Interviewing March 27th! For anyone who interviewed please let me know what you thought!
Overall, I liked it. LECOM Bradenton has been my tentative top choice for DO ever since I learned about PBL, and that didn't change (okay, so it was probably my tentative first choice since I learned about the beaches. But THEN because of PBL)
- The faculty and students don't seem in-your-face friendly, but each time I've actually talked to them they seem nice. More quiet, but nice. As one example, when I was walking down a hallway during my interview day a random student looked up from his book to wish me luck. Or when I was looking for the security entrance, the students kind of kept to themselves but were happy to answer a question when I asked. The PBL atmosphere I witnessed contained a fair amount of fun and joking around, even some with the facilitator.
- With that being said, there's definitely a no-nonsense, what-you-see-is-what-you-get feel to the school. The acceptance letter said many of the usual nice things, but there was also a sentence that mentions the expectation of "hard work and dedication." And instead of courting you as a potential tuition-paying student, LECOM-B almost asks you to think it over again and make sure this is the right school for you.
- We sat into a PBL session for an hour, and I really liked what I saw. I think it definitely will be more stressful in some ways, especially since LECOM Bradenton seems to value med school GPA (so I'm sure there is competition). But when I think back to undergraduate, I keep thinking about how little I learned from attending all the lectures or reviewing slides and how much I learned when I bothered to read the book. To me, it also seems like such a fun way to learn medicine - attempting to diagnose, learning from your mistakes, and studying with the intent of knowing what the heck is going on. And a few discussions with med students at other schools convinced me that you teach yourself medicine, no matter what school you go to.
- I'm read a lot of comments about the school on SDN, including LECOM as a whole. It seems to inspire strong feelings, either positive or negative - but I haven't seen anything to challenge the claims that LECOM-B students do very well on board exams and match decently well too. So whatever they do, it must work. The academic and professional outcomes seem excellent, and - it's hard for me to know until it's too late - but I really think I'm gonna like PBL.