Louisville vs. LECOM

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Domenick12

Domenick12

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I was fortunate enough to get accepted to both of these schools on December 1st and I would like people's opinions on which school I should put a deposit down at and which clinic is better? I'm torn because LECOM would be about 10k cheaper per year and is brand new, but Louisville is a bit closer to home (I'm from Michigan) and is an established dental school. Everybody at my LECOM interview said that their clinics are strong, but I can't help but think that they're still an up and coming school and that that may not be entirely accurate.

Thank you for any help!
 
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Just a couple of things from my interview at LECOM last year:
1. You will be partly responsible to find your own patients. I remember faculty telling us that we should put signs up at a grocery store, library, etc or pass out business cards
2. When my interview group toured the clinic, there were students taking naps in the patient chairs. I don't recall seeing a single patient in the clinic that day.
3. Are you prepared to live in one of those small towns in FL or PA your 4th year?

I would choose Louisville and never look back
 
go to an established school because 1)patients will be familiar with the school=potential to get MORE patients 2)patient pools at schools, like private practices are established. the numbers are extensive..meaning you're already stepping into an established system and can start treating patients sooner
 
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Keep pbl in mind when thinking about attending LECOM. Would you like that kind of learning style??

Also, I have some friends there and they aren't too happy with the program. I'd say go to Louisville
 
Is that 10K/year or overall. Does that include cost of living?
 
I'd normally say go to a cheaper school, but not in this case!
1jY6yOa
 
Thanks for the feedback, everyone!
 
dancer17 said:
Keep pbl in mind when thinking about attending LECOM. Would you like that kind of learning style??

Also, I have some friends there and they aren't too happy with the program. I'd say go to Louisville
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What are they saying that they don't like about the program?
 
Domenick12 said:
What are they saying that they don't like about the program?
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A lot don't like PBL, patients are hard to find (pushing back grad requirements, and also unable to learn certain procedures due to this lack of patients), faculty don't seem to care much about their students, not much of a campus - just two buildings and lib very small (hours of lib aren't great either), the town is pretty isolated, they don't like the move in their 4th year to either PA or the small town in FL.

Also as of now they haven't graduated a class yet so the ability to specialize and the board pass rate is all iffy.
 
70% failed the typodont portion of the ADEX at lecom..........
 
Domenick12 said:
Jeez... How do you know this?
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inside resources.

anyways, the patient pool is really poor. just focus on denture because their logic: poor patients wont have money for crown anyways so this is their approach to affordable dental care.
 
I am waiting to hear from both of those schools so I will give you an unbiased opinion. I hold your spot at Louisville based on your situation and what you said about being close-ish to home (which is a great perk - think about the easy drive home for holidays or random times you need to just get away on a weekend). I also know a couple of students at Louisville who absolutely love the school and its facilities. Some of them even opted for Louisville after getting accepted at their state school. I am sure you will get in at one of the schools in Michigan! Best of luck!
 
If you are torn between the two schools, your best bet is to try to find /message someone who goes to either school to get the most direct/accurate information. A lot of people on this forum like to bash LECOM so I would take everything that is posted with a grain of salt. Yes, there are still kinks being worked out, but no dental school perfect and even the more established schools have kinks they are dealing with. I wish you the best of luck wherever you decide to go to dental school.
 
Word on the street is that the faculty told them to make all their bridge preps look like indian teepees. Sounds like the faculty didn't bother to read the adex manual.
 
