I interviewed here recently and thought I’d give my opinion on the day and school.
You are interviewed by 2 faculty members. There are some general questions (Why DO, medicine, primary care, etc.). They also ask different questions based on your application because the interview is open file. Be ready to talk about weaknesses on your application. My interviewers seemed a bit detached/cold as they interviewed me, but when I started asking questions, it seemed like they really opened up. As soon as I answered a question, another one was asked at a rapid pace. The other people with my interviewers did not have the same experience as I did, but there was no good cop, bad cop games going on with my interviewers. Know your application well, prepare for some of the questions from the ”Interview Feedback” section of this website, and you should do fine. I had a few of those pop up in my interview. No ethical questions.
Lectures are recorded and available on iTunesU for you to watch before you go in for clicker sessions. Clicker sessions are interesting, and I have mixed feelings about them, but you should decide based on your interview experience. It is an interesting curriculum, and honestly, I think this is what PBL should be. The curriculum is not systems based, although there are claims that there is overlap among courses (physiology, biochemistry, anatomy, etc.). The aspect of the curriculum that I least like was that there are tests/quizzes nearly every Monday. For some people, it may be good, and for others, maybe not.
For information about the clinical years, one of the deans came in to talk to us. They were really trying to sell the Middletown campus. Rotations for Middletown are at ORMC and other hospitals in that area. Harlem rotations are throughout NY, NJ, and there’s 1 site in Philadelphia. The minimum number of people per rotation site is 10 and max is ~50 (in NJ consortium). They claimed that 95% of students got their first choice rotation site. They use a lottery system to assign rotation sites. You stay at each site (or area) for the 3rd year. 4th year has a lot of electives, so you don’t necessarily stay in any one area, unless you want to. The website says there are 6 months of elective rotations in 4th year. From my memory, here are some numbers of students at each rotation site, as of now: 10 at ORMC, ~12 in Philadelphia (not sure about this one), 12 at Southampton, 22 in Staten Island University Hospital, ~50 in NJ. I can’t remember the rest of the sites and numbers, but you get the picture. It was mentioned that some Middletown students MAY be able to rotate with the Harlem students, but I wouldn’t count on it.
The claims about residency matching sounded absurd to me (not in a good way). They were throwing around big names (Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Cleveland Clinic, Columbia, NYU), but based on the 2 match lists I’ve seen for this school, very few people match at such places. I haven’t been able to find the most recent (2013) match list. Of course, match lists don’t tell everything, but I’d recommend being somewhat skeptical about some of the claims. Having a single person match at a place like Johns Hopkins out of a class of 135 for 3 classes in a row does not deserve bragging rights, in my opinion. They were also parading their 100% match rate for the most recent class, but this number does not necessarily mean too much to me. At a lot of the more competitive MD schools, people choose to take a year off for research, for example. I would suggest that you really think about each claim that you hear (at every school) on interview day. Remember, they're trying to sell the school to you as much as you're trying to sell yourself to the school.
The interview day felt VERY disorganized to me. Lots of wasted time in the beginning and end, and this was not a good impression on me. There wasn’t much information given, considering the length of the interview day. I wish we had more time to talk to students, particularly 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year students. All in all, I honestly feel like they didn’t sell themselves well (to me), and I’m hesitant about the school. After all, if you take out the entire COA (not everyone does), you will have ~$310k in loans. The Middletown campus was slightly attractive to me because of the affiliations with ORMC and lower cost of living, but the main reason I applied here was because of the focus on urban, underserved populations. All in all, if I was accepted here, I’d have to think long and hard about it. But, as of right now I’m not terribly excited.
