Hi Comaxtli!
Thank you so much for your input! How is the grading like there? I read that its numeric grading on SDN. Since 70 is consider passing, do you think that just a little above passing will look bad for rotations? Also, how is board prep?
Grading is super simple. Tests are around around 90-120 questions. (3 questions per lecture hour) Depending on the semester you have a test ever 2-3 weeks. The amount of questions you get correct is your grade. (87/100 = 87%). As far as barely passing goes and how that looks I think that depends on the residency program and the rest of your application. I would try to do the best you can as you don't want to worry about failin. Your first semester (trimesters) a 65 is passing after that its a 70%. If you pass you will become a doctor. Everyone who graduated last year got a residency (100% placement) and 265/270 students graduated.
I haven't taken boards so I'm going to quote a 2nd year. I heard there is 5 weeks dedicated to board prep and I think we get a question bank and they do a basic science review for us.
"Still to be determined in regards to board prep time... I'm not even sure that has been decided for our schedule yet... there's no point during the trimester (which goes until mid-May) where we will have absolutely no commitments at school, however, they are working to put some study time into our schedules as part of one of our classes (for which right now we have been taking weekly board-like quizzes). Our final trimester is relatively light on work-load in the sense that it is only pediatrics, geriatrics, emergency medicine II, OMM, and PCS. Hopefully that helps."
"Just to give an update to this now that we have our Term 3 schedule, for anyone that was curious... Our Life Stages class ends on April 7. After that point, we just have some OMM, PCS, and EMED classes but for the most part we have every day in the morning completely free, and occasional classes in the afternoons... soessentially a month of relatively organized board prep time as most of us are takingStep 1 towards the end of May."
Course Sequence - DO Program
Students seem to be getting into very competitive residencies so they must be doing well on boards and it seems like almost everyone passes them.
