I am a current student here at nova and have been doing some digging, the info i have was shared between two long standing professors at NSUCOM that i was able to get ahold of. First off, the new MD School is pulling talented faculty away from the DO school and are leaving the DO school with trash faculty. Second, NSU is desperately hurting for money, enrollment numbers are down across the board and Hanbury is a dumb** who can't manage money let alone manage a Health college center. So they created the MD school in order to boost those numbers and the cost for opening up the school was next to none since they are MOVING the DO kids to the tampa location paid for by the Patels. Perfect segway into my third point. Kiran C. Patel isn't even a doctor!!! His ability to practice medicine was revoked because he killed two patients in 2015 with extreme negligence on his part. MONEY TALKS. Also his medical degree is in question. So called Dr. Patel has his BACHELORS degree in medicine and surgery not a doctorate degree, and then starts medical school in india for which college is not a prerequisite for. The only thing is that he was licensed in the states but he killed two people so a PHYSICIAN he is NOT!!!!!! So our beloved school is named after a fraud with a lot of money. And since the school is hurting for money they make US the students take a stupid tobacco cessation course or wellness course or other bs that takes up all of our time when we could be studying for biochem, or physio. Fourth, The school was forced to build a new teaching hospital because none of the surrounding hospitals wanted to support a MD school which had to be affiliated with the campus. So the school decided to build its own and thus this pissed off the surrounding hospitals and so they are done accepting DO kids for rotations. Fifth, the new dean is absolutely trasshhhhhhhh its either her way or the high way. And her changing the curriculum is part of the failure for this school. All in all this school is TRASHHHHHHHH I SEE THIS PLACE FOR WHAT IT IS AND IT IS TRASHHHHHHH ALL I CAN DO IS STUDY FOR BOARDS AND HOPE TO GOD IM NOT THE POOR SOUL WHO DIDNT SEE THIS PLACE FOR WHAT IT IS. I have concrete evidence of all these things and I will release my info and i hope to bury this school and hope to see not one more kid enroll into this trash program until the power is placed back into the students hands!!!!!!
Current M2 at Nova. Agree that we have unnecessary things that we have to do when we can be studying. However, if you think M1 year is tough just wait until next year(3-4 system courses every ~two months plus weekly OPP, clinical reasoning, and doctoring).
You are expected to know M1 basic science cold and material will fly through second year. We are on GI, Male GU, Renal, and Neuro block right now. Three weeks into the semester and we finished 70%+ of the path/pharm/random clinical lectures for all four systems. No one is holding your hand telling you that oh hi sir what happens when you lose the supply of the PICA? You are expected to know all the affected areas and affected tracts by the time you enter second year.
A lot of people are wondering about our low board pass rate. What happened here is that our curriculum asks a lot from us. Our classes are really tough and a lot of people failed (40+ for physio1, 40+ for MSK and 70+ for renal last year). For example, we just had a 50 minute lecture on all the infections related to the CNS system (rabies, meningitis, encephalitis and all its related bugs...etc) and that's about average for the amount of material in ONE lecture in your second year. If you have been using Sketchy religiously first year this will become like a board review session for you though. If you really understand the material and not just memorize and dump, Nova prepares you well for the boards and you see the same things multiple times.
Our old dean really cared about all roundedness and placed low emphasis on MCAT/GPA. Our new dean decided to raise the academic standard and placed a bigger emphasis on GPA and MCAT score on our class(2020) to match up with the curriculum. Our class performance really shows and raised the exam average significantly. In the past, you can easily get 8-12 points curve in classes like physio1/micro1/micro2 and we got literally NO curve for micro1/micro2. One professor said he couldn't even if he wanted to and the other professor just said there is no need and it has never happened before. I have a 90+ average GPA right now and I'm not even ranked top 50. In my opinion, board score is really up to the students. Our class works extremely hard and I am pretty confident that we can raise our COMLEX average by 100+ points this year.
We didn't lose rotation sites. Nova gained a new site at Tampa and they want to take 50 students this year. Palmetto had 20 last year and is asking for more this year but we can only give them 28. Westside had 12 last year is asking for 24 this year. We still have same number of spots for level 1 Trauma hospitals(60 at Broward General and 18 at Memorial Regional). If you like South Beach, there are also 24 spots at Mount Sinai. Some rotation sites won't even be filled up with students this year because we have so many available spots.
The way I see about the money hunger part is that it provides more opportunity. What's the big deal about the school name change? Some MD schools also change their name after people make donations. It's 50 million dollars!! Heck, I will even name my children after him if it means to provide a brighter future for them and get them to where they want to be.
Can NSU do better? Absolutely. Is our curriculum good? Not really. It's really unnecessary tough and needs to tailored more to the boards. They really focus on making you a good clinician and not just to pass the boards. But this also creates a huge gap between students. People who do well with Nova's curriculum rock their boards and rotations whereas some other people are struggling with classes and passing the boards. Sometimes I sit here and wonder why do I have to learn everything about all the subtypes of endoscopy and GI surgeries details. I almost went to KCU because I really liked their system based curriculum and I really hope Nova considers it because it really is a better curriculum.
Feel free to ask me anything if you got any questions.
