Many problems at Western University of Health Sciences COMP Pomona DO

[JLWesternU2016]

.I am a female DO student at Western U in Pomona. I would like perspective students to be aware of numerous problems that the school won't be upfront about. You need to be aware of these before you make a decision to attend. .
. .
.About the classes: .
· .We are largely on our own for learning here (lack of access to teachers, limited tutors, disorganized labs, confusing lectures, and overall disordered resources). They tell us to find a study group with other students (which doesn’t help all that much because they are trying to learn the material as well). .
· .We hardly have access to the professors. We are told to ask questions online but quite a few don’t get answered. Most teachers do not have office hours but some are willing to meet if they are around their office or maybe with an appointment. .
· .Some of our classes are televised from our satellite campus in Lebanon, Oregon (presumably to cut the school’s costs). One teacher we had was bad. They sent us study guides that had incorrect information and misspellings (such as mixing up sympathetic and parasympathetic- kind of a BIG difference!). Many students downloaded other teacher’s lectures about the same topics because it was so bad. It was frustrating to figure out what we needed to know about this topic. .
· .Many students spend more time trying to figure out what we need to know and deciding the most efficient way to learn it than actually learning the material itself. The disorganized material is time consuming to sort through. .
· .Much of what we learn in anatomy lab is from first year students that took an intensive summer anatomy course where they had to get 80% or higher in the course to instruct us. By the time they are our instructors, much of this info has been forgotten or not concrete. .
· .For anatomy lab, the instructors assign complicated directions such as assigning certain pages out of a book and giving us a supplemental handout with what we should do instead and what they don’t want us to do. Many students watch videos form other medical schools to try to figure out what is going on. There have been students that have asked about recording our own instructors demonstrating what they want us to do for lab and what structures they want us to know but the administration is NOT willing to do this. Extremely frustrating and a waste of time for many. .
· .We DO NOT have enough teacher assistants or tutors. Many students who are failing anatomy asked for a tutor right away and still have not been given one or assigned to a group even after 5 weeks of the 10 week anatomy course. Even students with a DOCUMENTED DISABILITY have not had access to tutors. A lack of tutors has been a known problem in the past with this school and we can only hope this changes. In the meantime, we make friends with smart friends or pay for tutors (like 50K a year isn’t enough!). .
· .The school didn’t want to assign tutors until after the first anatomy exam (after 2 weeks of the 10 week block). This put those who knew they needed help at a huge disadvantage. This brings up the whole ethical question of allowing access to important information only if you do poorly enough on an exam. .
· .Many students took anatomy courses in undergrad or other graduate school and are at a huge advantage in this course. In the end, anatomy gets curved at ~66% is passing in order to only make 8 or so students fail anatomy out of a class of 220 (they have to retake it the next summer). .
· .There are many students that pay other students for anatomy tutoring because of the lack of resources the school provides. .
· .The school enjoys letting you sort through all their information to find the useful things (instead of providing direction). For example, an instructor in Oregon uploaded videos of dissections that would have helped us in Pomona but the did not inform us of this information until half way through anatomy (they sent out an email after 4 weeks but they screwed up sending it to the class in Pomona of 2016)..
· .Some teachers don’t bother uploading their powerpoint presentation until AFTER they are done lecturing which makes taking notes on them much more difficult. .
· .Some classes are a waste of time. We have been told to watch prerecorded lectures then in class they go over almost all of that information anyways in the next class. Unfortunately in this class, we are not able to have electronics out where we could study for other classes. .
· .The exams we take have been very poorly written thus far. We have numerous grammar problems and confusing questions. How about you have someone proof read your poorly written exam??? .
· .Some teachers are really bad about answering emails (even really important ones). .
· .The DO classes communicate on our facebook page where we can try to figure out what we are suppose to do for classes and better resources to learn from. .
· .There are many students that realize that much of what we go over in classes is not that important to doing well on the boards (board exam scores are MUCH IMPORTANT THAN GRADES in classes). Therefore, just pass all of your classes and spend the rest of your time studying for the board exams!!! No joke! .
· .There is not much research that is performed on campus. They do not get much (if any) government grants to fund research. .
· .We still do not have a locker room to change clothes for cadaver lab or a shower on campus to use after. .
· .We do not have a workout facility on campus, they supplement our cost to be a member at a local gym. .
. .
.About the institution:.
· .Crime on and near campus is big problem. Pomona has a 13.2% unemployment rate and a high crime rate. .
· .Being a female on this campus can especially be scary at times. We find locals passing through campus picking through our garbage for recyclables. Who knows what happens at night! Not all that many people stay around after dark. .
· .Honestly, we had two bullets that big windows in the HEC on 9/23 around 10 pm at night. We are in arguments with the administration because they are not doing enough to protect their students. .
· .The buildings do not have swipe passes on them (so anyone can walk into our buildings and steal stuff). .
· .We do not have an emergency text message system set up in case the school is in a lock down (we get sent a email if they bother sending it out (we didn’t get an email from the school about the windows being shot until ~10 hours later). .
· .A few weeks ago, one student’s father got held up at gun point in a parking lot next to campus (again no immediate email from the school because it was “just off campus.” It was sent the next day). .
· .Parking on campus is $480 a year because the school leases the lots from the city. Cars in these lots are broken into on a regular basis. .
· .Tuition is $47,555 a year with an annual indebtedness of $203,430. This is the 5th highest graduation debt of ALL MEDICAL SCHOOLS .
. .
.I am not writing this to scare anyone away from Western U but I believe that everyone should be aware of these problems in order to help you make an educated decision if WesternU is the right school for you. .
. .
.Please feel free to clarify these topics during your interviews on campus or directly email the administration on the Pomona Campus .

