Thanks, exactly the answer I was searching for. I think overall school is what one makes of it. Initially, I was kind of looking for more of a "traditional college" setting, but I think SMU would be a good choice. I don't think experience wise it can get much better than actually being connected to the hospital.
How is the on campus housing? Is there usually a waiting list?
Thanks again.
Hey, I don't go to CSPM but have been accepted and sent my deposit in for class of 2013. I did a lot of research and talk to a few 1st/2nd/4th year students. Seems like a good program overall and the 2nd year clinics seem quite strong. Furthermore, the class size is great, capped at 48 students. The 2nd year students get to do a variety of procedures and not just pallative care (ie nail avulsions, diabetic wound debridements, etc). For reference, I talked to some 3rd years at Ohio who didn't even do a nail avulsion yet. SMC even has a sim lab that the pod students get to rotate through - only other program that does this is OCPM (other schools show them but the DPM's don't use them).
They just got a new dean from Scholl (I believed involved with ACFAS) who wants to revamp the 2nd year a bit, removing the observation based clinicals and adding in things like suturing labs (good idea IMO). Your 2nd year, you have clinic Monday/Friday and class Tuesday-Thursday. Just note, these early clinics have a tradeoff, your Tuesday has 10 hours of lecture and Thursday has 11 hours of lecture in the fall. Wednesday is a "light" day with about 4 hours of class. During your 3rd year, there's 4 days of clinic and 1 day of class...again, it is about 10-11 hours long.
About the housing, there are dorms available now but they will be closed around may 09 (demolition and making way for a new patient tower for the adjacent hospital). I have been told there will be an SMC apartment complex nearby that will be leased out to students. I believe there will be some form of shuttle to get to the campus itself. They have not told us the name of the place or its exact location, those should be coming within the next month or so. Overall, should be a great improvement over the current dorms. They were decent, but people with families could not live there.
About the hospital next door, I am pretty positive the pod students do not rotate there. One of the deans told me this. Your rotations will be in the bay area (Oakland, SF, etc) so a car is pretty necessary for some of 2nd/3rd year. Carpooling is the way to go and theres some special HOV lane on the bay bridge for this.
Hope this helps
