I've only been at NYCOM for 2 months. But because our new 1st year curriculum incorporates many clinical and 2nd year course material I feel I can comment on a few things. Since mostly pre-meds will be reading this, let me give you some advice. I read the same posts and Emails with compaints that you did. The evil physiology professor with the biochem degree, for example. I remember reading posts about it and being very nervous. Curriculum issues. This, that, and the other thing.
You MUST take everything you read with a heap of salt and an appropriate degree of skepticism. Much of the bs that I read turned out to be false. And I got worked up over nothing. A pretty small fraction of complaints turned out to be legitimate, based on my conversations with clear-thinking 2nd years. Mind you, so much is new for our entering class that perhaps we can't relate to what classes from 2 years ago complained about. Then again, doesn't this disprove the notion of an administration being uncaring and unresponsive? Think about it, when you read someone on a forum say things like "they only care about your money," if you have any critical and logical reasoning whatsoever it should be clicking in your mind, "idiot alert," and you shouldn't be losing any sleep over it. Stuff like "even the dean admits that many chose the school because they were accepted no where else." Yes, folks, it's called a joke during orientation and is a reflection of the reality that most people currently in medical school, allopathic or osteopathic, are there because they weren't accepted somewhere else more desireable to them. Some professors will occasionally make fun of the yuppy nonsense we told them during interviews. It's all for a good laugh and we move on. But some idiots hold a grudge, take things out of context, and use it to scare unsuspecting premeds trying to make an important future decision. Get a sense of humor and get over yourselves.
We recently had elections for class president, and some of the complaints that I heard made me think, "you've got to be kidding me." But hey, we elected a class president who sounded ambitious about wanting to improve these little things like the orders of some lectures, temperature in the study halls and lecture rooms, etc. Not my cup of tea but kudos to them.
And seriously, about board score pass rates and such things in general. Who the hell cares. Believe in yourselves for a change, and trust that averages don't apply to you and that you will succeed and thrive in the face mediocrity despite an artificial statistical predisposition. Since when does an average influence individual performance. Are there students consistently scoring multiple standard deviations above the mean into the upper brackets of the percentiles? Yes. That's enough. if they can do it, so can you provided you put in the work. Little things like using board review books to make sure you are covering the necessary material is helpful. You know, some people are so spoiled they don't know how good they have it. And there will always be the disenchanted crowd who will find something to complain about. Just remember that many of us will look at these whines, and will laugh, without wasting time getting into debates and such.
We have so many perks in year 1 and 2 that I think it's unacceptable for NYCOM students to fall back on the quality of the 3rd and 4th year in these discussions. So much has been revamped and improved. And we're paving the way for it to be even better for the next incoming class.
BTW, we were told several times during orientation that on paper we have the highest stats of all previous entering classes. Does anyone know when these numbers make their way into books like Barrons which I remember from applying during last year had rather precise gpa/mcat breakdown stats for all of the schools?
