I hope everyone takes what this kid says with a grain of salt. I don't know him personally, but as it is extremely difficult to be kicked out of USC, he was the talk of the school for a while...especially considering he emailed the entire school, excluding his own class, a copy of all of his grades (which were horrible) and pictures of his pre-clinical projects (which were equally horrible). SC holds really strict standards when it comes to clinical work, which can be incredibly frustrating at times; they also make every effort to get you up to standard to pass if you do fail. I squeezed by and never had to remediate any courses, but from what my classmates have said, remediation is a blessing in disguise...they basically offer you personalized tutoring free of charge. Anyway, this kid managed to remediate every class he took, and then even failed remediation. On top of that, he failed anatomy. I understand that hand skills take a long time to develop and some are quicker than others, but anatomy is straight up memorization. He seemed to make it obvious to everyone from the start that he didn't want to be at USC and was completely unmotivated...which is really the only way you fail anatomy (well, some people get whigged out by cadavers too, but you catch my drift.) I don't know him and I don't know what his problem was, but he was against the school from the beginning (as he made quite evident in his own post...seriously, making such a huge deal about a spelling error?) He can slam SC all he wants, but they're getting the last laugh...they got 100 grand of his cash and he'll never be a dentist.
As for USC, I think the cost and PBL are the reasons for its mixed reviews. I personally never liked PBL. I don't really know too many people that like sitting in a lecture all day either, but at least it's more cost effective. All I know is I passed my part 1s without too much effort, so I must have learned something from it. Either way, anyone can learn biochem by reading a book...clinic is where the real magic happens, and that is where SC shines. I'm not familiar with other school's pre-clinical schedules, but at USC you are holding a drill by day 1. PBL is only down to 2 half-days a week with a few other lectures interspersed, and otherwise, you're in the sim lab working on your hand skills. Once you make it to the clinic, you're confident and ready to work on the real thing. On the floor, the docs are very helpful and knowledgeable, and there is at least 1 per 8 students. I say at least because normally all chairs in the section are not filled and/or another doc or resident will hang around to help out.
Overall, I really didn't like SC much my first two years. I wasn't a fan of PBL and pre-clinical was TOUGH...it's no fun spending every weekend in the sim lab practicing on plastic teeth just to repeatedly fail. But they are tough on you for a reason, and it all pays off when you get to clinic. Now that I'm there and seeing the fruits of my labors, I'm pretty happy with the school. That's just my opinion, but I think it's fairly reflective of how most of my class feels. Hope this helps.
BTW, my husband and I share an SDN account...he's the one who's applying now with the predents account, in case anyone's confused.
