I've got 2014 stats from the 2015-2016 Podiatric Medical College Information Book:
BARRY
Average MCAT 22 (aprox. 496)
Average sGPA 2.90
Average cGPA 3.10
NYCPM
Average MCAT 24 (aprox. 499)
Average sGPA 3.20
Average cGPA 3.33
TEMPLE
Average MCAT 23.75 (aprox. 499)
Average sGPA 3.2
Average cGPA 3.35
http://www.aacpm.org/wp-content/uploads/2016-CIB.pdf
I think each school will have some students with research experience and some without. Research is available at most of the schools but most students that I've talked to see it as largely unnecessary, insomuch that you can get through school, land a residency, and be successful without completing a lick of research. Although I could see the case for doing research out of genuine interest or to land a more competitive residency or maybe even a fellowship down the road. Temple has Dr Song (
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=jinsup+song ) who seems pretty heavy into research as well as what Dr Harkless from Western described as probably the best gait lab out of all of the podiatry schools. I will admit though, that the Temple facilities are dated, including the gait lab. Renovations are supposedly underway but they're only doing like one area at a time so who knows if/when they might get around to the gait lab/research area.
Maybe someone else can chime in on Scholl's program because if I'm not mistaken they get a lot of research money and probably have newer facilities than Temple as well. I'm not sure, I ended up canceling my Scholl interview.
I at least got a very close knit feel from Mr Martin in admissions. We didn't have too much contact with students, but the students that we did speak to seemed happy to be there. The only other input I can give so far is that the upperclassmen that have been contacting us about orientation, clubs, etc. so far seem to know each other and be friendly with each other. I think in any school with a class size around 100 not everybody can be super close to each other. Cliques will inevitably form and there should be more than enough of them to go around and through that I'm sure we'll all find study partners or whatever other help we may need. In a school like AZPod where there are only like 30 students in each class, I assume there would be much more potential for the entire class to be close knit.