Hello all,
I was a MSMS student here at USF from 2011-2012 (lecture-based class not online), and I would like to provide some insights to those who are considering this program. Attending this program is a big disappointment to me, yet I will try my best to give you an unbiased comment of this program. This way, you will be well informed of what to expect if you ultimately choose this path. I will start out by giving you my application outcome before and after this program, followed by the pros and cons of this program.
My stats in MCAT, sGPA, and cGPA were 30 (V:10, P:10, B:10) ,3.4+, and 3.7+ respectively when I applied to USF's MSMS program in 2011. In addition, I had three years of undergraduate research, wrote an honors thesis, and volunteered at a ECU unit throughout college. Before attending USF, I applied to 10 MD schools, interviewed at 3 schools, and got waitlisted at 2. I reapplied to the same 10 MD schools after attending USF with my Master's GPA 3.8+ in June 2012 with a new MCAT score (V:10, P:9, B:11) plus 2 new volunteer and 2 doctor shadowing experiences. The outcome of my application this year did not improve, and I scrambled to apply to 4 D.O. programs which I later got accepted into two of them. Overall, I consider this MSMS program as a high risk but low reward program. From my personal experience, since this program has no linkage and is fairly new, even if you do well, your good stats in this program will not stand out in your application. And from talking to MD college admissions after this application cycle, I learned that my Masters degree did little to improve my application since many other re-applicants achieve a 4.0 on their one-year Master's or two-year Master's in public health (MPH). On the other hand, you have a great chance of doing poorly in this program because it is intensive, unfair, and poorly structured. Below, I will give you some facts why this program is unfair and poorly structured.
Many of my classmates resented this program during our second semester. This was due to a combination of more challenging courses and an on-going problem not because students did not study enough, but because there were discrepancies between what was delivered in lecture and what was tested on our exam. Each exam consisted materials from 10 lectures and there were only three exams total for each class. If you bombed one exam, you were basically doomed. Also, many of our professors did not follow their syllabus which was given to us. 50 standard questions on the exams became 44, 45, or 40. Paper based exams later turned into computer exams which had so many glitches that the instructors were unable to resolve. In one instance, about 50 students had to wait for an hour to take the exam because there was a computer glitch. A town hall meeting was held to remedy these issues, and everything started to look promising after the meeting. WRONG. The only thing administrator did was making the exams easier plus throwing in a huge curve at the end to make most students happy (physiology wasn't curved in the beginning but the class average was too low--60ish out of 100 so they finally curved it.) I categorize the aforementioned facts as poor structure of the program because it is still feasible to get good grades if you study efficiently and effectively and utilize the Friday Q & A sessions.
Now, I want to talk about why this program is unfair. During summer semester, because some of my fellow classmates cheated on the online courses: medical ethics and clinical correlation, the program director decided to punish the entire class by replacing our exams with papers. Although the program directors claimed that they have evidence and knew who cheated, none of the involved students faced disciplinary actions. Then, the grading quality for our papers was abysmal--punctuation error,doesn't flow, and need more citations were the only feedback we received on our paper. Later, I found out that a majority of our paper (300+) was graded by a TA whose education background was in education. When I went to talk to the program director about how to improve my paper with so little feedback, I was offered a much higher final letter grade when I had only submitted half of my paper! All of these may sound appalling, but it is true.
Despite the mentioned cons, there are some pros in this program. You will meet many other classmates who share similar situation and goal. I learned a great deal of some fantastic learning strategies from my classmates and friends in the program. Also, some professors are very resourceful and willing to help if you ask them. I got two LORs from professors who taught our classes. Yet, some professors did seem to avoid students and would not do anything to help students succeed. Finally, this program will make you realize that once you select this path, there is no turning around. One of our professors frankly put it "What can you do with Master's in Medical Science? Lecturer at a community college? TA at universities? How are you going to pay back your loans? You got to move forward and get into a professional school." I think his words are so true that made it the most valuable lesson I learned at USF.
P.S. I did not enroll in the Princeton Review offered in addition to the MSMS program at USF. The MSMS program itself did not really help me achieving a higher MCAT score.
