- Joined
- Jan 30, 2005
- Messages
- 2,752
- Reaction score
- 657
If you had to make the decision, which would you pick? I'm in at both. Trying to decide.
thanx
sc
thanx
sc
Touro-CA's strongest points are the global health program and the OMM department. I'm not sure about UNECOM, but Touro is big on OMM (training is one of the best) and Dr. John Glover is our department chair and he is very well-known when it comes to osteopathic circles. He won the AT Still Medallion of Honor which is pretty much the highest honor a DO can receive: http://www.academyofosteopathy.org/MbrNews/AT_STILL_AwardInfo-Form.pdf. Research at Touro is also decent.If you had to make the decision, which would you pick? I'm in at both. Trying to decide.
thanx
sc
Touro-CA's strongest points are the global health program and the OMM department. I'm not sure about UNECOM, but Touro is big on OMM (training is one of the best) and Dr. John Glover is our department chair and he is very well-known when it comes to osteopathic circles. He won the AT Still Medallion of Honor which is pretty much the highest honor a DO can receive: http://www.academyofosteopathy.org/MbrNews/AT_STILL_AwardInfo-Form.pdf. Research at Touro is also decent.
If you want a residency in CA, you should choose Touro. There are some problems with the rotations as noted above but there are also some very solid rotation sites available for third year as well.
I'd pick Touro if you're interested in research. My friend was in a UCSF lab for a few years. Got some pretty good HIV related publications.
I don't have the money for the fee right now, but I will be pretty soon.Triage,
thanks for the heads-up. I noticed on your profile that you are not applying to TUCOM-CA. Any particular reason?
thanx
If you had to make the decision, which would you pick? I'm in at both. Trying to decide.
thanx
sc
Update: I should have picked UNECOM.
Can't leave us hanging OP.
Sorry you're having such a tough time man
Do you feel you will receive a high quality education regardless of the trials experienced?
The campus at UNECOM is also beautiful and is very safe. Maine in general has a low crime rate. The cost of living there is very low. While UNECOM isn't in the most exciting location, neither is Touro, and Touro's location to boot is extremely dangerous (off the island). There is absolutely nothing redeeming about Vallejo: it's crime rate is worse than that of Compton.
...My fiance has been incredibly disappointed with living here. The closest places that are a reasonable commute would be Benicia or perhaps Emeryville, which is where Pixar is located and has a nice bunch of shops, places to live, etc...
"Bernard Lander, founder of Touro College, received compensation of more than $4 million in 2008, making him the top-paid private college president that year."
...Now of course, private university presidents make a lot, but this isn't exactly Harvard, Stanford, or Yale--you get the idea. This is a podunk Osteopathic school. I would be cool with paying these prices for Yale and watching Yale's prez earn 4 mil+. Not so much for Touro. I've tried to make clear that Touro is run by cheapskates and is, functionally, just a business.
Check out Touro's match list history. Compared to more reputable DO schools like PCOM, TCOM and Western, its match list sucks. It has always been unimpressive (more or less; there are a few notable exceptions, such as the student who matched Allo N-surg a couple years back). Consider, though, that Touro's residency placement will probably worsen with the coming residency crunch. As it is, the school's third-year rotations are of dubious quality; couple that with the stagnant number of residency slots, the 'no-name' hospitals at which most Touro students will complete their 3rd year rotations, and the fact that better residency programs (especially ACGME) will not be impressed by no-name community hospital physician letterhead and you have a recipe for low quality and low-level career opportunities.
USC for instance used to take a number of DO grads (including Touro's!) into its IM program. USC is not the most prestigious IM program, but it has always been regarded as a program that will f u k k i n g *prepare* you for real, cold-hard clinical practice. Now, unfortunately, they are very reluctant to take DOs I believe as a result of a management/policy change (please do a search for this on SDN--it has been written about and described in more detail more accurately than I can convey). The DO students who have the best chances at USC-IM now are probably those at Western, which is a much better DO school in every way. The point being, don't look to match lists from even just a few years ago to indicate what you might be able to match, because with policy changes, expanding MD programs, stagnant ACGME programs, etc.., this will probably not the be the case. Again, if you would be happy with a simple AOA residency...ignore and help make Touro's president the highest-paid in the nation.
Now, match lists to some degree are dependent on the student and not the school--but there is only so much one can do to over come a poorly organized curriculum and lackluster clinical opportunities. Of course, if you are one of what I call the "OMM Freaks" (throw that good banner to the wind, A.T. Still! ) then you will care about none of this because you will of course be in 7th heaven when you match into AOA family care in Alaska, or North Dakota, or some other awful place. As I said in a different thread, attending a DO school means paying top-shelf prices and putting forth top-shelf effort for bottom-shelf opportunities. This is exaggerated even more at Touro because the opportunities here are overall crap or simply non-existent.
To a large degree, "education is what you make of it." But the gross inefficiency, disorganization, dearth of technology, poor rotation/clinical opportunities, awful location and horribly overpriced tuition of Touro significantly negate even my best efforts and most efficient time-management skills. It also kills my enthusiasm.
Touro is also notorious for having very poor rotations. They farm students out to a variety of hospitals (which is what most DO schools do), but most of these sites are of dubious quality. The best place to be for rotations is probably Arrowhead hospital at Western. Rotations are awarded on a lottery system; what will I do if I can't get some place reasonably close and my fiance is here for a job? Like I said--the school is a **** show.
There was a similar thread about Western last year, describing the atrocious shortcomings of the administration and also some gun shots near campus. People tend to get frustrated about their school and vent. I don't know, Temple SOM for instance is in a pretty rough section of Philly. If you need to be in a super safe / sheltered area then take that into consideration when you apply. Vallejo is crazy but there are ways to avoid it, the island being well removed from town. We had classmates live in San Francisco and commute by ferry (1 hr) or Berkeley (30 min drive) or Benicia (15 min drive) so there are options if you're flexible.
However, I think a lot of the stuff OP said is true, just overly histrionic. Plenty of hard-working students ahead of our class matched well (and plenty matched in places / specialties that I would hate) ...UNECOM sounds nice, and if you're lucky enough to get multiple offers at DO schools you should always factor in as much information as possible. But threads like this often scare people away from even applying, and my opinion of Touro really changed for the better when I interviewed there. If I'd only listened to the echo chamber on SDN talking about its problems, I wouldn't have applied. There are some really incredible people among the faculty, the campus is unique, the weather is beautiful and nobody will stand in your way if you're gunning for that ACGME neurosurgery spot and capable of achieving it anywhere.
Isn't there Touro Neveda and NY?
All three under the same name but different med schools?
I believe they are run by the same organization, just as there are two WesternU: one in Pomona, CA and one in Lebanon, Oregon.
I already paid my $2000 deposit to touro and satisfied with the choice I made. Thank you.This is a good post bump. @MDrocker wheb I told you why I didn't recommend Touro CA, what Silent Cool wrote above can help elaborate it better for you.
I am at TUCOM and I completely agree with everything "Silent Cool" has said - it is 100% accurate to my experience.