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[thepoopologist]

Welcome to DO school

 

[oms2]

welcome to med school

 

[thecgrblue]

If you took all of your effort that you expend being pissed off about how the school is run and put it into studying you wouldn't have to worry about the lack of resources and bad lecturing. I'm sorry...but most of your complaints are just plain obnoxious.

Personally, I don't learn super-well from lecture so I plan on learning everything on my own and that makes the quality of the lecturer irrelevant.

As one of our profs put it (who is an amazing teacher), "If you have time to complain about the institution you aren't studying enough."

 

[costales]

 

[MRSAful Fate]

.I am a female DO student at Western U in Pomona. I would like perspective students to be aware of numerous problems that the school won't be upfront about. You need to be aware of these before you make a decision to attend. .

.About the classes: .
· .We are largely on our own for learning here (lack of access to teachers, limited tutors, disorganized labs, confusing lectures, and overall disordered resources). They tell us to find a study group with other students (which doesn’t help all that much because they are trying to learn the material as well). .
· .We hardly have access to the professors. We are told to ask questions online but quite a few don’t get answered. Most teachers do not have office hours but some are willing to meet if they are around their office or maybe with an appointment. .
· .Some of our classes are televised from our satellite campus in Lebanon, Oregon (presumably to cut the school’s costs). One teacher we had was bad. They sent us study guides that had incorrect information and misspellings (such as mixing up sympathetic and parasympathetic- kind of a BIG difference!). Many students downloaded other teacher’s lectures about the same topics because it was so bad. It was frustrating to figure out what we needed to know about this topic. .
· .Many students spend more time trying to figure out what we need to know and deciding the most efficient way to learn it than actually learning the material itself. The disorganized material is time consuming to sort through. .
· .Much of what we learn in anatomy lab is from first year students that took an intensive summer anatomy course where they had to get 80% or higher in the course to instruct us. By the time they are our instructors, much of this info has been forgotten or not concrete. .
· .For anatomy lab, the instructors assign complicated directions such as assigning certain pages out of a book and giving us a supplemental handout with what we should do instead and what they don’t want us to do. Many students watch videos form other medical schools to try to figure out what is going on. There have been students that have asked about recording our own instructors demonstrating what they want us to do for lab and what structures they want us to know but the administration is NOT willing to do this. Extremely frustrating and a waste of time for many. .
· .We DO NOT have enough teacher assistants or tutors. Many students who are failing anatomy asked for a tutor right away and still have not been given one or assigned to a group even after 5 weeks of the 10 week anatomy course. Even students with a DOCUMENTED DISABILITY have not had access to tutors. A lack of tutors has been a known problem in the past with this school and we can only hope this changes. In the meantime, we make friends with smart friends or pay for tutors (like 50K a year isn’t enough!). .
· .The school didn’t want to assign tutors until after the first anatomy exam (after 2 weeks of the 10 week block). This put those who knew they needed help at a huge disadvantage. This brings up the whole ethical question of allowing access to important information only if you do poorly enough on an exam. .
· .Many students took anatomy courses in undergrad or other graduate school and are at a huge advantage in this course. In the end, anatomy gets curved at ~66% is passing in order to only make 8 or so students fail anatomy out of a class of 220 (they have to retake it the next summer). .
