UNE vs. UMDNJ

[egull28]

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So, I'm in the fortunate position of having recently been accepted to both UNE and UMDNJ. I would appreciate some insight from current students at both schools. And for anyone else who wants to chime in with opinions, feel free.

I've basically decided to set up a simple pro/con list:

• Location: Advatage UNE

• Facilities: Advantage UNE

• Clinical Sites: Advantage UMDNJ (I like the fact that UMDNJ has its own affiliated hospital system - although I do have to investigate some more. Don't know too much about UNE's clinical sites)

• Curriculum: Tie (Material seems fairly similar. I know UMDNJ does testing in board style blocks, does UNE do this as well?)

• Board Prep: Advantage UMDNJ (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I remembered that UMDNJ schedules time off for board studying and offers Kaplan prep courses. How does UNE prep for boards? Does anyone have pass rates or averages scores for each school?)

• Cost: Tie until I receive more information (Best case scenario: UNE + Doctors for Maine's Future Scholarship = tuition ~20k/yr, UMDNJ + In-state tuition after year 1 = ~30k/year average. Worst case scenario: UNE = ~46k/year, UMDNJ = ~42k/yr )

• Anything else I'm forgetting??

Now also, is there a date in which you can't hold more than one osteopathic acceptance at the same time? (I think for allopathic it is May 15th?) Would be good to know how much time I have to make this decision...

Thanks guys!

 

[ShyRem]

UNE's clinical sites are typically pretty good. Depending on where you go you can get into a level 1 trauma center (but you have to fight for procedures with residents) or a place with only a family med residency and surgery at a smaller community hospital (pro: you are first assist on EVERYTHING - for example, I first assisted on a total hip replacement and first debridement of necrotizing fasciitis, con: you don't see cool stuff like heart surgery), inpatient peds or outpatient peds (which can actually be cool since you get to see the stuff going to the hospital), lock-down psych or outpatient psych. Third year at UNE is all at one site (there are several sites but you plant at one) so you're not moving around third year which is nice. I was very well prepared when I did my away rotations in fourth year.

Board prep at UNE has traditionally be next to nothing with no protected time. This may change with the new Dean, so we'll have to see what happens. Contact UNE for more details about potential plans for this. EVERYONE takes boards and MUST PASS to progress to third year rotations. My class first time board pass rate was 96%. UNE doesn't release average scores. (in fact, UNE releases darn little information about their students - no board scores, we still don't have a match list published, no class rank, etc, and we don't know what the level 2 first time board pass rate was).

 

[egull28]

Thanks ShyRem! Good info.

I have a few more questions if you don't mind.
-Is testing during the first two years done in blocks, board style?
-In your experience how have UNE students fared in obtaining their top-choice residency picks?
-Do some students get screwed with the lottery selection for clinical sites?

...whew this is going to be a tough choice. I'm seriously like 50/50 right now.

 

[ShyRem]

Testing for first year is done in blocks board style. Second year has usually been systems based with no block style. This may be changing. They have just changed to the block style exams with my first year and have been tweaking it ever since (my first year was a nightmare with their attempts to change over; I understand its gotten better).

UNE students typically do rather well obtaining their residency of choice. I did. Most UNE students I've talked to got their #1 or #2.

Lottery. No matter what, some students aren't happy. Rules are decided by each class. In my class there was a woman with a very young daughter whose family was not able to move away for rotations - she ended up at a place 8 hours away from her daughter and was going to defer for a year. A second student who got the location student #1 desired didn't pass boards and #1 got her desired spot near her daughter after all. But my class decided children were not important enough to make an exception for lottery (I kid you not - almost exact words). Other classes decided differently. I ended up 1.5-2 hours away from my husband and children and went home weekends. Not ideal, but it worked out ok. I got totally screwed on my AHEC rotation and was assigned 3-4 hours away from home (although in fairness it seemed EVERYONE got screwed by AHEC - some students wanted to be near my rotation site and got assigned to near my home. AHEC seemed to relish putting folks nowhere near where they wanted to be.)

I got almost all of my desired away rotations as long as they weren't in Maine. Seriously. I got rotations at the Cleveland Clinic no problem whatsoever, but for some reason I had the worst time trying to set up rotations in Maine. Other people had the opposite experience. Several of my classmates were able to go to Haiti on medical mission work after the earthquake as a rotation.

Really, every experience is what you make of it. If you are industrious, hard-working, and not a total suck-up you'll do well no matter where you go for school and rotations.