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- Jul 14, 2017
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I am a student of the class of 2019 at Ponce School of Medicine (Ponce Health Sciences University), and I wanted to give my fairest evaluation of the institution, which is congruent with that of most of the student body.
Campus/Surroundings
The school repainted a majority of the exterior of the buildings in 2015-2016, but the indoor problems remain. The ceiling leaks when it rains in the main first-year classroom, student lounge, and through the windows of some of the buildings. The carpet in the library has a lot of mold (from the rain), so if you have allergies, then you basically cannot study there. Also, you can hear everything through the walls, so the group study areas can be a little distracting (perhaps this is a little nitpicky). Lastly, the interiors of a lot of the buildings need to be renovated.
Regarding the rest of campus, much of the parking lots are dirt roads, gravel, or what remains of the concrete, which can be tough on your tires. There are also plenty of feral dogs on campus that get territorial and violent in the evenings toward students returning to their cars. We have informed the administration of this issue and the dangers associated with it plenty of times, but they have yet to do anything about it. These dogs along with the domesticated dogs around campus bark to no end, which can be pretty distracting without ear plugs or noise-canceling headphones. Moreover, people don't really take care of their dogs in Ponce either, so they bark out of boredom throughout the day and night. There is also this gas station (Puma) that blares vulgar reggaetón/trap music on weekends deep into the night, so don't live anywhere near the Puma and Guarina Bakery across the street like I did because you won't get any sleep. Also, if you are considering living in Valle Real, be sure to only look at houses in the back of the neighborhood because you’ll certainly hear the speakers from near the entrance.
These problems have all existed since I started.
Administration/Education
We have unfortunately had quite a few issues with the administration and their decisions. They are not transparent about these things during orientation, so pay attention closely. First things first, you won't be allowed to see your old tests and learn from your mistakes, nor will you be able to challenge exam questions as a class. This has been something that every entering class has tried to reverse, but it ends up being a huge waste of time because they just won't budge on this. Many of the professors are not so strong with English (yes, exams are in English), so there can be a lot of confusion on exams regarding what a question is asking due to the spelling and grammatical errors. Often, it just so happens that the professor responsible for that question is not proctoring the exam or is in the library proctoring the MS students (just your luck). The president's defense for all of this is that they will throw out the question if more than half of the students miss it. I believe this could all be avoided if the professors had their graduate students review and revise their exam questions like at other institutions. It just seems like an excuse for blatant negligence on the part of the faculty and administration.
The school also converted to a flipped classroom lecture style, which means that there are lectures on videos that you'll need to watch the night before an in-class session. During the in-class session, professors are supposed to ask the class questions through Reef Polling that you answer on your phones (for our year, we used iClickers). Now, this sounds nice in theory, but the videos often lag or just cannot download well from the website that the school uses (Docebo), so you might end up wasting a lot of time if you do not have another media player like Azul. Also, the professors are teaching in front of a green screen, which is just awkward for everyone because it’s extremely unnatural for the professors. Other schools record the professor’s lectures in a regular classroom setting, and the lecture is simply more educating than having a professor reading from PowerPoint slides in front of a green screen. The in-class sessions can also be a letdown because many of the professors don’t bother to write questions, so instead, they just give the same lecture as what you already watched on Docebo. This is a huge waste of time.
Subsequently, the school is on a traditional lecturing schedule rather than a systems-based learning schedule. Systems-based means that every class (physiology, biochemistry, anatomy, etc.) is in the same section at the same time. For example, the thorax is discussed in physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, histology and then an exam is given in that section of the body incorporating all those subject areas. This might seem daunting, but it helps when approaching the Step 1 because the USMLE questions incorporate material from more than one subject area. My friends at other schools reflect highly on this lecture-style and they say that it flows better with the flipped classroom style as well. At PHSU, each class has its own exam, so you could have more than a couple of exams in a week at some points in the semester. Each class has already asked as many different questions as they can from high-yield information, so in recent years, they have started to ask nitpicky and trivial details about the PowerPoint presentation. I personally believe that switching completely to a systems-based learning style would force the professors to target high-yield concepts from their subject area because they would not have to write so many questions for an exam of only their subject, but instead a handful of questions for a comprehensive exam that includes all subjects for that body region. I know this is how it is done at Ciencias Médicas (UPR), and it has worked out well for them thus far.