· .There are many students that pay other students for anatomy tutoring because of the lack of resources the school provides. .
· .The school enjoys letting you sort through all their information to find the useful things (instead of providing direction). For example, an instructor in Oregon uploaded videos of dissections that would have helped us in Pomona but the did not inform us of this information until half way through anatomy (they sent out an email after 4 weeks but they screwed up sending it to the class in Pomona of 2016)..
· .Some teachers don’t bother uploading their powerpoint presentation until AFTER they are done lecturing which makes taking notes on them much more difficult. .
· .Some classes are a waste of time. We have been told to watch prerecorded lectures then in class they go over almost all of that information anyways in the next class. Unfortunately in this class, we are not able to have electronics out where we could study for other classes. .
· .The exams we take have been very poorly written thus far. We have numerous grammar problems and confusing questions. How about you have someone proof read your poorly written exam??? .
· .Some teachers are really bad about answering emails (even really important ones). .
· .The DO classes communicate on our facebook page where we can try to figure out what we are suppose to do for classes and better resources to learn from. .
· .There are many students that realize that much of what we go over in classes is not that important to doing well on the boards (board exam scores are MUCH IMPORTANT THAN GRADES in classes). Therefore, just pass all of your classes and spend the rest of your time studying for the board exams!!! No joke! .
· .There is not much research that is performed on campus. They do not get much (if any) government grants to fund research. .
· .We still do not have a locker room to change clothes for cadaver lab or a shower on campus to use after. .
· .We do not have a workout facility on campus, they supplement our cost to be a member at a local gym. .

.About the institution:.
· .Crime on and near campus is big problem. Pomona has a 13.2% unemployment rate and a high crime rate. .
· .Being a female on this campus can especially be scary at times. We find locals passing through campus picking through our garbage for recyclables. Who knows what happens at night! Not all that many people stay around after dark. .
· .Honestly, we had two bullets that big windows in the HEC on 9/23 around 10 pm at night. We are in arguments with the administration because they are not doing enough to protect their students. .
· .The buildings do not have swipe passes on them (so anyone can walk into our buildings and steal stuff). .
· .We do not have an emergency text message system set up in case the school is in a lock down (we get sent a email if they bother sending it out (we didn’t get an email from the school about the windows being shot until ~10 hours later). .
· .A few weeks ago, one student’s father got held up at gun point in a parking lot next to campus (again no immediate email from the school because it was “just off campus.” It was sent the next day). .
· .Parking on campus is $480 a year because the school leases the lots from the city. Cars in these lots are broken into on a regular basis. .
· .Tuition is $47,555 a year with an annual indebtedness of $203,430. This is the 5th highest graduation debt of ALL MEDICAL SCHOOLS .

.I am not writing this to scare anyone away from Western U but I believe that everyone should be aware of these problems in order to help you make an educated decision if WesternU is the right school for you. .

.Please feel free to clarify these topics during your interviews on campus or directly email the administration on the Pomona Campus .

 

[pattr]

I feel like this thread is more just OP venting about her qualms about her experience at Western (many of which are common to DO schools and medical schools in general) moreso than offering constructive feedback/criticism that would be helpful to a potential applicant.

