I always hated lecture and rarely attended lectures, so the transition was easy for me. If you are the kind of person that loves lectures, stays focused and gets a lot out of them, PBL might not be for you.
Pros:
Deeper understanding of material through reading academic texts (IMO, at least)
Making your own learning schedule
Deciding where and how you want to study
Having an investigative, problem solving mindset while studying
Learning how to explain things, ask questions of and even debate with your colleagues on the material
Early exposure to patient cases and working through histories, lab values, xrays, differential diagnosis, assessment and treatment plans
Learning all aspects of a particular problem at the same time - i.e. a chest pain case will lead you to study the anatomy of the chest, physio of the lungs and heart, patho of the lungs and heart, pharmacologic treatment of the possible disorders, etc - all at the same time so it's all connected
You can spend more time on your weaker areas, everything is customizable
You don't have to spend much time in the actual school building
Your learning doesn't depend on the quality of the lecturers
Cons:
You may at times vehemently disagree with the way your PBL group mates want to run the PBL session and this may be distressing
There is little safety net if you fall behind, everything is on you
As you can see, I'm pretty happy with PBL 🙂 Maybe others could add more Cons to the list.
I agree with the above. The ones I'd add:
Pro:
-There are A LOT of audio and video resources available on the web for particular subjects, including lectures. If something isn't making sense, you can talk to your classmates, friends, and group mates; still don't understand, move on to asking faculty members; and you can probably dig up a lecture somewhere (even, sometimes, on youtube, or from another medical school) about the subject that's confusing you. In my case, neuroanatomy was something I needed a little more guidance for than just the textbook, but it was fairly easy to find other resources.
-The PBL model is largely how you will be learning in 3rd/4th year. Depending on where you are, it's up to you to read enough to learn the subject of your rotation and pass the shelf exam. You'll be used to that before you even start 3rd year.
-You will be ahead at the start of 3rd year relative to other students, because you've actually seen chest x-rays and lab tests and results every week since you started med school. By the end of 3rd year, most everyone will be at about the same level, but PBL may give you an advantage at the beginning.
Con:
-The adjustment to PBL is rough. You will likely go through a period at the beginning wondering if you're doing the right thing. The curriculum is structured so that your first anatomy exam and your first PBL exam are only 10% or so of your grade where later tests that 1st semester count more, so if you bomb the first exam because you're not doing the right things, you have time to adjust. After the first semester, and even more so during 2nd year, you know the drill and will be a lot more comfortable.
-Another potential con, rumor had it the dental students might be mixed into med student PBL, which a lot of us thought was ridiculous. Whether they go forward with that, though, I'm not sure. This year would be the first it would happen. Maybe it won't be a big deal--for anatomy it probably won't be--but I doubt the dental students would feel the same pressure to read through, for example, endocrine pathology, that medical students would, which might create some issues in the PBL groups.
-You will still have lectures in OMM, clinical exam, and various mini-courses in your first 2 years. They will seem even more painful, being your only lectures.
Just my opinions. It's been over a year since I last did PBL at Bradenton, so the new 2nd and 3rd years are probably better-informed on the details than I am. Good luck to all of you starting at the end of the month, and to those of you who had to go through more than one application year. I was in that group (I got in the 2nd year I applied to med schools) and I had a lot of classmates in the same position. Don't take it personally, but do stop and reassess whether this is really what you want to do before you start another round of applications. Good luck.