UTSW: A day in the life of.....

[JDAD]

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I am really interested in UTSW, but I have heard some negatives about their traditional style of teaching. Long days of lecture and little patient contact until M3. Is there any current students in here that could straighten me out? Can you post a schedule of a typical day at school.

Thanks

 

[jaboy]

I am really interested in UTSW, but I have heard some negatives about their traditional style of teaching. Long days of lecture and little patient contact until M3. Is there any current students in here that could straighten me out? Can you post a schedule of a typical day at school.

Thanks

It is true that first year has little patient contact. We have a couple of professional patient interviews and the like, but no 'real' patients. There are opportunities for volunteering though. I cannot speak for the MS2s though. They do have their clinical skills stuff, so I am not sure how much patient contact they have. We do have long days (if you go to all classes):

Monday, Wednesday and Friday
9-11 biochem
11-12 biochem review
1-2 anatomy lecture
3-5 anatomy lab

Tuesday
9-11 biochem
11-12 biochem review
1-3 Sometimes we have clinincal ethics at this time (maybe every two weeks)
3-5 electives (if you want)

Thursday
9:30-11:30 Critical Thinking
occasionally ethics from 1-3
Electives from 3-5

 

[JDAD]

Thanks for the post jaboy. It doesn't look as bad as I thought. I had heard 8 till 8. It looks like MWF are eight hour days, but Tuesday Thursday seem pretty chill. Do many people take electives, or is it possible to do research during that time?

Can you elaborate on your experience at UTSW. Do you get time to use that new rec facility? If you had to do it all over again, would you still pick UTSW? Are the students as "gunnerish" as they are made out to be? And one last question, are the classes as hard as everyone says they are?

Thanks in advance for answering my questions. I really hope to become a future classmate.

 

[ndi_amaka]

Med school is hard. Period. I got friends at baylor and UTSA that go through the same difficulties as me. My classmates study hard (as I would expect anyone who wants to be a good, intelligent doctor to do) but they are not trying to under cut me in my efforts.

The rec center is nice. It's good to be able to walk over and run off the stress or watch tv/sleep on the couches.

I've only been a med student for about 2 months. I like my classmates but I'm ready to be rid of biochem. Overall i like the school.

 

[ndi_amaka]

Oh yea....we do get very little patient contact. But what's the point of getting patient contact when you don't know what you are doing? If you don't know any of the anatomy, the pathology of disease, or understand what medication to give or why...what benefit would patient contact provide you or the patient? I'd much rather KNOW I'm ready for it so when i start i sound semi intelligent.


That being said, there are plenty of summer research opps that provide clinical contact. i spent my summer working with suicide attemptors and I got LOTS of experience on how to talk to mentally stressed patients.

 

[JDAD]

Are you expected to take electives?

 

[ndi_amaka]

Are you expected to take electives?

nope.

many people sign up for the classes and find that they are too difficult to coordinate into their schedules and drop it. There are no penalties.

 

[Giving My .02]

Are you expected to take electives?

Electives don't cost any money at all. They are simply Pass/Pass. So if you withdrawl from them mid-semester, you don't see it on your transcript. Only if you complete, will it show on your transcript. These might take about 15 hours total a semester including class time. I dropped one already, but I really enjoy MEDICAL LAW. It is pretty cool. I am in there with Jaboy and all we have to do is attend 10 of the 12 hours of class. The only outside assignment is to print out a copy of something interesting.

 

[fourthyearmed]

Don't worry too much about patient contact during the first two years. My school was traditional based like UTSW and only had a few patient encounters where we did a full history and physical during 2nd year. We really didn't know what we were doing at that point and we were annoyed that it took up our study time for something that really didn't count for much of a grade. Now as a 4th year doing away externships I see no difference in my skills vs those of students from schools with earlier patient contact. Go to the school where you feel you will best fit in and will be the happiest because that's the school where you will learn to be the best doctor you can be. You'll see more than enough patients 3rd and 4th year! Some of my classmates are so tired of patients they've decided to go into Rads or Path! Good luck!

 

[Argonaut]

I don't really mind the fact that there's no patient contact here at UTSW for the first couple years. Considering we start our first year not knowing any medicine, there doesn't seem to be much point in seeing patients.

 

[jaboy]

Thanks for the post jaboy. It doesn't look as bad as I thought. I had heard 8 till 8. It looks like MWF are eight hour days, but Tuesday Thursday seem pretty chill. Do many people take electives, or is it possible to do research during that time?

Can you elaborate on your experience at UTSW. Do you get time to use that new rec facility? If you had to do it all over again, would you still pick UTSW? Are the students as "gunnerish" as they are made out to be? And one last question, are the classes as hard as everyone says they are?

Thanks in advance for answering my questions. I really hope to become a future classmate.

I would choose this school again. You really have a lot of free time your first year and the gym is pretty good. If you like to play sports, there are a lot of teams...like kickball, softball, flag football.....
A lot of people take electives. I think you could do some research if you really wanted to your first year, but I have no idea why that would be. You can do research in the summer before you start and the summer after your first year.
There are a few gunner students, but I don't think that title is representative of the entire school. My carrel is really cool and most people are really helpful in there (especially GT)

 

[jaboy]

Electives don't cost any money at all. They are simply Pass/Pass. So if you withdrawl from them mid-semester, you don't see it on your transcript. Only if you complete, will it show on your transcript. These might take about 15 hours total a semester including class time. I dropped one already, but I really enjoy MEDICAL LAW. It is pretty cool. I am in there with Jaboy and all we have to do is attend 10 of the 12 hours of class. The only outside assignment is to print out a copy of something interesting.

Law is a great class. You don't have to take any electives if you don't want to. You just take what you are interested in.