To the OP: you're a first year, right? I would suggest that you direct these kinds of complaints/suggestions to your student government or the faculty rather than posting it here... there are a lot of good things about Western that are not being represented here and you run the risk of skewing people's perception of a DO school that is otherwise relatively well-respected regionally.

 

[Mass Effect]

If you took all of your effort that you expend being pissed off about how the school is run and put it into studying you wouldn't have to worry about the lack of resources and bad lecturing. I'm sorry...but most of your complaints are just plain obnoxious.

Personally, I don't learn super-well from lecture so I plan on learning everything on my own and that makes the quality of the lecturer irrelevant

I disagree. Just because you're good at doing it all on your own, doesn't mean you should be expected to when you're paying $50,000 a year. I mean, professors who don't answer emails? Professors without office hours? Students having to pay for tutoring? The school asking first years to teach other first years just because they took a summer course? No text notification in case of campus emergency? People failing anatomy and still not having a tutor 5 weeks into a 10-week course?

I won't dismiss all that as "welcome to med school" because not all med schools are created equal. At my school, the tutors and TAs for first years are second years who get paid to do it by the school. And the program is competitive enough that the school only hires those who mastered the course they're expected to tutor in. This is supplemental to professor instruction, not in place of it. First years sign up for tutors during orientation week and everyone who wants one gets one. They don't wait until you're failing to do something about it. They try to keep you from failing in the first place.

Professors not answering emails? I don't think I've ever had to wait more than a day to hear back from a professor. Nine times out of ten, I hear back within an hour and most professors have an open-door policy, so if you're on campus, you can just swing by.

I know every school has its problems, but these things make me happy I chose the school I did. If these allegations are true, I don't blame the OP for venting.

 

[Mass Effect]

....

 

[TallScrubs]

If you took all of your effort that you expend being pissed off about how the school is run and put it into studying you wouldn't have to worry about the lack of resources and bad lecturing. I'm sorry...but most of your complaints are just plain obnoxious.

Personally, I don't learn super-well from lecture so I plan on learning everything on my own and that makes the quality of the lecturer irrelevant.

As one of our profs put it (who is an amazing teacher), "If you have time to complain about the institution you aren't studying enough."

Is your professor stupid? I'd say a key characteristic of med students is that they bitch. I bitch ALL THE TIME because **** is stupid, but that doesn't mean I'm not studying enough.

 

[p30doc]

Most of these are common issues among DO programs, it sucks. You will survive, first and second year don't last forever. You will find a whole new laundry list of frustrations with third and fourth year.

 

[84kizpce]

