Western Pod Program

[JEWmongous]

Thus, resulting in my distaste for Temple.

Seems to be a pretty good school/program. I wish I could say the same about the admissions department Biggest turnoff of all my pod school interviews!

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[Feli]

...my distaste for Temple.

Seems to be a pretty good school/program. I wish I could say the same about the admissions department Biggest turnoff of all my pod school interviews!

The interview is only a glimpse of the big picture. After you matriculate, the admissions staff are people you will barely ever see or interact with again. I know it's a big part of your first impression of the school, but it will really have minimal effect on you aside from the interview day. The old "don't judge a book by its cover," I guess...

Temple is a good school with busy and hands-on Philadelphia clinics/hospitals. The residents I've met who are graduated there are generally quite good, especially in terms of practical clinical skills and judgement. The school also does pretty well in the match year in and year out. Many well known attendings and high ranking residency directors/attendings are Temple alumni, so that definitely won't hurt you when interviews and match day roll around.

If I were hypothetically was applying to pod schools as a pre-pod yet knew what I knew now, then Temple and Barry would probably be my top choices due to busy and diverse clinical rotations. I'd probably also give AZPod a good look, but I'd need to learn more about their available 3rd year clinical rotations.

 

[215512]

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[JEWmongous]

im thinking about oakland and chicago...so do you think those suck? my choices from top to bottom are:
1) Scholl
2) Samuel merrit(oakland)
3) temple
4) DMU
the others i have been turned off due to the massive amount of bad mouthing that i perceive ppl on here giving to them...

yea bro , they suck

 

[NAVYLABTECH08]

Creating more residency spots and more pods is not the answer. A few of the good residency programs are already getting pressure to expand, and their per-resident surgical numbers will become watered down.

IMHO (so take this all with a sizable grain of salt): Yes, we need a few more good pods to adjust with population increases, but mostly, our profession need a lot less bad pods to accomplish parity, etc.

The pod schools which are graduating a class of with a sizable amount of poor students need to have their enrollment cap reduced - especially the one or two schools that are currently accepting way over their enrollment cap without penalty. I could care less if the schools accept students who did marginal in undergrad/MCAT for whatever reason, but actually letting bad students GRADUATE really is what hurts our profession. A "poor student" can be in either a clinical or academic sense, they usually go hand in hand. If you ask around, it's not hard to read between the lines and know who they are.

/soapbox

I agree with everything you said except 1 thing, how can a "bad student" graduate? A curriculum is set forth and a student completes it. If you suck, you should get exposed somewhere in the academics or clinicals. Is the real issue "bad POds graduating" or is it the fact that maybe certain schools need to make that programs more involved or less " watered down. " I am not a podiatry student and have no person experiene with how tough their programs are, but if the programs are legit and pods graduate from them that should not, there is a problem with the program. Threre is a reason that in teh Caribbean schools like Ross or SaBa, the ratio of residency matches to graduate is horrible. Also, the majority of the matches are in family practive/internal med and not neurosurgery or something like that. Most carib med students went there because they were not really able to endure the US school programs. They think that the program is easy because the application process was and lots of them fall flat on their faces in year 1-2.The saying is true that whereever you go, you can suceed if you are willing to work hard to do so. It just edpends on how hard you have to work.

 

[Feli]

Creating more residency spots and more pods is not the answer. A few of the good residency programs are already getting pressure to expand, and their per-resident surgical numbers will become watered down.

IMHO (so take this all with a sizable grain of salt): Yes, we need a few more good pods to adjust with population increases, but mostly, our profession need a lot less bad pods to accomplish parity, etc.

The pod schools which are graduating a class of with a sizable amount of poor students need to have their enrollment cap reduced - especially the one or two schools that are currently accepting way over their enrollment cap without penalty. I could care less if the schools accept students who did marginal in undergrad/MCAT for whatever reason, but actually letting bad students GRADUATE really is what hurts our profession. A "poor student" can be in either a clinical or academic sense, they usually go hand in hand. If you ask around, it's not hard to read between the lines and know who they are.

/soapbox

I agree with everything you said except 1 thing, how can a "bad student" graduate? A curriculum is set forth and a student completes it. If you suck, you should get exposed somewhere in the academics or clinicals....

Bad students graduate every year... MDs, DOs, DPMs, PharmD, DDS, etc etc etc. It is unavoidable. Yes, there are tons of checks and balances along the way (tough classes, board exams, clinical evals, residency, state board exam, etc etc etc).

Top students are top students - regardless of the degree program. Likewise, top docs are top docs (best dentists, best pods, best cardiologists, etc etc). Those are the students/residents/docs who read a lot, take genuine interest in their field, want to be the best they can, work hard, etc will always excel. After them, there is the middle of the pack: a whole lot of very smart people who will also make very competent clinicians; they might choose to have a more balanced life, but they will still help a ton of patients. At the bottom, a few "bad students/residents" will always slip through the cracks to graduation, through residency, hospital privileges, etc. It's just unavoidable.

Keep in mind that "bad" does not mean "dumb"... schools and boards will weed out 99+% of the dumb people. More often, "bad" can also mean incompetent, immoral, uncaring, greedy, arrogant, etc. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect, and not all doctors are good doctors. There are extremely intelligent docs (again, all degrees) who are out there billing fraudulently, doing hack job surgery, treating their patients/staff/colleagues like crap, forging their credentials, practicing a standard of care that's 20yrs old since they quit reading literature, etc. The scary part is that most of them are smart enough not to ever get caught. It's the dark side of any profession, and, in medicine, you read about it on the front pages of the newspaper from time to time ("Doctor loses license for X"). Those people got through professional school, and you can't simply blame the school... it's also just the person. Schools or residencies aren't really responsible for what happens after you graduate; they give you the basics, and the rest is up to the individual. Board exams are basically the final hoop to jump through, but people can certainly still go awry after that.