70% fail rate?!

yeah. don't go there. that's bad. that's actually beyond bad, considering how important and expensive those exams are
 
darknightzzz said:
inside resources.

anyways, the patient pool is really poor. just focus on denture because their logic: poor patients wont have money for crown anyways so this is their approach to affordable dental care.
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this i believe because they were pushing dentures like no other when i interviewed there. no school should pride themselves on making denture specialists, lol. it is a lost art and not many general dentists go through the whole pain staking process, but it's definitely not something you want to focus on with dentistry in current times.

it sounds cool to you now, and it did to me as well...but fast forward 3 years into dental school i can see how that works if you're going to work in a medicaid mill for the rest of your life. it's not very practical. patients want implants and crowns..not dentures.
 
toothdriller2k17 said:
this i believe because they were pushing dentures like no other when i interviewed there. no school should pride themselves on making denture specialists, lol. it is a lost art and not many general dentists go through the whole pain staking process, but it's definitely not something you want to focus on with dentistry in current times.

it sounds cool to you now, and it did to me as well...but fast forward 3 years into dental school i can see how that works if you're going to work in a medicaid mill for the rest of your life. it's not very practical. patients want implants and crowns..not dentures.
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It's pretty sad when dentures is the selling point of the school. Learning removable dentistry is a good idea but it is not what I would call bread and butter dentistry. Go to a school where you will use your hand piece. From the looks of it, lecom just comes off as another osteopathic school jumping on the dental bandwagon to make extra cash. Poor didactics combined with poor clinical skills screams of for profit dentist mill.
 
ibgirl09 said:
If you are torn between the two schools, your best bet is to try to find /message someone who goes to either school to get the most direct/accurate information. A lot of people on this forum like to bash LECOM so I would take everything that is posted with a grain of salt. Yes, there are still kinks being worked out, but no dental school perfect and even the more established schools have kinks they are dealing with. I wish you the best of luck wherever you decide to go to dental school.
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you just went through ur first year so any school will probably be ok at this point however, come back and tell us about 3rd and 4th clinical years. 70% fail rate? I thought most schools have above 90% pass rate on clinical portion.

LECOM doesnt even have implants (a d3 over there told me no students even does implants because they don't have the OMFS faculty). LECOM has no CAD CAM and milling machine. words from rep are "we have to find 2 patient for each student, 2 * 100 students * 5 days = 1000 patients per week, and that is a lot of patients, sometimes we can't satisfy this need and students take longer to work on one patient a day"
um, one denture patient per day will surely build up ur skills. I think LECOM is okay but one graduating from LECOM will definitely need GPR and AGED FOR SURE. like not even optional.

yet, at the end of the presentative, LECOM prides themselves in providing clinical hours that is equal to hours other dental schools provide + hours in one year of GPR/AGED. IDK how they even come to this.
 
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Well that is what was making the decision hard for me is that they say that each student sees 2 patients per day for years 3 and 4 and that they graduate with as many patient contact hours as someone doing as residency.
 
Domenick12 said:
Well that is what was making the decision hard for me is that they say that each student sees 2 patients per day for years 3 and 4 and that they graduate with as many patient contact hours as someone doing as residency.
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I didn't see a single patient in the waiting room or the operatory when I interviewed there. The D3s were sitting around waiting saying "yeah, I'm booked for months"... for some reason I don't really think that's the case.

Reasons I don't like LECOM are:
- There's no content experts guiding you through your PBL sessions, instead you have "educators" reading off a piece of paper.
- electronically simulated cadavers lab on a computer/iPad (wtf...)
- You only go to school 3 hours a day (although that's nice... you're honestly not getting your money's worth.)
- They kept avoiding questions about residency and patient pools. They were bragging about how many people got into an AEGD residency... Which isn't really impressive... at all.
- Not even accredited yet so if you graduate, you can only work in FL or PA...
- You move your 4th year... So.... Yeah. No.
- Although part 1 of NBDE went swell, part two was miserable. Students were concerned about wanting to pass.
- No specialties there so you'll have to refer out from your already low patient pool.
- I asked the D1s if LECOM was their first choice and found many of them were there because LECOM was the only school to accept them.
- LECOM was my first school to accept me and I didn't even crack a smile, in fact, I was disappointed.
- LECOM has a lot of things they still need to work out, maybe one day they'll learn from other dental schools instead of trying to change all the rules and make it unique because honestly, the D3s looked super dissappointed.

