Extremely impressive for a first class! . WoW, I'm kinda shocked.
Would u know more or less the Step 1 scores for those who took it? Just wondering how their PBL approach prepares you for that exam.
Let me give you some background-- maybe more than you really wanted
🙂. You know that there is a physician shortage in FL. In fact, there are two new MD schools opening in the next couple of years because there are so many people here turning 65 that a crisis is in the making.
Several years ago there were plans for a new osteopathic school, the Florida College of Osteopathic Medicine (FCOM) that was slated to open in Tarpon Springs, FL. There was a lot of suport locally....but the money to do it just wasn't there in the end. A couple of years later, LECOM (who had plenty of money) was looking to expand and looked at property in Tarpon Springs. Instead, they ended up locating in a new planned community not too far away called Lakewood Ranch, between Bradenton and Sarasota. At the time there was a lot of planned development and even more empty land.
Lecom took a chance, got some breaks locally and a bit of money from the state of FL if they would agree to lower tuition for in-state students and Lecom-B was born. If you look at the pics on Google Earth you can see the campus being built-- before the pond was even filled.
Lecom had experience with PBL. They'd been doing it a for a few years in Erie and the students had performed better on the boards than the regular students. They had a theory that just about anyone could do well in PBL. That was a lofty ideal... but it wasn't quite right.
As the "new kid on the block" who also had a whole different curriculum, PBL wasn't as easy a sell as they thought it would be. Not surprisingly, some of the first PBL students in Erie were virtually bribed to try PBL, i.e. they were offered spots in medical school only if they would agree to the PBL track. They went to some post-bacc students, who had no other offers and no other choice, and offered them spots if they would go PBL. It worked. Keep in mind, though, that it as still a small number of folks and they kept a pretty careful eye on them. A whole school of PBL students was a new thing entirely. So, they were forced to take some students that would not have gotten in otherwise and "bribed" a few Erie applicants to join the first class too.
Had everyone simply followed the directions and trusted in PBL from the outset, the first class probably would have done incredibly well. Unfortunately, there were a number of students who refused to embrace the concept. When time came for the boards, a number of folks in the first class had less than stellar scores.
By the time the second class, and the third class after that, matriculated the schoool had become a lot more picky. They zeroed in on those folks who really could excel in a PBL environment. The first class didn't do all that well on Step 1, but the second class absolutely rocked. They trusted in the system and exceded expectations.
Not to be outdone, most of the first class buckled down. Lecom-B identified 12 students in that first class that were in danger of failing Step 2. They offered them the chance to voluntarily miss a month of rotations and come to Bradenton for an intense Step 2 review. 8 of those 12 chose to do that. All 8 of them passed Step 2. The 4 who chose not to do so failed. Yet, 4 out of 152 failures meant that 97% passed-- well above the national average.
Each consecutive class has managed to do better at every step so far. Today, applicants with really good MCATs and GPAs are routinely turned away because they might not excel at PBL. It really takes a special, self-motivated person to do well. Yet, there is no better system for those who can handle it. Why? Because COMLEX is a test that measures how well you can clinically correlate the basic sciences. Likewise, PBL teaches you the basic sciences through clinical correlations.
Most people I've talked to will agree that COMLEX is actually quite a bit easier than our PBL tests. If you can do well on those... you can do well on the boards
🙂.
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