Being a medical professional is a tough job... you have a ton of responsibility and tough hours. Doctors work very hard. A small % of them might have been "bad" people to begin with, and some will also get stressed out along the way. These problems are sure not unique to podiatry...

 

[pipetman]

yea bro , they suck

HOLD UP so you think chicago and oakland suck? or is it every school that gave you an interview (so you say) suck too?



dont start fights dude. stop obsessing about the stats or what each school has or doesnt have or how many students or if the admissions people loved you or whatever it is you are worring about. . JUST GO TO A SCHOOL ALREADY and keep in mind that students that graduate from your "suck" schools are your future colleages. you can have your opinion but dont flame other schools in a public forum.

I dont care what school anyone graduates from. If they become are competent physicians who care about thier patients and treat thier peers with respect, I am down with them.

 

[JEWmongous]

HOLD UP so you think chicago and oakland suck? or is it every school that gave you an interview (so you say) suck too?



dont start fights dude. stop obsessing about the stats or what each school has or doesnt have or how many students or if the admissions people loved you or whatever it is you are worring about. . JUST GO TO A SCHOOL ALREADY and keep in mind that students that graduate from your "suck" schools are your future colleages. you can have your opinion but dont flame other schools in a public forum.

I dont care what school anyone graduates from. If they become are competent physicians who care about thier patients and treat thier peers with respect, I am down with them.

It was a joke dude, thus the face.

 

[Dr. Agape]

I've talked to upper level (even chief) residents who went to the residency fair there. They said it was a ton of students, especially first years, and it was overcrowded. They were told by first years that there were 120+. I believe them.

Out of curiousity, what is their CPME or AACPM enrollment cap? Do you know? Is it 125? I don't think it could be.

Well, you are right. Not all will graduate.

The major problem I have is that a large chunk of the faculty are CWRU part-timers using mostly old exams. The school may be unaware, or they may be turning a blind eye to that since the students are passing, moving on in the program, and therefore continuing to pay tuition that feeds the machine. So, there could potentially be some "resourceful" old test collecting students who not only graduate, but sneak by the NBPME boards and graduate with a fairly high gpa by mostly just memorization of old exams. Minimal effort could lead to high gpa and marginal knowledge in a setting like that. The accepting of too many also means graduating too many, and that makes the residency shortage worse.

A school's greed and accepting enrollment far over its limit CAN and WILL hurt all pod students by possibly causing a residency shortage. It could also let some poor students "slip through the cracks" and graduate, get a residency, rep our profession, etc. THAT is what I see as the big problem. I'm not saying that all pod/med/pharm/dent/etc schools don't have a few bad apples getting a diploma every year - that is unavoidable. BUT I am saying that accepting 125 per year, disregarding the residency balance, and jeopardizing the reputation and credibility of our profession just to cash tuition checks is a bit crazy. Agreed?

Just curious but is the maximum number of students a school is suppose to take each year?

 

[Feli]

Just curious but is the maximum number of students a school is suppose to take each year?

You'd have to ask the APMA... CPME specifically. As I said in the post you quoted above, I don't know what each school's cap is. The CPME establishes the enrollment caps in hopes of managing the residency spot balance, but to my understanding, the problem is that there is no penalty for the schools that have exceed their cap.

I'm pretty sure Barry's cap is roughly 80 first year students, and the school has consistently accepts 60-80 incoming students each year since I've been here. Graduating classes are usually around 35-55 students.

 

[APMAHelp]

Of course there are enrollment caps for each of the colleges that are based each year on a number of factors. If a college exceeds their cap, there are specific and punitive consequences that are defined in the CPME's new procedures.

 

[JEWmongous]

Of course there are enrollment caps for each of the colleges that are based each year on a number of factors. If a college exceeds their cap, there are specific and punitive consequences that are defined in the CPME's new procedures.

Just curious, what schools are over their enrollment cap? It seems like ohio, with about 120 in the entering class, is over this cap. Have they or other schools been penalized with this practice????

 

[DPMstudent]

from what i've read other schools are nearly just as big cali, nycpm, temple, scholl.... very surprising

 

[JEWmongous]

from what i've read other schools are nearly just as big cali, nycpm, temple, scholl.... very surprising

Not quite.

Cali only allows 48 students max in a class.

Scholl = 100 or low 100's

Temple = 80's

NYCPM = 80's I believe

 

[DPMstudent]

from an old thread i saw the enrollment max is
"NYCPM is 127ish"
"I think SCPM is around 120, but not sure. Last year's P1 class was 115"
"I thought that this years cap for SCPM was 110. "
"I don't know the exact cap at temple, but the class of 2010 has about 90"
"I think OCPM is 120"
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=383501

 

[Feli]

The CPME mandated enrollment caps, accreditation status, next on-site eval, etc for each pod school are published on the APMA website.
You probably have to be a member to login.

http://www.apma.org/s_apma/bin.asp?CID=299&DID=9191&DOC=FILE.PDF

 

[pipetman]

It was a joke dude, thus the face.

Oh, I didn't see the rolling eye smilie face. That changes everything. arf.

 

[TheBee]

There are 96 P1's at SCPM this year.