medical school curriculums

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cardiology88

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I have a couple interviews coming up and I know I am going to be asked the question Why do you want to go to our school? Thats a difficult question for me to answer since I really don't care where I go as long as I can get in, however I can't say that at the interview. I guess one thing I can comment on is the curriculum. I know very little about med school curriculums. What kinds of curriculums are out there? What are the pros and cons of each type?

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What I've learned about curriculums along the interview circuit includes:

-Block : where you take 1 class for a month to 6 weeks, as well as a year/semester long clinical skills class, and probably a lab.

-Semester : like most undergrad, you take 4-6 classes/labs and have tests in all the classes at any given time, sometimes with one big testing week every month or two. You take classes like anatomy, physio, histo, pharm

-Integrated (or systems) block : you take 1 class at a time, generally looking at like an organ system or like a histo/anatomy or a "host defense" class in micro/immuno/pharm... No standard classes like the semester style, it's all mixed together so you learn about the anat/physio/histo/pharm/path, etc of the cardiovascular system, and then you do that again, for like the nervous system, or the renal system.. Oh and you still have a lab and a clinical skills class.

-Problem based learning: You can have this with block, semester or integrated, and this is a less lecture based system where you work in teams with a moderator w/ a case study and study the whole process of diagnosing from history to differentials to drugs to treatment and so on. lots of critical thinking.

-Lecture based: typical go to class kind of deal... like most undergrad work done in a lecture hall.

-Practice based: lots of hands on stuff, lots of review.. I don't know much about this.

I don't personally know the pros and cons for you, because like some people love problem based and others think it's awful. it just gets down to how you learn best and what makes the enormous amounts of info stick.

again, I'm not a student yet, so this is just my outside opinon from what has been explained to me.

Good luck in your studies :)
 
Okay actually I will say one more thing:

With block, you have to keep up with your studies and you cant procrastinate cuz you have tests every couple weeks. you kinda have to study a little everyday. That is hard for some people who aren't super self motivated.

With the several courses all at once, you have tests less often generally, but testing week/days are INTENSE because its a lot of classes all at once. but then once you're done testing, you're done for a while, which means you can actually take a week off and then ramp the studying back up once it gets near test time.

with problem based, you need to be able to work in teams because its 100% collaborative.

with regular lecture style, its much more independent study. however, med students have told us over and over -- don't try to do it alone... it's too hard and you go crazy. study with friends sometimes, if for nothing but the social support.. but the exchange of ideas and the aspect of teaching others while learning yourself is invaluable.

and not gonna lie, this is coming from a self studier in undergrad... but trust me, that's changing come august! :)
 
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In addition to knowing the above stuff, make sure to peruse school websites and see what each advertises to be the unique selling points of its curriculum. Usually this is just the same stuff packaged in different boxes with different painfully tedious titles, but it's the easiest way to learn what the school thinks is important about its curriculum.
 
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