USC PBL curriculum

[385835]

What exactly is PBL?

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[ginaych]

check out their PBL website:

http://www.usc.edu/hsc/dental/students/PBL2/index.html

 

[Bereno]

Problem Based Learning = PBL. This is often called "open query" learning
Case Based Learning = CBL. This is often called "guided query" learning

I prefer CBL over PBL in most situations...

 

[cmcner]

Well USC is an "enjoyable" place to go to dental school, and that's worth noting since dental school is usually hell. The faculty tends to treat you with respect and people go out and have a good time quite a bit. This school is all about clinical, people talk about PBL all the time but we only have that 8 hours a week, and by the time you get to second year it's more like 2-3 hours a week even though it's still scheduled for 8 hours a week.

We spend all our time in sim lab doing pre-clinical things that will actually be applicable to practice. You will start drilling even before the first official day of school here. First year they ease you in with amalgam, tooth morphology, and PBL first semester. You get like a day and a half off a week and get to have a really good time. That day off is in there so you can go on your radiology rotations and take x-rays when your turn comes up. Second trimester it starts to get harder, Amalgam continues, you go into Composite, Occlusion while still having PBL. Third trimester it really starts to get rough you continue Composite, while taking Indirect restoration which is preparing teeth for crowns and making provisional (temporaries) and use CEREC, you take sophomore perio block and clean each other's teeth, you also take head and neck anatomy lab, and PBL again.

So at the end of your first year you know how to fill every type of cavity, make or place veneers, clean teeth, and do a crown.

Second year first trimester you take post fixed where you do bridges and harder crown preps on posterior teeth, you also have to cast your own crown out of gold, you also take ortho, pedo, endo, treatment planning, and you also take perio again but this time you work on patients. oh yeah and PBL

Second trimester you take anesthesia, implant treatment planning, more perio, more ortho, start studying for boards, anterior fixed, removable partial dentures, perio implant lab and oh yeah that pesky PBL again.

Then after that you go into clinic and start working on patients for the next 2 and a half years
So as you can see we focus on the preclinical stuff, they drill it into you, the smother you with it, and you will be better for it.

As far as graduating on time everyone but one person who I know graduated on time, and that one person took a different pathway where he went to all the CE courses this school offered so that he'd learn more(they cost a fraction for students compared to the public), but he had to skip class to do it. Lots of my friends went on to specialize all across the country, I don't know exact stats but I know where these people went.

I personally would not have gone to any other school at this point. USC was like the bottom of my list due to price and it was the only school I got into. I am happy here and I live a great life, the stress comes and the long hours and hard days, but that's just part of dental school. I've gone to every football game, we have sick tailgates, everyone helps each other out and you get treated like a human. Plus the undergrad girls are smoking and the weather is sweet.

I am very happy with USC. I know that last year all the graduating seniors that I was friends with said this was the best four years of their life, and you never hear that about dental school.

 

[ginaych]

Well USC is an "enjoyable" place to go to dental school, and that's worth noting since dental school is usually hell. The faculty tends to treat you with respect and people go out and have a good time quite a bit. This school is all about clinical, people talk about PBL all the time but we only have that 8 hours a week, and by the time you get to second year it's more like 2-3 hours a week even though it's still scheduled for 8 hours a week.

We spend all our time in sim lab doing pre-clinical things that will actually be applicable to practice. You will start drilling even before the first official day of school here. First year they ease you in with amalgam, tooth morphology, and PBL first semester. You get like a day and a half off a week and get to have a really good time. That day off is in there so you can go on your radiology rotations and take x-rays when your turn comes up. Second trimester it starts to get harder, Amalgam continues, you go into Composite, Occlusion while still having PBL. Third trimester it really starts to get rough you continue Composite, while taking Indirect restoration which is preparing teeth for crowns and making provisional (temporaries) and use CEREC, you take sophomore perio block and clean each other's teeth, you also take head and neck anatomy lab, and PBL again.

So at the end of your first year you know how to fill every type of cavity, make or place veneers, clean teeth, and do a crown.

Second year first trimester you take post fixed where you do bridges and harder crown preps on posterior teeth, you also have to cast your own crown out of gold, you also take ortho, pedo, endo, treatment planning, and you also take perio again but this time you work on patients. oh yeah and PBL

Second trimester you take anesthesia, implant treatment planning, more perio, more ortho, start studying for boards, anterior fixed, removable partial dentures, perio implant lab and oh yeah that pesky PBL again.

Then after that you go into clinic and start working on patients for the next 2 and a half years
So as you can see we focus on the preclinical stuff, they drill it into you, the smother you with it, and you will be better for it.

