Thanks for sharing your opinions. There are a lot of good things about LECOM-B and many that need improvement. It's important to find a school that fits you, and often times that seems to be different than the school that might look good on paper.
LECOM-B is in some ways an experiment - to my knowledge, it is the nation's only all PBL school, certainly the only all PBL DO school. There are many visions of how to implement that experiment, and sometimes differing opinions about what priorities should be.
i grew up in breadenton and wanted to move back but after my interview & acceptance at LECOM-Bradenton i chose another school... even though it was in the midwest.
1) no cadaver lab. not only was there no cadaver lab but i was ridiculed and insulted when i asked questions about it. This was the case from both faculity and the students who ate lunch with us "go getters like you can volunteer to disect cadavers in the summer for the fall class" what? the anatomy prof actually said that teaching MS1 anatomy was a waste of time that "if you needed to learn it you would in your residency"...
True that the LECOM program is accelerated and cadavers are prosected. Untrue that there is no cadaver lab - I will be spending all afternoon in it -
doing dissection. It is hard for me to imagine any professor saying anatomy isn't important - if it were up to the anatomists at the school, we'd probably each have our own body and dissect for the whole two years. As I mentioned above, accelerating anatomy is a choice to allow more time to learn the rest of medicine. Whether or not it is the right choice is certainly a valid debate, as well as one which has been discussed on sdn at length.
2) no faculity research... the two faculity members that i interviewed with either did not do research or didnt want to talk about it. they were by far the LEAST impressive interviewers that i had (4 interviews 2 MD, 2 DO)
Lack of research is a weakness of DO schools in general and LECOM-B is no different. There is little to no research happening here.
3) insulting me for expressing an interest in research and surgery
Odd, one of our professors is a general surgeon, and there is a very active SOSA chapter on campus.
4) creepy feel of building... i was actually told by a 2nd year who ate lunch with us that they "watch the cameras" but that "there is no problem with privacy" that would be NO PRIVACY, right? why are there cameras in ALL of the halls, the libary and many of the rooms? NO students walking the halls? creepy...
5)coporate feel... office space anyone?
Watch out for the clown hallway - their eyes follow you! It's a PBL school, so there are less students hanging around. I tend to agree about the "coldness" of the building - there are just not a lot of places to chill in the building. The campus definitely doesn't have a casual feel, at least from 9-5. If you are a really casual person you might not like it here. Personally, I treat the campus almost like an office - I go there and work, but I don't spend a lot of extra time there.
6)they absoutly refused to talk scores... COMLEX or USMLE just metioned that one student blew away the USMLE...
One class has taken the boards so far, and the results weren't stellar. The pass rate was somewhere in the low 80's. I'm sure they don't want to advertise this to interviewees, but it's no big secret. I anticipate large jumps over the next couple years in pass rate.
7) didnt subscribe to MedLine or PsychInfo... WHAT? Both my Undergrad instution and my grad school subscribed to BOTH as well as many others... the lib. had EMPTY shelves and their excuse "they are for future issues" didnt hold up since the librarian said they almost exclusively used online resources... WAIT NO MEDLINE!
The library has the following databases available: OVID MEDLINE, EbscoHost, STAT!Ref Electronic Medical Library, OSTMED, LEXI-COMP CRL. It'd be nice to have a larger library, but honestly I don't see myself using a library in med school like I did in undergrad. In med school, what you need to know is laid out very clearly for you, the challenges are the volume and in some cases the complexity of the material. I occasionally pull articles from NEJM, but that's about it.
the facility is beautiful but i have a bit of trouble with this school. I was excited about PBL and not having to sit in lectures for hours on end. I truly believe that PBL is the best way to learn but LECOM-bradenton just doesnt implement it in a fashion that i could deal with.
I was accepted to several others schools, but I chose LECOM-B for PBL, and I'm very glad I did. It's important to go to a school that fits your learning style - after interviewing at other schools, I just couldn't see myself thriving in lectures the way I do in PBL. Best of Luck to you wherever you choose to attend!
