Hi. I am a 3rd year at Touro also in the MPH program. I read wingardium's review of his/her interview and think a lot of their concerns are warranted... I'm not going to comment on all of them but here are my thoughts on a few:
1) Panel interviews suck.
As far as sharing intimate details of their life during panel interviews, I don't think applicants would do this outright unless they were comfortable. I think for this you have to trust the individual's judgment. They would not reveal things that they are uncomfortable with other interviewees knowing. I think this problem can be easily side-stepped by such an applicant by saying something like "As you may have read in my application, I..." and giving a broad but not detailed sense of the subject. If it was relevant enough a experience for them to be mentioning it in the interview, it's probably going to be in their personal statement/application and the interviewers will have looked over that.
2) There is too much talk and information about the public health program. That should be moved to the end of the interview day and students who are interested can stay the extra 20-30 minutes. I personally want to go to med school to be a doctor, so I provide medical care with autonomy to people who need it, and I don't think I need an MPH for it.
There is a lot more to public health than simply recognizing "that sometimes the root of poor health is often poverty and inaccessibility to things like clean water." In fact there is a lot of overlap between what you learn in medical school and what MPH coursework teaches you. I excel on the public health/preventive aspects of my DO coursework and on board exams b/c of my public health background. I am leaps and bounds ahead of many of my classmates in terms of research/study/program design and data analysis b/c of it.
The reason why they have the MPH talk during the interview is mainly to increase enrollment/grow the public health program. It's also to get the word out to interviewees who might not be familiar with what public health is and how and MPH could benefit them. You can think of it as more beneficial to those interviewees who haven't quite figured out "what kind of doctor they want to be."
What they neglected to say is that we may also end up just watching during our clerkship since hospitals don't want to be liable and physicians in a non-teaching hospital don't know how to teach since it's not a common thing for them to do.
I don't think I've ever heard either of these being an issue on rotations from my classmates.
Even if they can only guarantee us rotations in SoCal or somewhere else, they should at least take care of housing. If a rotation is in Turlock or Fresno, they should just buy or rent a house there for students to stay in. I mean, it's Turlock and Fresno, how much is a house there anyway?
The problem with rotation sites is that they are not always stable. Meaning they change year to year. It wouldn't make sense for Touro to buy property if there is no guarantee that they'll still have rotations there 5, 10 years from now. I do think Touro can place more emphasis and effort on getting more quality Bay Area rotation sites for its students though.
Loma Linda is not a core site btw...
9) Everyone kept mentioning how amazing the faculty was, but I'm skeptical. While there are good faculty, I do not think it's any different from the professors at any other osteopathic school.
The main draw of the faculty is the closeness they have with the students. You may be right that Touro faculty may not be any better than other schools (however our OMM dept is definitely top-notch). Last week a COM student passed away unexpectedly. The whole campus, professors and students, came together to put on a candlelight memorial service in his honor within just a few days. There were eulogies from several professors about this student because they knew him so well! Touro really does have a family environment with regard to its students/faculty.
I still had a plethora of questions after my interview, and while I think osteopathic physicians deserve more credit and respect, I don't know if Touro is doing a good job in keeping up that reputation. The physicians I know from Touro are excellent, but I worry about the administration and organization of the school.
Not sure where this is coming from. Sure there are problems with how the school is run; I think that can be said about any school. But how that reflects on the credit/respect of osteopathic physicians.... you're losing me there.
Judging from your posts alone it would seem that you also interviewed at schools like Western and PCOM? I think you'll find that the experience in terms of quality of education at Touro is pretty much the same as at Western. I can't speak for PCOM though. Touro is a relatively young school (established 1997) so it's definitely still got some growing to do.
Anyway I'd be happy to answer any specific questions you have about our school.
🙂
