Alright. I was reluctant to reply to autum's first post because I agree with most of her points and I felt strongly that it was something that "belonged" in this thread as another valid viewpoint. But at the same time, there are a few clarifications that should be elaborated on and since someone asked above, i'll share my own personal thoughts on her concerns (valid points imo).
Hi everyone!
I am a current post bac student here at lecom. I believe it is very important for ALL students (rather its med or dental etc) to really weigh out their options. with that said, also note that whatever anyone says is purely based on their personal experience here and take it with a grain of salt.
I have regrets with this program. If i could change back time, i would have chosen my PCOM or VCOM acceptances. I had chosen LECOM simply because it was closer to home. The program itself is designed to give you a taste of med school. It WILL prepare you for med school, but it WILL NOT necesarily get you in one. Alot of us have felt like we are treated inferior to all other classes. we are given professors that are incompetent to teach, such as our biochem prof, who after failing over half the class on his exams, is now facing the board and is not allowed to teach. the sad thing about this whole fiasco was that WE as post baccs COMPLAINED about him, but since we were post baccs, noone cared. but the minute the med and pharm students complained, he was taken away.
Aside from that, we were taught microbio in a week and half right before finals. we had only one exam in micro which had over 100 questions (Same concept goes for viro and immuno), and basically if u failed that exam, u failed the class bc u had no chance of redeeming yourself even with the final which only had like 30 questions.
our stats are that the average GPA from fall semester was a 2.7. a good 40% of the students WILL NOT be getting in.
our last anatomy exam, 40% failed. 40% recieved a C. and only ONE person got an A (90.4%).
So, im here to share my experience. do not base your entire decision on it. obviously. but dont think its like the best program out there either. i can bet money on it, that u can find another post bac with better acceptance statisticss and better faculty that are more student oriented.
jslo has good info, but also realize, he is only ONE of hte 60 students. and not part of the majority who are failing.
I'm not sure how much research or information each one of you have done in looking at special masters type programs, but they are
not to be used liberally. Generally speaking, these programs (DO or MD) are used to correct a
severe deficit in your application (usually GPA) in a short amount of time (1 year usually) by providing a chance to prove your academic capabilites against a medical school curriculum.
The blade cuts both ways. For students like me and other classmates who had a torrid UG gpa and a plethora of units under our belt that prevented any realistic timeline of improving it through taking additional UG science classes, this was an
efficient option provided we do
well. For all students who aren't successful in the program, you just nailed your coffin shut. You just demonstrated that you just aren't fit to handle medical school coursework by your subpar performance in a "practice run".
Autum is right on both accounts that this program
will prepare you for medical school and we did have somewhat of a catastrophic incident a particular biochem professor which resulted in a large majority of the class recieving a C or lower (me included). What I do
disagree with is that we had the same exact professors as the medical students. Yes we experienced him first since physio and biochem were taught to us while MS1s were still on anatomy and embryo but they had his tests for the sections he was responsible for as well. On the subject of microbiology, the scheduling was brutal and similar to last year's class, there were several students who recieved a failing grade after the first test and could not recover. It's unfortunate that the scheduling still hasn't improved despite general complaints of this from past years but imo, the blame cannot be placed solely on the program itself but that the students should shoulder heavy responsibility for the grade they recieved.
i can bet money on it, that u can find another post bac with better acceptance statisticss and better faculty that are more student oriented.
Statistics are misleading and can be interpreted subjectively depending on which way you look at it. But I will say that I'm willing to bet money as well that you won't find another SMP out there that's willing to openly state that they'll accept any of the students in their program with a certain GPA and a certain MCAT outside of LECOM (DO), TU-NY (DO), Temple (MD). There is a significant difference between being guaranteed an interview meeting certain requirements and being given a conditional acceptance meeting certain requirements. It's what makes LECOM's post-bacc program unique imho.