Also, the Reef polling/Clicker questions counted for points in some classes (Biochemistry and Physiology) for the class of 2020; as much as 10 points were allotted to participation/Clicker questions in physiology, which is ridiculous. They tried to fight this, but again the administration and faculty did not budge on this. Biochemistry had a weird rule where one gets a couple of points for answering like 90% of the Reef questions, and then the average that one scores in Reef also counts for points. So, scoring a Reef average of 70-79 was one point, 80-89 was two, 90-100 was three. Nobody really liked it from what I heard because some of the professors did not ask Reef questions toward the end when everyone was trying to reach that next range for another point, which made the difference for a lot of people.
Next, attendance is mandatory and is also something that plenty of classes before you have fought against. They pass an attendance sheet that everyone signs each class; it’s extremely annoying. There’s a rule in the student handbook that says they will pretty much expel you if you get caught signing in for other students or if someone else signs for you, but nobody enforces that rule. Professors pretty much turn the other cheek, which is a plus for those of us that just do not want to waste time in class. So, make friends with those that can get up for those 8:00 am lectures because there is a participation grade in each class that is a couple of points that can save you in the end.
Lastly, the registrar and financial department can be extremely slow with processing student loans and getting loan money to its students. I remember we were well into our first and second semester before receiving student loans (this happened twice), which put a lot of pressure on the students and their families to live without these loans for the time being. The registrar is slow about carrying out anything for students, so do whatever you can to not have to go there and do anything. It is because they are understaffed and the old ladies move slowly. Paying tuition is also a huge hassle because you cannot just do it on the computer like in the year 2017. They have this assembly line of registrar office ladies that are processing all the tuition costs on carbon copy paper and entering it into the system. You must write your name on a sign-in sheet and wait until your number is called. Then, cross your fingers that no random problems arise while they are completing all the tuition costs and loans. It is a huge waste of time because of the outdated system.
Attrition and Remediation
Unfortunately, the school has a poor attrition rate. We lost some half a dozen students our first year, which may not sound all that bad, but it takes a toll on a class of 76 students. A couple other students had to repeat the entire first year or several classes from the first year, a couple of students entered the five-year program, one student had to take some time off before repeating a class in the Spring, and a good dozen or so students had to repeat biochemistry over the summer. It felt like we lost half our class when I walked into my first lecture in the second year. Additionally, approximately 30 students from the class of 2018 had to enter the class of 2019 after their second year because they were unprepared to take the Step 1 exam.
We also had a student that suffered a mental breakdown in the Spring of 2017 that was handled extremely poorly by the administration. We have a Whatsapp group chat that is basically a message board for the whole class. After a particularly unfair exam, the student basically snapped and wrote all this random stuff about the school and his role in the class. A whole lot of it did not make sense, but he was texting well into the early morning (As a class, we wrote a formal complaint about that exam). The following morning, members of the administration met us in class and told us not to spread rumors about the event. To all of us, it seemed extremely insensitive that rumors were the main concerns of the event instead of the mental health of the student. In the proceeding weeks, we had several more meetings as a class to sort out issues regarding security and mental health at PHSU. Our president claims that we have the best psychology program in the country, but we all find that hard to believe since we don’t even have any student mental health services. I am leaving out a whole lot of detail regarding the incident because this was a huge ordeal that lasted a majority of the Spring semester. However, I personally do not see the administration investing much more time or money into mental health because it is now a for-profit institution, and paying for on-campus mental health counselors obviously takes away from the profit.
Lastly, I really do not see why PHSU talks so poorly about San Juan Bautista (SJB) because from what I hear, SJB is starting to get its things together. PHSU and SJB have purchased question banks from NBME, which are old USMLE questions, but the difference is that SJB uses them. It feels like a waste of our tuition dollars to not be tested with the NBME questions, but instead, have open-ended questions written by our staff. The friends that I made from SJB have reflected a lot more positively on their school than we have here at PHSU unfortunately. Perhaps the administration can get on the professors about using these questions in the future. I know that our class has tried in the past to push for this but to no avail.
Why I attended
Mainly I was naïve to all these things that I learned about upon arriving and spending two years at PHSU. The second year was a bit better, but a whole lot busier; skipping class was a necessity then. I have been told that rotations are a lot more interesting and insightful, so I look forward to them. I just hope that those applying to PHSU take all these details into consideration. I know that PHSU had a good reputation in the good ole days and that is why I went there. I knew good physicians that attended it in the 70’s-90’s, but I did not personally know any doctors from the other schools that accepted me. The school is far more expensive than some of the other schools on the island, and it is not necessarily better, so give a lot of thought to those other schools first before PHSU. I hope this all helps, and I apologize for the length of this thread along with my rants.
