USUHS and online coursework

[petomed]

According to the MSAR, the answer is unambiguously No for all prerequisite coursework. However, I wrote this email to USUHS admissions just to be sure. Let me know your thoughts, I will post the reply from USUHS once received.

Working full time while completing missing prerequisites did not allow me the flexibility of attending rigidly scheduled lectures and exams on a campus. I used UNE Online in order to complete five courses. UNE Online offers all prerequisite courses and they are fully accredited. The five courses I took are:

Biology I + Lab
Biology II + Lab
Organic Chemistry I + Lab
Organic Chemistry II + Lab
Biochemistry

These were challenging courses, especially Biochemistry, but I managed a 4.0 GPA. The courses were structured such that student interaction and dialog was part of the grade. The laboratory components included hands on experiments performed at home whenever possible and comprehensive virtual laboratory experiments otherwise. These courses were very good and I can see why their program is accredited.

The goal of USUHS is to prepare its students for a career as a military physician. This is in-line with the philosophy behind offering HPSP and FAP sponsorship. HPSP and FAP however, do not discriminate against those who had to take some of their coursework online, since acceptance to any md/do program will suffice for the scholarship.

I want to serve the country as a physician and the quickest path is through USUHS. Will these courses be accepted by USUHS? If not, could transfer equivalency be offered?

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[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

According to the MSAR, the answer is unambiguously No for all prerequisite coursework. However, I wrote this email to USUHS admissions just to be sure. Let me know your thoughts, I will post the reply from USUHS once received.

Working full time while completing missing prerequisites did not allow me the flexibility of attending rigidly scheduled lectures and exams on a campus. I used UNE Online in order to complete five courses. UNE Online offers all prerequisite courses and they are fully accredited. The five courses I took are:

Biology I + Lab
Biology II + Lab
Organic Chemistry I + Lab
Organic Chemistry II + Lab
Biochemistry

These were challenging courses, especially Biochemistry, but I managed a 4.0 GPA. The courses were structured such that student interaction and dialog was part of the grade. The laboratory components included hands on experiments performed at home whenever possible and comprehensive virtual laboratory experiments otherwise. These courses were very good and I can see why their program is accredited.

The goal of USUHS is to prepare its students for a career as a military physician. This is in-line with the philosophy behind offering HPSP and FAP sponsorship. HPSP and FAP however, do not discriminate against those who had to take some of their coursework online, since acceptance to any md/do program will suffice for the scholarship.

I want to serve the country as a physician and the quickest path is through USUHS. Will these courses be accepted by USUHS? If not, could transfer equivalency be offered?

I doubt they will accept online courses, as they explicitly state they don’t. USUHS is not really quicker than HPSP, you just get paid more quicker. You also have to pay back more time. If you’ve already taken your prereqs online, you should probably just look at HPSP if you really want to serve (or wait until residency and do FAP). That said, I’m interested to see their reply.

 

[MusicDOc124]

There is a big difference between online classes in general, and the pre-reqs online. USUHS probably will not take pre reqs online... in fact many wont. Some that do have a limit (the school I attended limited it to 8 credits of pre-reqs online). HPSP doesnt care about your online courses - they care about your MCAT, GPA, and whether or not you get in somewhere.

 

[petomed]

I doubt they will accept online courses, as they explicitly state they don’t. USUHS is not really quicker than HPSP, you just get paid more quicker. You also have to pay back more time. If you’ve already taken your prereqs online, you should probably just look at HPSP if you really want to serve (or wait until residency and do FAP). That said, I’m interested to see their reply.

Quicker in the sense that I have already completed the coursework and would need to repeat it if USUHS, like their website and the MSAR say, does not accept online classes or offer transfer equivalency. HPSP is the next best in my opinion, but not the best because it seems preference may be given to USUHS grads during residency match. Further, I’m under the impression if one decides to make a career out of military medicine then USUHS is the best option in accumulating the 20 year pension threshold.

 

[petomed]

There is a big difference between online classes in general, and the pre-reqs online. USUHS probably will not take pre reqs online... in fact many wont. Some that do have a limit (the school I attended limited it to 8 credits of pre-reqs online). HPSP doesnt care about your online courses - they care about your MCAT, GPA, and whether or not you get in somewhere.

It’s not like you can cheat at UNE Online, exams are heavily weighted and proctored. Where online struggles is with labs. Where it excels is independent learning. For each con there is a pro but either way there should be no difference overal if regional accreditation is the standard. This is my personal view which is not the view of all admins.

