I am sorry but I have to address some of the issues brought up here. I am a first year attending OCPM, and granted, I think that they do accept too many students to "get the tuition check" but there have been several claims that have been made on here that aren't true.
My class has 119 students I was told. 5th years take all classes with us but gross, and last years 5th years take gross with us. I don't think the school is "overcrowded' except maybe at lunch. Otherwise, 3rd years are here rarely, except in the late evening/night and then it is just the 1st and 2nd years. Each class has it's own lecture hall and there is plenty of room in the school to study.
The class that just took the boards had 10 people that needed to re-take I heard, and their class has around 75 people in it.
It is true that some of the professors for our basic sciences work at CWRU, but as for old tests floating around, there aren't. There are like 2 or 3 tests from the 90's and early 2000's from the dental school (for anatomy & biochem) that EVERYONE has because they are in a public folder on the school computers that everyone can access. Other than that I have not seen any other exams. In fact, the school has a severely strict policy on how we take our exams, so that cheating and copying of the test is not allowed.
I don't think that an MCAT score of 14 is very common to be honest. I have met a lot of people who are very intelligent and hard-working. Our professors do not "water down" information so we can pass our classes. On thursday, we were given a 200 slide lecture in anatomy and are expected to know most everything in it (including any notes, verbal or written she gave). Most of us are studying after school for 3-4 hours at school and for another hour or 2 at home later during the week. This does not even include the weekend. And it is necessary if you want to keep up with the material. I have taken all these classes in undergrad, and if I felt they were easy or watered down, the extensive amount of studying would not be necessary.
I am not sure what you mean by "limited clinical training". Students go into the clinic starting their second year. I am not sure how the schedule works, but they start doing H&P's and basic exams from what I understand. In the third year, you are in the clinic 3x/week.
The half tuition scholarship is not given out to first year students. It is only given out to 2nd,3rd and 4th years. They must receive 4.0. In last year's class (now 2nd years) I heard there was only 5 who had 4.0 after the summer session, when they reward the scholarship.
As I stated before, I think that OCPM does take too many applicants, some that probably shouldn't be here, or maybe should be in the 5 year program, but I have also seen a lot of my classmates work very hard these past 3 weeks. Our first exams are coming up so we'll see how well everyone is REALLY doing. I already know some people who I think will be leaving if they don't make some drastic changes. But who's place is it to say that they should not have been accepted. I think that it is ultimately the student's choice when they are accepted by a school like OCPM. If they were a borderline applicant then they should be making an extra effort to study and pass their classes. They should know what it will take for THEM to be able to graduate. I don't think that one can necessarily place ALL the blame on the school, some blame has to be placed on the student if he/she fails out because ultimately they applied with the intentions of succeeding/finishing school and something went awry. (In addition, OCPM offers many chances to redeem oneself before you fail out of the school). If people can keep up with the work and produce good grades and eventually become good clinicians I believe they deserve to be here, whether or not the school accepts too many people.
(my caveat: I don't think OCPM is the most best, greatest pod school ever, but I came here because it was the best school for me. I think that what they do have to offer is pretty good, and needed to clear some things up so others who may be looking at the school don't get the wrong idea.)