Campus/Surroundings
The school repainted a majority of the exterior of the buildings in 2015-2016, but the indoor problems remain. The ceiling leaks when it rains in the main first-year classroom, student lounge, and through the windows of some of the buildings. The carpet in the library has a lot of mold (from the rain), so if you have allergies, then you basically cannot study there. Also, you can hear everything through the walls, so the group study areas can be a little distracting (perhaps this is a little nitpicky). Lastly, the interiors of a lot of the buildings need to be renovated.
Regarding the rest of campus, much of the parking lots are dirt roads, gravel, or what remains of the concrete, which can be tough on your tires. There are also plenty of feral dogs on campus that get territorial and violent in the evenings toward students returning to their cars. We have informed the administration of this issue and the dangers associated with it plenty of times, but they have yet to do anything about it. These dogs along with the domesticated dogs around campus bark to no end, which can be pretty distracting without ear plugs or noise-canceling headphones. Moreover, people don't really take care of their dogs in Ponce either, so they bark out of boredom throughout the day and night. There is also this gas station (Puma) that blares vulgar reggaetón/trap music on weekends deep into the night, so don't live anywhere near the Puma and Guarina Bakery across the street like I did because you won't get any sleep. Also, if you are considering living in Valle Real, be sure to only look at houses in the back of the neighborhood because you’ll certainly hear the speakers from near the entrance.
These problems have all existed since I started.
Administration/Education
We have unfortunately had quite a few issues with the administration and their decisions. They are not transparent about these things during orientation, so pay attention closely. First things first, you won't be allowed to see your old tests and learn from your mistakes, nor will you be able to challenge exam questions as a class. This has been something that every entering class has tried to reverse, but it ends up being a huge waste of time because they just won't budge on this. Many of the professors are not so strong with English (yes, exams are in English), so there can be a lot of confusion on exams regarding what a question is asking due to the spelling and grammatical errors. Often, it just so happens that the professor responsible for that question is not proctoring the exam or is in the library proctoring the MS students (just your luck). The president's defense for all of this is that they will throw out the question if more than half of the students miss it. I believe this could all be avoided if the professors had their graduate students review and revise their exam questions like at other institutions. It just seems like an excuse for blatant negligence on the part of the faculty and administration.
The school also converted to a flipped classroom lecture style, which means that there are lectures on videos that you'll need to watch the night before an in-class session. During the in-class session, professors are supposed to ask the class questions through Reef Polling that you answer on your phones (for our year, we used iClickers). Now, this sounds nice in theory, but the videos often lag or just cannot download well from the website that the school uses (Docebo), so you might end up wasting a lot of time if you do not have another media player like Azul. Also, the professors are teaching in front of a green screen, which is just awkward for everyone because it’s extremely unnatural for the professors. Other schools record the professor’s lectures in a regular classroom setting, and the lecture is simply more educating than having a professor reading from PowerPoint slides in front of a green screen. The in-class sessions can also be a letdown because many of the professors don’t bother to write questions, so instead, they just give the same lecture as what you already watched on Docebo. This is a huge waste of time.
Subsequently, the school is on a traditional lecturing schedule rather than a systems-based learning schedule. Systems-based means that every class (physiology, biochemistry, anatomy, etc.) is in the same section at the same time. For example, the thorax is discussed in physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, histology and then an exam is given in that section of the body incorporating all those subject areas. This might seem daunting, but it helps when approaching the Step 1 because the USMLE questions incorporate material from more than one subject area. My friends at other schools reflect highly on this lecture-style and they say that it flows better with the flipped classroom style as well. At PHSU, each class has its own exam, so you could have more than a couple of exams in a week at some points in the semester. Each class has already asked as many different questions as they can from high-yield information, so in recent years, they have started to ask nitpicky and trivial details about the PowerPoint presentation. I personally believe that switching completely to a systems-based learning style would force the professors to target high-yield concepts from their subject area because they would not have to write so many questions for an exam of only their subject, but instead a handful of questions for a comprehensive exam that includes all subjects for that body region. I know this is how it is done at Ciencias Médicas (UPR), and it has worked out well for them thus far.