.I am a female DO student at Western U in Pomona. I would like perspective students to be aware of numerous problems that the school won't be upfront about. You need to be aware of these before you make a decision to attend. .
. .
.About the classes: .
· .We are largely on our own for learning here (lack of access to teachers, limited tutors, disorganized labs, confusing lectures, and overall disordered resources). They tell us to find a study group with other students (which doesn’t help all that much because they are trying to learn the material as well). .
· .We hardly have access to the professors. We are told to ask questions online but quite a few don’t get answered. Most teachers do not have office hours but some are willing to meet if they are around their office or maybe with an appointment. .
· .Some of our classes are televised from our satellite campus in Lebanon, Oregon (presumably to cut the school’s costs). One teacher we had was bad. They sent us study guides that had incorrect information and misspellings (such as mixing up sympathetic and parasympathetic- kind of a BIG difference!). Many students downloaded other teacher’s lectures about the same topics because it was so bad. It was frustrating to figure out what we needed to know about this topic. .
· .Many students spend more time trying to figure out what we need to know and deciding the most efficient way to learn it than actually learning the material itself. The disorganized material is time consuming to sort through. .
· .Much of what we learn in anatomy lab is from first year students that took an intensive summer anatomy course where they had to get 80% or higher in the course to instruct us. By the time they are our instructors, much of this info has been forgotten or not concrete. .
· .For anatomy lab, the instructors assign complicated directions such as assigning certain pages out of a book and giving us a supplemental handout with what we should do instead and what they don’t want us to do. Many students watch videos form other medical schools to try to figure out what is going on. There have been students that have asked about recording our own instructors demonstrating what they want us to do for lab and what structures they want us to know but the administration is NOT willing to do this. Extremely frustrating and a waste of time for many. .
· .We DO NOT have enough teacher assistants or tutors. Many students who are failing anatomy asked for a tutor right away and still have not been given one or assigned to a group even after 5 weeks of the 10 week anatomy course. Even students with a DOCUMENTED DISABILITY have not had access to tutors. A lack of tutors has been a known problem in the past with this school and we can only hope this changes. In the meantime, we make friends with smart friends or pay for tutors (like 50K a year isn’t enough!). .
· .The school didn’t want to assign tutors until after the first anatomy exam (after 2 weeks of the 10 week block). This put those who knew they needed help at a huge disadvantage. This brings up the whole ethical question of allowing access to important information only if you do poorly enough on an exam. .
· .Many students took anatomy courses in undergrad or other graduate school and are at a huge advantage in this course. In the end, anatomy gets curved at ~66% is passing in order to only make 8 or so students fail anatomy out of a class of 220 (they have to retake it the next summer). .
· .There are many students that pay other students for anatomy tutoring because of the lack of resources the school provides. .
· .The school enjoys letting you sort through all their information to find the useful things (instead of providing direction). For example, an instructor in Oregon uploaded videos of dissections that would have helped us in Pomona but the did not inform us of this information until half way through anatomy (they sent out an email after 4 weeks but they screwed up sending it to the class in Pomona of 2016)..
· .Some teachers don’t bother uploading their powerpoint presentation until AFTER they are done lecturing which makes taking notes on them much more difficult. .
· .Some classes are a waste of time. We have been told to watch prerecorded lectures then in class they go over almost all of that information anyways in the next class. Unfortunately in this class, we are not able to have electronics out where we could study for other classes. .
· .The exams we take have been very poorly written thus far. We have numerous grammar problems and confusing questions. How about you have someone proof read your poorly written exam??? .
· .Some teachers are really bad about answering emails (even really important ones). .
· .The DO classes communicate on our facebook page where we can try to figure out what we are suppose to do for classes and better resources to learn from. .
· .There are many students that realize that much of what we go over in classes is not that important to doing well on the boards (board exam scores are MUCH IMPORTANT THAN GRADES in classes). Therefore, just pass all of your classes and spend the rest of your time studying for the board exams!!! No joke! .
· .There is not much research that is performed on campus. They do not get much (if any) government grants to fund research. .
· .We still do not have a locker room to change clothes for cadaver lab or a shower on campus to use after. .
· .We do not have a workout facility on campus, they supplement our cost to be a member at a local gym. .
. .
.About the institution:.
· .Crime on and near campus is big problem. Pomona has a 13.2% unemployment rate and a high crime rate. .
· .Being a female on this campus can especially be scary at times. We find locals passing through campus picking through our garbage for recyclables. Who knows what happens at night! Not all that many people stay around after dark. .
· .Honestly, we had two bullets that big windows in the HEC on 9/23 around 10 pm at night. We are in arguments with the administration because they are not doing enough to protect their students. .
· .The buildings do not have swipe passes on them (so anyone can walk into our buildings and steal stuff). .
· .We do not have an emergency text message system set up in case the school is in a lock down (we get sent a email if they bother sending it out (we didn’t get an email from the school about the windows being shot until ~10 hours later). .
· .A few weeks ago, one student’s father got held up at gun point in a parking lot next to campus (again no immediate email from the school because it was “just off campus.” It was sent the next day). .
· .Parking on campus is $480 a year because the school leases the lots from the city. Cars in these lots are broken into on a regular basis. .
· .Tuition is $47,555 a year with an annual indebtedness of $203,430. This is the 5th highest graduation debt of ALL MEDICAL SCHOOLS .
. .
.I am not writing this to scare anyone away from Western U but I believe that everyone should be aware of these problems in order to help you make an educated decision if WesternU is the right school for you. .
. .
.Please feel free to clarify these topics during your interviews on campus or directly email the administration on the Pomona Campus .

From a second year's point of view..

