Excalibur (who's a T4) was pretty much on target, but I'll add a few comments too.
1. I never got to see the Anatomy lab. How is it? Is it like every other anatomy lab I've ever seen? yes, it's pretty much like every other anatomy lab.
2. I never got to see the classrooms either. I heard they were damaged pretty bad by the hurricane. Is that correct? How are they now? They were on an upper floor, so not much damage. I just took a test in one of them Friday, and it was exactly as I remembered from preclinical. However, your class, because of the increased size, has to have a bigger classroom. So you'll be in the new auditorium in the new building. I can't remember when they said it would be ready, though, and until it is you'll be in the 1st floor auditorium in the old building. That was underwater for a while, and I haven't been in there to look, but I'm sure excalibur is correct about its current status.
3. Where is there to eat close by the med school? The only place I notcied was the cafeteria (cafeteria is a generous word) where I had my student interview. The cafeteria's actually much better than it was pre-K. It's small, but there's a good variety of stuff. As for other places to eat, there are a couple of places near the new building. One's open now, and the other should open soon.
4. How responsive is the administration to student needs/suggestions/recommendations? To echo excalibur, I've seen a number of changes made based on student input. In fact, in a couple of instances, one class will suggest a change, the change gets made for the following class, who hate it the new way and ask for it to be changed back. Then the following class hates it the old way, and so on. It's kind of funny, if you can take a step back and observe it objectively.
5. Are opportunities for research at the med school made readily available or do you have to hunt them down? How about summer research programs after you end your first year? Here I disagree with excalibur. You have to hunt them down. In fact, I had to come up with my own project from scratch, find a faculty member willing to supervise me, submit it to the IRB as the PI, and then recruit people to help me. If I had needed funding, I'd have had to find that myself as well.
The great thing about Tulane is, you can take the initiative like that, and no one will stop you.
6. About when do you get your financial aid package (assuming I've sent it off fairly recently) back from FAFSA? I got my award notification toward the end of June, after sending my FAFSA in at about this time. I wasn't admitted until May, though, so you may get yours sooner.
7. Is the only PBL in the Foundations in Clinical Medicine class? How is the PBL graded? Is fairly subjective? Most classes have a PBL component, and the grading is usually very simple: did you attend? did you participate? were you irritating or obnoxious? yes/yes/no = full credit
8. Do you have BS papers you have to write or is it just tests for the most part? no papers. there are a couple of group presentations in 2nd year, but that's pretty much it. MPH has papers, homework, mandatory attendance, and group projects and presentations out the wazoo. It's like the total opposite of the MD program. And the straight-MPH students really don't understand how busy we are, so if you can arrange for your groups to be all MD, life will be much easier.
9. How do you guys go about getting books? Do ppl get the books recommended by the professors or do they go off of recommendations of previous classmates? Basically, I looked at the class ahead of me, and bought whatever I saw the smart people using to study.
10. Are most of the test questions from books or lecture or both? Neither, really. Every course has stated objectives for each topic, and if you learn the objectives, you should do well on the test.
11. Any recommendations to future T1's concerning certain professors or classes? Try to choose people who are good at explaining things to be your notetakers. As for study methods, keep trying different things until you find something that works. Then stick with what works for you regardless of what everyone else is doing. Also, Dr. Hurley likes to write test questions on lecture details that didn't make it into the class notes. And he's a good lecturer, so attending his class is worthwhile, and not nearly as painful as most others.
That's all just my opinion, so it may not be helpful to you at all. The most difficult thing about med school, for me, was realizing that what works for other people won't necessarily work for me. And that what works for me would result in a failing grade for anyone else. There are just no shortcuts, and you have to muddle through and figure it out yourself.