Also, the Reef polling/Clicker questions counted for points in some classes (Biochemistry and Physiology) for the class of 2020; as much as 10 points were allotted to participation/Clicker questions in physiology, which is ridiculous. They tried to fight this, but again the administration and faculty did not budge on this. Biochemistry had a weird rule where one gets a couple of points for answering like 90% of the Reef questions, and then the average that one scores in Reef also counts for points. So, scoring a Reef average of 70-79 was one point, 80-89 was two, 90-100 was three. Nobody really liked it from what I heard because some of the professors did not ask Reef questions toward the end when everyone was trying to reach that next range for another point, which made the difference for a lot of people.
Next, attendance is mandatory and is also something that plenty of classes before you have fought against. They pass an attendance sheet that everyone signs each class; it’s extremely annoying. There’s a rule in the student handbook that says they will pretty much expel you if you get caught signing in for other students or if someone else signs for you, but nobody enforces that rule. Professors pretty much turn the other cheek, which is a plus for those of us that just do not want to waste time in class. So, make friends with those that can get up for those 8:00 am lectures because there is a participation grade in each class that is a couple of points that can save you in the end.
Lastly, the registrar and financial department can be extremely slow with processing student loans and getting loan money to its students. I remember we were well into our first and second semester before receiving student loans (this happened twice), which put a lot of pressure on the students and their families to live without these loans for the time being. The registrar is slow about carrying out anything for students, so do whatever you can to not have to go there and do anything. It is because they are understaffed and the old ladies move slowly. Paying tuition is also a huge hassle because you cannot just do it on the computer like in the year 2017. They have this assembly line of registrar office ladies that are processing all the tuition costs on carbon copy paper and entering it into the system. You must write your name on a sign-in sheet and wait until your number is called. Then, cross your fingers that no random problems arise while they are completing all the tuition costs and loans. It is a huge waste of time because of the outdated system.
Attrition and Remediation
Unfortunately, the school has a poor attrition rate. We lost some half a dozen students our first year, which may not sound all that bad, but it takes a toll on a class of 76 students. A couple other students had to repeat the entire first year or several classes from the first year, a couple of students entered the five-year program, one student had to take some time off before repeating a class in the Spring, and a good dozen or so students had to repeat biochemistry over the summer. It felt like we lost half our class when I walked into my first lecture in the second year. Additionally, approximately 30 students from the class of 2018 had to enter the class of 2019 after their second year because they were unprepared to take the Step 1 exam.
We also had a student that suffered a mental breakdown in the Spring of 2017 that was handled extremely poorly by the administration. We have a Whatsapp group chat that is basically a message board for the whole class. After a particularly unfair exam, the student basically snapped and wrote all this random stuff about the school and his role in the class. A whole lot of it did not make sense, but he was texting well into the early morning (As a class, we wrote a formal complaint about that exam). The following morning, members of the administration met us in class and told us not to spread rumors about the event. To all of us, it seemed extremely insensitive that rumors were the main concerns of the event instead of the mental health of the student. In the proceeding weeks, we had several more meetings as a class to sort out issues regarding security and mental health at PHSU. Our president claims that we have the best psychology program in the country, but we all find that hard to believe since we don’t even have any student mental health services. I am leaving out a whole lot of detail regarding the incident because this was a huge ordeal that lasted a majority of the Spring semester. However, I personally do not see the administration investing much more time or money into mental health because it is now a for-profit institution, and paying for on-campus mental health counselors obviously takes away from the profit.
Lastly, I really do not see why PHSU talks so poorly about San Juan Bautista (SJB) because from what I hear, SJB is starting to get its things together. PHSU and SJB have purchased question banks from NBME, which are old USMLE questions, but the difference is that SJB uses them. It feels like a waste of our tuition dollars to not be tested with the NBME questions, but instead, have open-ended questions written by our staff. The friends that I made from SJB have reflected a lot more positively on their school than we have here at PHSU unfortunately. Perhaps the administration can get on the professors about using these questions in the future. I know that our class has tried in the past to push for this but to no avail.
Why I attended
Mainly I was naïve to all these things that I learned about upon arriving and spending two years at PHSU. The second year was a bit better, but a whole lot busier; skipping class was a necessity then. I have been told that rotations are a lot more interesting and insightful, so I look forward to them. I just hope that those applying to PHSU take all these details into consideration. I know that PHSU had a good reputation in the good ole days and that is why I went there. I knew good physicians that attended it in the 70’s-90’s, but I did not personally know any doctors from the other schools that accepted me. The school is far more expensive than some of the other schools on the island, and it is not necessarily better, so give a lot of thought to those other schools first before PHSU. I hope this all helps, and I apologize for the length of this thread along with my rants.