As far as graduating on time everyone but one person who I know graduated on time, and that one person took a different pathway where he went to all the CE courses this school offered so that he'd learn more(they cost a fraction for students compared to the public), but he had to skip class to do it. Lots of my friends went on to specialize all across the country, I don't know exact stats but I know where these people went.

I personally would not have gone to any other school at this point. USC was like the bottom of my list due to price and it was the only school I got into. I am happy here and I live a great life, the stress comes and the long hours and hard days, but that's just part of dental school. I've gone to every football game, we have sick tailgates, everyone helps each other out and you get treated like a human. Plus the undergrad girls are smoking and the weather is sweet.

I am very happy with USC. I know that last year all the graduating seniors that I was friends with said this was the best four years of their life, and you never hear that about dental school.

cmcner thanks so much for the detailed input. How do you think of the grading at USC? you think it's fair?

 

[Silencio]

Plus the undergrad girls are smoking and the weather is sweet.

LOL, how about the dental school girls? Funny how you specifically specified undergrads.

 

[cmcner]

cmcner thanks so much for the detailed input. How do you think of the grading at USC? you think it's fair?

It's hard to figure out really, you won't have a bunch of numbers and be able to do a calculation at the end of the semester, you'll just be like, I wonder what I'm going to get. Most people get A's and B's, but in all honesty we're not ranked so how much our GPA actually matters is up for debate. If you want to be a general dentist, passing is the only thing that matters. The preclinical courses require a lot of time to do well in, much of this is standard class time, but there have been times where I've had to stay in lab until it closed, so that's basically 8am-12am, those days luckily are rare. In the end you will get 4 grades on your transcript, clinical, behavioral, function, and structure, you will get graded in those 4 categories every time and those grades are a mesh of other grades, like endo, ortho, amalgam, MCQ (multiple choice exam) COMBOT (picture exam (identify this)), etc. Even though it's confusing, I'd still say it's fair and very possible to do well. The clinical grading though is very strict and it's easy to fail. But you can fail many things in one of the clinical thing and still get an A. When you get graded to 0.1mm at times, you're never going to be perfect 100% of the time.

LOL, how about the dental school girls? Funny how you specifically specified undergrads.

The dental school girls here are better looking than at most of the other dental schools I went to, but it's just a smaller pool 144 in your class 40% female so like 58 girls, a lot of them in a relationship or married when they arrive at school. Also gossip spreads like wildfire here and I'm guessing at most dental schools, so going out with someone in your class can be risky, especially if you end up in a small group with them later on. That being said, it happens.

 

[ginaych]

It's hard to figure out really, you won't have a bunch of numbers and be able to do a calculation at the end of the semester, you'll just be like, I wonder what I'm going to get. Most people get A's and B's, but in all honesty we're not ranked so how much our GPA actually matters is up for debate. If you want to be a general dentist, passing is the only thing that matters. The preclinical courses require a lot of time to do well in, much of this is standard class time, but there have been times where I've had to stay in lab until it closed, so that's basically 8am-12pm, those days luckily are rare. In the end you will get 4 grades on your transcript, clinical, behavioral, function, and structure, you will get graded in those 4 categories every time and those grades are a mesh of other grades, like endo, ortho, amalgam, MCQ (multiple choice exam) COMBOT (picture exam (identify this)), etc. Even though it's confusing, I'd still say it's fair and very possible to do well. The clinical grading though is very strict and it's easy to fail. But you can fail many things in one of the clinical thing and still get an A. When you get graded to 0.1mm at times, you're never going to be perfect 100% of the time.



The dental school girls here are better looking than at most of the other dental schools I went to, but it's just a smaller pool 144 in your class 40% female so like 58 girls, a lot of them in a relationship or married when they arrive at school. Also gossip spreads like wildfire here and I'm guessing at most dental schools, so going out with someone in your class can be risky, especially if you end up in a small group with them later on. That being said, it happens.

cmcner, sorry for throwing questions at you, but do you happen to know anything about specialization at USC? OMFS specifically. thanks again really.

 

[cmcner]

I don't really know about specialization rate, but we have every specialty here and you're allowed to assist as much as you want in all of them except for Ortho. I know people that got into OMFS but I haven't looked for any statistics because that's not really my interest. Lots of my senior friends went on to continue their educations last year I knew people who went to pedo, ortho, and OMFS, also a few GPRs. You might have to call the school for actual stats though.

 

[385835]

Thanks for all of the great information about Ostrow.

 

[Silent Cool]

thanks for all of the great information about ostrow.

+1.