"weed people out that dont belong in med school"? really? no.
in our class, i would say with the exception of probably 2 people, everyone is capable of getting through medical school. this program is supposed to help you, not hinder you. we have ppl with MCATs over 30. and we also have ppl with GPA's over 3.7. but their application is lacking in one way or another. all these ppl are intelligent. i know of atleast 2 ppl that know they arent going to be getting into lecom the following year that already got accepted to another med school. the messed up part is that alot of ppl have left their jobs, have moved their entire family, wife and kids, and they come here to just find out that this program is run like a family-owned business. everyone in the administration is related and they will not take responsibility for their actions. an ideal example that i have ALREADY presented was the biochem prof., he is being fired after bringing students GPA's down by a whole letter grade or two. and since we dont have plus or minuses, u drop from an A to a C pretty damn quickly.
with all that said, i did not say look upon my post as ur decision making factor. this program is good for those students that no other post bac would accept or students that simply love erie (not sure why..) or know the owners of the school (that will get u far). as for the other students out there who have other acceptances, they really should look into those other programs.
but do not be naive and think that "ooohhh im gonna go to lecom bc their acceptance rate into their med program is 98%", bc its not. its more like 60 some percent for THIS year. last year was different. and next year will be different.
Goodluck.
Autum's absolutely right that stats shouldn't be held as the golden standard. Compared to previous years, our class' performance is unfortunately underwhelming and whether that is due to the negative impact of our biochem grades or whatever else can be debatable. It's just like match lists for residency, highly misleading if you look too deep into it. They sound great for publicity, but the only concrete factor that you can derive from seeing one is that such and such program was open to taking a student from this school. We have no knowledge of their board scores (his/her app in this scenario) or who he/she knew for connections, but that the program took him. Same thing for this program, you just know that LECOM has been open to the idea of taking back in X% of their students.
It really is unfortunate that many classmates won't be getting in and a couple particular situations have really hit close to home for me. At the same time, this is what this program was meant to do: provide a difficult curriculum and test whether students can sink or swim in an experiment simulating medical school. To me, it's highly unrealistic and idealistic to think hey, i'm going to pay 12,500 dollars into this program, chill for a year and get into medical school. If you talk to any of the students who did achieve a 3.0, the # of hours each of us spent studying is variable but I think I can safely say we all worked like hell for it. It sucks that many didn't make it and biochem certainly worked against us, but we all had the "clean slate" going into this program. We had the same lectures, same textbooks, same test questions, and the same opportunities to seek faculty assistance for help understanding the material. 22 of us from last year made a 3.0 and above, the rest didn't. That is all fact. Maybe extensive science background helped you might think? I know of several students with non-traditional backgrounds in that group of 22 and those with graduate degrees in anatomy or physiology that aren't apart of it. Point I'm trying to make is, we were all treated more or less the same yet some excelled and others didn't so the only practical thing I attribute that to is how much effort the individual put in.
The last thing I wanted to say was, that no one really knows for absolute certainty whether "grass is really greener on the other side". I know friends who are attending allopathic and osteopathic SMPs around the nation and there are plusses and negatives. There are plenty of things we don't know about such as whether the exact material and test questions are identical. For instance Touro NV can say they took back 70% or so of their students from their last year's pb class. That's great but take into consideration that TU-NV had 7 students total, 5 which made it in. The students accepted last year back into LECOM is 4x the TU-NV class size alone. Or you can look at PCOM where students do late interviews in March or April for spots on the
waiting list where 20-28 students make it in each year from
1st and second yr combined. A student in AZCOM's MA has told me that they only interview students with a 3.5+ with expectations that only those with a 3.7+ should matriculate.
LECOM has it's faults no doubt about that. If you are deadset on going down the SMP route, you should make your decision based on the factors you hold most important. In medical school application, it's hard to find a guarantee which is why LECOM's conditional acceptance is (in my eyes) so valuable.
My 2 cents.