What I’m more interested in and know very little about is whether transfer equivalency could be offered for these courses. As I understand it, an online course may not be ‘accepted’, but if the institution (USUHS) offers the course, they could dig into the syllabus and determine it has transfer equivalency. If the course is transfer equivalent then it may be denied as is because of its ‘online’ status but equivalency credit may be offered to circumvent the denial. Anyone familiar with this or am I up a creek?

 

[xffan624]

It’s not like you can cheat at UNE Online, exams are heavily weighted and proctored. Where online struggles is with labs. Where it excels is independent learning. For each con there is a pro but either way there should be no difference overal if regional accreditation is the standard. This is my personal view which is not the view of all admins.

What I’m more interested in and know very little about is whether transfer equivalency could be offered for these courses. As I understand it, an online course may not be ‘accepted’, but if the institution (USUHS) offers the course, they could dig into the syllabus and determine it has transfer equivalency. If the course is transfer equivalent then it may be denied as is because of its ‘online’ status but equivalency credit may be offered to circumvent the denial. Anyone familiar with this or am I up a creek?

Why would USUHS, a medical school, offer pre-med courses? They don't really have an undergrad component unless I'm mistaken.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Quicker in the sense that I have already completed the coursework and would need to repeat it if USUHS, like their website and the MSAR say, does not accept online classes or offer transfer equivalency. HPSP is the next best in my opinion, but not the best because it seems preference may be given to USUHS grads during residency match. Further, I’m under the impression if one decides to make a career out of military medicine then USUHS is the best option in accumulating the 20 year pension threshold.

USUHS grads are legally and contractually guaranteed a pgy-1 spot in a military program. As such, HPSP grads have a more competitive match for military residencies. That said, if you must go civilian deferred, you are no less competitive than you would be if you weren’t an HPSP grad.

As far as retirement threshold, the four years at USUHS does not count towards your 20. What happens is if you retire at 20, those four years get added to the end. So a 20 year career will then be 24.

As far as I know, some of the HPSP will count the same way depending on what specialty you go into, but I’m not really family with HPSP.

 

[MusicDOc124]

It’s not like you can cheat at UNE Online, exams are heavily weighted and proctored. Where online struggles is with labs. Where it excels is independent learning. For each con there is a pro but either way there should be no difference overal if regional accreditation is the standard. This is my personal view which is not the view of all admins.

What I’m more interested in and know very little about is whether transfer equivalency could be offered for these courses. As I understand it, an online course may not be ‘accepted’, but if the institution (USUHS) offers the course, they could dig into the syllabus and determine it has transfer equivalency. If the course is transfer equivalent then it may be denied as is because of its ‘online’ status but equivalency credit may be offered to circumvent the denial. Anyone familiar with this or am I up a creek?

You're thinking about this all wrong. The military doesn't care. "You already did them online? Well you should have been better prepared and knew that we don't take them as we explicitly say that we don't." As for transfer equivalency? As @xffan624 mentioned above, there is no undergrad transfer equivalency... it's medical school, not undergrad.

They don't care if you can't cheat. They're just not viewed the same, and it's explicit what they write. The military is very by the book.

Think of it like this... you have asthma, an amputation/prosthetic, and an inoperable brain tumor - all of which are medical disqualifiers - even if with all of those things, you can run 20 miles in 3 minutes carrying 450 pounds, the subsequently do 500 dead-hang pull ups with a sumo wrestler on your back, the answer will still be no as you would be DQ'd.

There may be some lateral mobility in what I just said as there are amputees currently serving (though keep in mind, they were already serving when the amputation already occurred).

Even civilian schools have a cap of 2 pre-reqs online if they even allow for online-pre reqs. Again, some schools just don't take them at all, some may be flexible depending on the situation, especially UNE since it's their courses. Some schools may not have a limit.

I took 2 pre-reqs online, and applied only to schools that would allow it. The school I ended up attending had only allowed up to 8 credits online (two 3-credit courses + two 1-credit labs).

You took 5 out of 8-10 pre-reqs online.

 

[petomed]

You're thinking about this all wrong. The military doesn't care. "You already did them online? Well you should have been better prepared and knew that we don't take them as we explicitly say that we don't." As for transfer equivalency? As @xffan624 mentioned above, there is no undergrad transfer equivalency... it's medical school, not undergrad.

They don't care if you can't cheat. They're just not viewed the same, and it's explicit what they write. The military is very by the book.

Think of it like this... you have asthma, an amputation/prosthetic, and an inoperable brain tumor - all of which are medical disqualifiers - even if with all of those things, you can run 20 miles in 3 minutes carrying 450 pounds, the subsequently do 500 dead-hang pull ups with a sumo wrestler on your back, the answer will still be no as you would be DQ'd.

