Opinions btw ICO, SUNY and NECO plz!!!

[shortie]

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Hi everyone,

I have been contemplating between ICO, SUNY and NECO, so I was hoping if you guys can list pros/cons or anything you know about each place. I'm quite confused as to which one would be more "better". (in terms of clinic, academic, precentage ppl passing boards, housing, city etc)

Personally, I have heard/seen that ICO has a great clinical facility, although it the most expensive school in the States Another good thing is that it actually has housing available directly across from the school. Some people have told me though that it can be an unsafe place?!?

SUNY - Since it's public, I remember the guest speaker saying it is better than all the private run schools. I believe their clinic is well known as well!?! Con- expensive housing!

NECO - People just tell me that it's nice and reputable.

Sooooooo, basically, I was wondering if I can get more input from here to help me make my decision easier.

Thanks a lot!

 

[calcium boy]

I don't know about the other schools but my brother is a fourth year at ICO. The school is located in an ok area, your a five minute walk away from U.S. cellurlar field (white sox baseball) and another college. I spent a good amout of time with my brother and his classmates. Yes, you will most likely owe 150,000 dollars when your done, but you get a great education. I might be bias because i love chicago. The students are really nice, you will learn alot in clinic beacuse you see alot of public aid. My brother is planning to due a residency nest year because he wants to treat more disease of the eyes instead of referring them to a opt MD. He will mostly likely get his top choice because he is either ranked number 1 or 2 in class and has great board scores.

 

[Potato!]

Hello! Last year I was accepted to both ICO and SUNY, and I ended up choosing to go to SUNY. One of the main reasons was the difference in tuition. ICOs tuition is sooo expensive. SUNY is a public school, so after the first year, you can become a resident of the state of NY and you can pay in state tuition (~15K). For me, I weighed all the options...ICO even offered me one of those 10K a year scholarships, but SUNY was still way cheaper for me. SUNY also has a cool O.D./M.Sc. program where you can earn both degrees in 4 years. It's a good program if you're into research. Why else did I choose SUNY again? Oh yeah, when I visited ICO, it was kind of in a scary area. On one side it's nice, and on the other side it's pretty ghetto.

At SUNY, the living expense is obviously insanely high. I think both the clinic at SUNY and ICO are amazing. ICO is definately fancier, has newer equipment and is more state-of-the-art than SUNY. Both clinics are great because you will see every type of ocular problem imaginable, as they both have huge patient bases. (Sorry my ideas are kinda jumping around. I'm trying to throw all the pros and cons at you).

Hmmm, that's all I can think of right now, hopefully you can derive some use from my ramblings.

Potato!

 

[stompy]

Thank you Potato! for your response, I appreciated a lot since I'm comparing/contrasting the two schools right now. As far as I understand, ICO will cost almost or around 180k for four years of school, which includes tuition and room and board. However, I'm not quite sure about the four year cost for SUNY. Would you happen to have a figure for comparsion? In other words, while SUNY's tuituion is low, its living cost is high. Which school is actually cheaper in the end? Thanks lots!

 

[Smorr18]

I know that SUNY is building a resident's buiilding with dorms 10 min from the actual college. They said it should be open by 2007...

 

[christie]

You can go to suny and still have a decent priced apartment, if you live in one of the other boroughs.

 

[HOLLYWOOD]

Suny's clinicals are'nt that good. Newenco's part 1 pass rate is low. Don't know much about ICO. I think the PCO students are the best trained (out of nova,suny,and newenco.) Houston new grads were good also but I dont have much experience with them.

 

[stompy]

I think I'll lean toward SUNY...