of the professors are physicians so they drop lots of great clinical pearls while lecturing which makes the subject material more interesting and engaging. I believe a lot of them also have privileges at the major hospitals that NSU students rotate at. As such, teaching is a passion of theirs and you can tell when they lecture. A lot of them also emphasize topics on boards and they’ll make it a point to talk about it more in depth. After taking the COMLEX I can tell you that there were a bunch of things that I remembered partially because those professors emphasized it so much during class and on their exams. I thought the professors we had as M2s were all fantastic.

Reputation: NSU is pretty well known with a good reputation. I get good feedback from my patients, residents, and attendings when I tell them I go to NSU. Even lay people know about NSU-COM. Large network of alumni and the program itself has been around for decades.

Clinical Rotations: In my opinion, probably the biggest pro about Nova. We have 14 in-state core sites and many of them are statutory teaching hospitals with a multitude of affiliated residency and fellowship programs. Tons of patient exposure and tons of pathology. If you want the big hospital feel and work alongside residents and attendings on a team, then you will definitely get that here. However, if you’re looking for one-on-one with an attending with no residents or other students, you’ll also get that here if you end up at one of the community hospitals for your core site.

Where you end up for rotations is based on a random lottery system and a rank list that you fill out. A majority of people get one of their top 3 choices. The school also assigns your schedule for you so you don't have to go about setting up third year by yourself.

With all that being said, you actually don’t spend all of M3 year at wherever your core is. You’ll most likely do your main rotations there, like IM or surgery. But other things like peds and EM will be done elsewhere. It’s completely random which rotations are done at your hospital and which aren’t so that part of it is unpredictable. The good thing is that if there’s a rotation you really wanted and one of your classmates has it, the school will let you switch.

Core rotations are as follows: Peds (2 months), FM (2 months), IM (3 months), Ob/Gyn (1 month), Surgery (2 months), Geriatrics (1 month), EM (1 month), Psych (1 month).

The month of July between M3 and M4 year is considered either an independent study month for Level 2/Step 2, or it can also be used as an audition rotation. There are 3 mandatory rural rotations you have to do as part of your M4 year. Two of these months are done at a community health center. Some people get assigned a site in Orlando, some people get a random place in Miami, and others get a place in between. It's really random. If you have to go far away for rurals the school will provide you with housing and a stipend. There's also a chance you'll get assigned your 2 months of community center rural rotations during the so-called "golden months" of M4 year in which case I don't think there's anything you can do except deal with it and try to work around it. One of the three rural rotations is considered a rural selective and can be done somewhere in the US. Some students use it as a type of audition rotation month. Another option is to use the rural selective as an opportunity to go abroad.

Housing: There’s an on-campus dorm called Rolling Hills about 3 blocks or so from the school. It’s only open to professional and graduate students. The units all come furnished and there’s a shuttle that comes by and takes people to and from various locations on both the HPD campus and the undergrad NSU campus.

There are also a bunch of apartments and condos around the school itself. Some students also live by the beach. Rent isn’t super expensive, but it’s not super cheap either. Living with classmates definitely cuts down the costs. My personal advice with apartments down here is to live on any floor except the 1st. Lots of strange bugs and creatures make their way into your place if you live on the ground floor.

Study areas: Most people study at the Health Professions Division Library. We share it with all the other HPD programs though, so it gets crowded during finals when it seems like every single program has an exam that week. I personally have never had a problem finding a cubicle there, even when it was packed. There’s also an adjacent building with 24/7 study rooms and two other large libraries on campus where students go to study. The Alvin Sherman Library is massive. I know some classmates that also choose to study at the University Center, probably because there’s a Starbucks there. If you know where to look, there are a lot of places to study.

Social Scene: I don’t really think I need to say much here. You have the beach and downtown Ft. Lauderdale less than 30 minutes away and Miami to the south. Other than going to bars and clubs, there are a bunch of art events and music festivals/concerts year round as well as some decent food and drink events. My class would usually go to Las Olas after a major exam and go down to Miami for special occasions. It’s a lot of fun, but I think it can be a negative in that some people get distracted and do poorly in classes. If you come to NSU, you need to be able to focus.

Local Hospitals: Big ones in Dade and Broward County are Palmetto General, Mt. Sinai, Broward Health, and Memorial. They’re 4 of 14 in-state rotation sites for students. There's some overlap with the University of Miami and FIU medical students but no issues have come up.

Board Prep: In M1 year, there’s a mandatory 2 hour class every Friday that’s supposed to help students think like a clinician. A professor usually presents a case for the first hour and we participate by asking appropriate questions with regards to the H&P, PMHx, FHx, SHx, etc. At the end of the first hour, they reveal what the diagnosis is. The second hour is then spent going into depth about the pathophys about whatever the patient was diagnosed with. Some people really like the class and other people don’t. I don’t think it’s a horrible thing but we get really antsy and impatient when there’s an exam on the immediate horizon.

M2 year you still have the mandatory 2 hour class on Fridays except now you have an additional 2 hours of board review immediately afterwards. It’s basically 2 hours of one of the professors going through a ton of board questions. I want to point out that most of the questions aren’t really board-quality. They're pretty short and are only really good for drilling some facts and those knee-jerk diagnoses when given a certain set of symptoms. Again, some people really like it, and others don’t.

At the end of 1st semester, the school distributes First Aid for the USMLE books to the M2s M1s. Everyone also gets access to the Doctors in Training (DIT) USMLE videos and their massive workbook. It’s a relatively new (and expensive) prep program. Most of my class liked it a lot so we were happy with it. We also get DIT for Level 2/Step 2.

The OMM department at NSU starts prepping you for the OMM portion of boards starting Day 1. As an M2, you’ll still be tested on M1 OMM material. It helps to keep everything fresh.

Specialty: We usually do pretty good with the match list. Below are the # of matches for some random specialties I picked for the class of 2015. More info on http://osteopathic.nova.edu/do/residency-board-scores.html.

Anesthesiology- 3
EM- 18
Rads- 8
Surgery and surgical subspecialties (general, neuro, ortho, ophtho, ENT & plastics) - 18

Grades: Grades are percentage for M1/M2 years and your numerical class rank is emailed out at the beginning of M2 year. Some classes are pass/fail. Grades for M3/M4 years are Fail/Pass/Honors.


Curriculum: B-. Needs some tweaking. Exams could be better written and be more board-like/actual board questions. Lecture content could be more streamlined especially during M1 year.
Location: A
Cost: C-
Faculty: A
Reputation: A+
Technology: B, only because sometimes there are recording issues. Something to mention is that how quickly the recordings are uploaded or fixed has to do with how good the AV captains for the class are. The ones for my class were awesome so even when something didn’t work, they were able to find the recording and have it online by the end of the day.
Study Space/Library: B+. Gets kind of crowded. Study rooms can only be checked out for 3 hours at a time. If someone is waiting you have to give up your room at the end of the 3 hours.
Library technology/Resources: B+. Sometimes the printers are down. Not a super huge deal though since there are a ton of printers on campus. We got about $60 worth of printer money for the year during M1 and slightly more for M2 year. Lots of people ran out of printer money and had to use their own funds. We get access to a lot of major medical journals and online medical resources through the library, so that's nice.
Rotations: A+
Social: A+
Hospitals: A+
Post Grad: A+

Overall Grade: A-