OP, before you throw your frustration out and blame everything on the school and the curriculum, I'd wait a few more weeks/months before aiming it at WesternU.

Anatomy is rough, we all went through it, but it'll get better. You're in medical school now, much of your learning will be independent. Later in your second year, you're going to have to learn on your own a lot of times when you're in small group. How do you expect to survive without someone holding your hand every step of the way? There are a lot of online resources to use (which I'm sure students at all medical schools don't SOLELY rely on the material presented by their faculty). Use the good resources you find online and supplement that with your curriculum.

If you can honestly say that you study every day, all day without taking a break and you are still failing then by all means you have the right to be angry because then it's not taught well enough. But I'm sure a lot of your classmates are still doing well (despite the horrendous curriculum that you're portraying), so maybe you have some adjusting to do in terms of how you study? First year is about learning how to absorb massive amounts of information in time for examinations and considering you're not even through you're first class, I'd say you just haven't gotten the most efficient method for you yet.

Also, the reason why approximately half of our lectures come from the satellite campus in Lebanon, Oregon is because they are currently undergoing accreditation and in order to do that, the Lebanon campus needs to have the EXACT SAME curriculum as us, until they are accredited. Once that happens, they have their own faculty to teach them from Oregon and we'll have ours down here in Pomona.

In addition to your other remarks, yes there are not enough teacher assistants or tutors for everyone. It would be ridiculous for the school to have private tutors in "medical school" to everyone that needs it, so the ability for the school to get tutors is based on students that have time to volunteer. 3rd and 4th years are on rotations. 2nd years are busy studying and prepping for boards. So the only students available are the ISAC students (students that took anatomy in the summer)? It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. If you really need help, I'm sure you could contact someone who is tutoring for anatomy and ask if you can join their group.

Also, there are going to be people that have advantages in every class/system you take from now on. You need to get used to that. This is at every medical school by the way. You're going to have people in your class that are PhD's, PA's, PT's, etc etc. Who cares.. just try your hardest. What about the people that don't have as good of a science background as you, students who don't have english as their first language, students that have a lot of personal issues going on during school that will affect their grades. Everyone has their advantages and disadvantages, focus on yourself and WHY you're in medical school. It's not to beat out the competition, it's for you to learn how to become a competent physician.

Addressing another point, teachers will have miscommunication, (ie. the instructor in Oregon that uploaded videos of dissections that would have helped you guys). That's not the school's fault and honestly you can find dissection videos online. Each of your problems seem to be stemming from your frustration from anatomy, but don't take it out on the school. It's a stressful time. I understand, I went through it too . There's light at the end of the tunnel, and at the end of the day, it's about you and your patient.

Yes you're going to learn more in school than what's on boards, because that's how it's supposed to be. Why go to college, if you only use 10% of what you learn at your job.

There isn't a lot of research because you're at an osteopathic school --> primary care focused. If you care about research, there are still tons of research opportunities available (lots of classmates did research over the summer).

We don't have a gym on campus, but you get a 1 year pass to LA fitness at a severely reduced cost. This allows flexibility and probably a better gym experience than if WesternU was to build one themselves.

If classes are a waste of time, then don't watch the prerecorded lectures. They are posted because for those students that want to get ahead, they have the option to. If you don't have time, wait until the next day and hear it in class.

Do you really need to shower on campus after anatomy lab? You guys have anatomy lab in the afternoon now (we had it in the morning), which means you're free to go home after.

I need to get back to studying now, but please please stick it out a few more months before misleading premeds. You just started and still have a lot of rocky patches to get through so don't let the small things get to you and keep your head up.

Feel free to msg me if you really need some advice. You should have a COMPanion and faculty advisor to talk to in terms of guidance. We're all in the same boat now. Let me know if I can be of any help.

 

[group_theory]

Cross-posting (identical thread) in both pre-osteopathic as well as osteopathic forum is not allowed on SDN without SDN admin or moderator approval.

Since the thread in the Pre-Osteopathic Forum has more posts, will close this thread. If you want to continue to participate in this conversation, please go to the active thread in the Pre-Osteopathic Forum

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=953048


Closing.