There may be some lateral mobility in what I just said as there are amputees currently serving (though keep in mind, they were already serving when the amputation already occurred).

Even civilian schools have a cap of 2 pre-reqs online if they even allow for online-pre reqs. Again, some schools just don't take them at all, some may be flexible depending on the situation, especially UNE since it's their courses. Some schools may not have a limit.

I took 2 pre-reqs online, and applied only to schools that would allow it. The school I ended up attending had only allowed up to 8 credits online (two 3-credit courses + two 1-credit labs).

You took 5 out of 8-10 pre-reqs online.

Thanks for the insights!

Doesn’t USUHS offer a competitive two year postbac for service members? This would contain all candidate transfer courses in question.

As for the military being by the books, no surprises there. More and more colleges seem to be accepting online courses though and perhaps not updating their websites every cycle. Seems worth a shot to ask admissions.

You mentioned preexisting conditions, USUHS’s site says waivers are offered in the event of disqualification in many of these cases.

Did you really find two online courses to be the max in most cases where online courses are accepted? My list will get pretty short pretty quick if that’s the case...

 

[petomed]

USUHS grads are legally and contractually guaranteed a pgy-1 spot in a military program. As such, HPSP grads have a more competitive match for military residencies. That said, if you must go civilian deferred, you are no less competitive than you would be if you weren’t an HPSP grad.

I do like that HPSP kind of has two layers for match in case things are clogged up for the specialty in question that cycle. However, what happens if I go HPSP, don't match military, and don't match civilian deferred? Conversely, is a GMO tour the only option if going USUHS and not matching, or is civilian deferment available with USUHS as well? No one plans on not matching but knowing the comparative contingencies is helpful in weighing options.

 

[petomed]

Official reply from USUHS Admissions:

"Thank you for your interest in our school. Unfortunately the School's policy does not allow for the prerequisite courses to be taken on-line. Our school does not offer transfer equivalencies for on-line prerequisite courses. We are sorry for the disappointing reply."

I knew the risks taking online courses from the start but they were my last shot at getting in the game without quitting my job. No big, still looking forward to pursuing the colleges that will accept them, surely they're out there.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I do like that HPSP kind of has two layers for match in case things are clogged up for the specialty in question that cycle. However, what happens if I go HPSP, don't match military, and don't match civilian deferred? Conversely, is a GMO tour the only option if going USUHS and not matching, or is civilian deferment available with USUHS as well? No one plans on not matching but knowing the comparative contingencies is helpful in weighing options.

All USUHS grads will match into a military intern year. I am not overly familiar with the Army or Air Force. In the Navy, a small number will get straight through contracts and not have to apply for pgy-2. Most will enter the match again during intern year to apply for residency. Depending on the specialty, the number of interns who go straight through varies from most to none.

If you do not match into pgy-2, you will go GMO. You have to apply for civilian deferment. It’s not a fallback option. They also don’t offer a ton of them, and which specialties they do offer it for varies.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Official reply from USUHS Admissions:

"Thank you for your interest in our school. Unfortunately the School's policy does not allow for the prerequisite courses to be taken on-line. Our school does not offer transfer equivalencies for on-line prerequisite courses. We are sorry for the disappointing reply."

I knew the risks taking online courses from the start but they were my last shot at getting in the game without quitting my job. No big, still looking forward to pursuing the colleges that will accept them, surely they're out there.

Always HPSP.

 

[petomed]

All USUHS grads will match into a military intern year. I am not overly familiar with the Army or Air Force. In the Navy, a small number will get straight through contracts and not have to apply for pgy-2. Most will enter the match again during intern year to apply for residency. Depending on the specialty, the number of interns who go straight through varies from most to none.

If you do not match into pgy-2, you will go GMO. You have to apply for civilian deferment. It’s not a fallback option. They also don’t offer a ton of them, and which specialties they do offer it for varies.

Thank you for these details. Would you mind providing the same details for HPSP students instead of USUHS?

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Thank you for these details. Would you mind providing the same details for HPSP students instead of USUHS?

It’s pretty much the same. The only difference is you are less likely to get a military residency since you are not contractually guaranteed to get one. If you don’t match military, you will enter the civilian match (which means you need to apply and even interview before you even know if you’re going military or civilian since eras opens for submission in September and the military match is in December). If you fail to match in the civilian match, you will then need to scramble into at least an internship. If you cannot scramble into a civilian internship, they will likely put you in a military TY internship.