Overall, LECOM is a good school if you want to balance family life but lackadaisical in terms of their program structure.
 
Typical Average Student said:
- LECOM has a lot of things they still need to work out, maybe one day they'll learn from other dental schools instead of trying to change all the rules and make it unique because honestly, the D3s looked super dissappointed.

Overall, LECOM is a good school if you want to balance family life but lackadaisical in terms of their program structure.
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Yeah, one day LECOM will bump up their tuition by 100k so that they can provide cadavers for everyone and move their campus to an expensive city.
I'm not sure why you applied there with your stats, but it's not a terrible school. They are definitely not for specializing, but neither are many other schools.
 
Typical Average Student said:
I didn't see a single patient in the waiting room or the operatory when I interviewed there. The D3s were sitting around waiting saying "yeah, I'm booked for months"... for some reason I don't really think that's the case.

- They kept avoiding questions about residency and patient pools. They were bragging about how many people got into an AEGD residency... Which isn't really impressive... at all.
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I didn't see a patient there either, but the D3's that I talked to said that they felt they would have enough clinical experience by the time they graduate to not have to do an AEGD or GPR.. I too am skeptical though, having just interviewed at another school where there was so much going on and so, so many patients throughout the building while I was touring.
 
allantois said:
Yeah, one day LECOM will bump up their tuition by 100k so that they can provide cadavers for everyone and move their campus to an expensive city.
I'm not sure why you applied there with your stats, but it's not a terrible school. They are definitely not for specializing, but neither are many other schools.
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Hehe. I applied to LECOM because I like PBL learning style but didn't really know exactly what I was expecting. I also applied before taking my DAT lol
 
darknightzzz said:
inside resources.

anyways, the patient pool is really poor. just focus on denture because their logic: poor patients wont have money for crown anyways so this is their approach to affordable dental care.
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My brother is a practicing dentist and has friends in high places. He was told the same thing.

That being said, I'm still putting down my deposit at LECOM as it's my only acceptance, but I am hoping for other schools to come through. Interviewed at UNE and just got an interview request for NYU, so trying to stay positive.
 
Go Louisville, besides saving your breathe clarifying what LECOM is or stands for or where it is, take pedigree over price in this instance. Like many before me said, the patient base isn't there
 
Thanks everyone!
 
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Is Louisville still the unanimous winner? I'm trying to decide if I should attend my LECOM interview when I have an acceptance at Louisville.

Sent from my SM-G920V using SDN mobile
 
@Shifff based If you have the money to go, go and enjoy yourself. Decide by yourself which school you like better. Take into consideration how you feel at LECOM and remember how you felt at Louisville.
If you would need to sacrifice yourself to get the money to go, don't waste it.
 
A million times Louisville. If I could I would clone myself and one of us would go to Columbia and the other would go to Louisville.
 
i choose what everyone else says.
 
nice_guy1 said:
I dont have an opinion of what schools to pick, but i just hope you make a decision soon because im on the waiting list at both schools.
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:hilarious: Hilarious and honest
 
I'm currently a student at LECOM and these rumors are hilarious, LOL.
 
  1. All our courses are not PBL, most of the basic sciences are but all the oral health sciences and dental classes are lecture style.
  2. I don't think I've had a week where I haven't been busy seeing patients. There is no shortage of patients.
  3. ADEX failure was a problem with the first class and that was it. Question, have other schools advertised their ADEX prosth/endo passing rates?
  4. Dentures is a small part our clinical experience but is cool that we do get to do them our D1 year.
  5. D3 year I've only done a total of 2 dentures.
  6. People in my clinic are already doing alveoplasties, molar endo, surgical extractions, 3rd molars, biopsies, crown lengthening, frenectomies, etc.
  7. We do restore implants and they are placed at the school by residents.
  8. Anybody who has ever worked at another school has said that our school's biggest selling point is our clinical hours. Plus we start doing advanced procedures starting our third year.
  9. Our NBDE passing rate is 98-99%
This is just to name a few.
 
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