I am interviewing here on Jan 11th and I can't really find any good information on the school. Does anyone have any links or information on why they want to go here? Their website seems very generic and since it is a newer program there isn't much on them.
To be completely honest I applied to several schools around my area that I had friends, family and where I went to college. I was planning at looking at more detailed information once I found out where I got interviews to.
Thanks,
Hey there, I'll try to add on to some things that Art3Mis didn't mention.
🙂 It's true that most of our classes are lecture-based, but in 1st year you will also have PBL in the 2nd semester. Biochem has lots of small-group cases that you make concept maps for. Basic Science Foundations (BSF) has small-group days as well called TBL (team-based learning).
In 2nd year, we have PCS (primary care skills) 1st semester, and the lab portions of that are usually small group cases with a faculty physician, where we talk through the history, ROS, physical exam, plan, differential, etc. as a group. We dress up and wear our white coats for this. (This is very similar to PBL first year, except now we have a little better idea of what's going on). PCS also includes a suture lab and a couple of different simulated patient encounters that get recorded and we can watch our own exams to see how we did. 2nd semester we have OSCE, where we have even more simulated patient exams and they told us it's going to be focused a lot on training us for COMLEX level 2. Our practicals will be in that format, with 14 (I think) mins to do the history & physical and 9 mins to write a SOAP note.
Something unique we do is Project Prepare (
http://www.projectprepare.org/about/clients/), which we actually do next week. Educators come teach us in small groups (of 4ish) how to do pelvic, rectal, breast exams, etc. on themselves. Our professor for OSCE said yesterday that out of all the reviews students have done since they started using the program, they have only gotten one 4/5, the rest were 5/5.
We also do have the patient clinic, but the only time you will be getting involved there is if you sign up for Peds OMM clinic (which is weekly this year) or if you rotate with one of the physicians during 3rd or 4th years. But we have lots of other opportunities to get some clinical exposure if you pay attention and join clubs, especially ACOFP, which has a lot of volunteer opportunities (our chapter is currently #1 in the nation!).
Mediasite is kind of unique about us. All of our lectures get recorded, so you can watch them again online. It's really helpful if a professor talks fast, so you can pause while taking notes that you missed. We also began taking our exams on a computerized system this year called Examsoft.
We are a Jewish medical school, but most of our students are not Jewish (me included). The main things that will make us noticeably different from this are that we get Jewish holidays off and all food provided by clubs, school funding, etc. must be Kosher (you can bring whatever you want for lunch, however).
Those are just some big things that I can think of off the top of my head.