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First...I was wrong to write in UF with FSU, UCF, USF... I took a few summer classes there a few years ago and it was not easy. It wasn'y cal poly but it was hard! (sorry to be such a harp on cal, but I remember several classes where 1 to 2 people got an A...My biochem class had 83 people, and 4 A's, two of which were retakes. After going to two other schools, I was shocked by how different the culture was)

I understand the idea that several people are writing about, that clearly some rankings must be taken...I guess that I am argueing that the idea that there isn't a concrete system is insane and harmful to our system.

I wish I could find the link on here, but I recently saw a show that talked about this; all from the prespective of a medical school admissions program. They spoke about how little they "trust" the grades of most anyone, and then went on to cite american college grade inflation as a reason that more foreigners are able to get in. ( I find this to be unsatisfactory and a cop out, but that is what they said)

Also, I do not want to leave out the countless other schools that run the same shell game...fl schools are prob no different than those all over the country in the fact that an education has become a commodity. (A lot of people much smarter than me have written some great books about this) In all, I think that the current method of selection is flawed, with the GPA being given a lot of cred even with no comparison to the program you were in...

A few things that confuse me:

Isn't nova (as well as several others) non-profit?

Why do we assign such horrible things to the admissions people? do we think they say, "well, I get a bonus this year if I let unqualified people in?" What motivation would they have? They get about 100 students paying admission one way or another...

Why is it that people not getting through seen as inherintly bad? To me, any program where 100% of people are getting through looks bad.Clearly there are limits to this, but a few who don't make it?

Why does everyone talk about Nova so much? Penn takes 160+... seven other schools take more people, yet are never mentioned on here. Why is that?

Anyway, good exchange:thumbup:
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Thanks for the retraction of the UF comment :D

It is a good point though. How do you compare GPA's between someone who went to South Central Louisiana State University (its the school from "The Waterboy" vs Someone who went to Harvard. Is aSCLSU 4.0 the same as a Harvard 4.0. NO WAY. Is a 4.0 from SCLSU vs a 3.0 from Harvard (exxagerations of course).....welll then it starts to get tricky.

The OAT is the only way of leveling the playing field as a "standard" of admittance. But then again variables....did the person take the Kaplan course, take a semester off of school to study for it, or study his ***** off while in school and working full time. No way of telling.

Solutions:

1) If you want to go to opt/med/whatever school. Get the grades and transfer to a reputable institution that has a pre-whatever program thats well accepted. Then obviouslly do well.

2) Become God and get addmissions boards change the way they do things :laugh:
 
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I took your advice a few years ago Blyss... went from a 2.9 to getting most all A's my final two years after a transfer. There has to be room for people to turn it around.

To me, a big thing for admissions should be how long it appears that you wanted to do this. People that decide with a year left, after realizing that they can't get into medical school, to find religion and start shadowing an OD...I believe this should hurt a person much more that it appears to. From what I have heard, a lot of people don't fail as much as they quit... i.e. They realize it isn't what they want and stop trying as hard = out in a hurry.

Most everyone that gets to this level of even applying is a pretty bright person. Past that, it is how bad you want it that will determine your success. This manifests itself in the great time management that will get you through the really tough stuff.... I believe schools should do as much as they can to find this intent. (Of course, with other factors)

And as much as I try, God has not returned any of my text messages lately for my suggestions...guess he's busy:).
 
Taven7755 said:
Why does everyone talk about Nova so much? Penn takes 160+... seven other schools take more people, yet are never mentioned on here. Why is that?

Anyway, good exchange:thumbup:
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But after our first semester we only went from 160 -> 159. Even with a much larger class size, we lose very few students.

I think they key is to compare board passing rates, which unfortunately are difficult to get a hold of. That can at least give you some kind of idea how well schools are preparing students, of course its up to the individual to do well, but schools with 70% passing rates are clearly doing something wrong.
 
SarahNC said:
But after our first semester we only went from 160 -> 159. Even with a much larger class size, we lose very few students.

I think they key is to compare board passing rates, which unfortunately are difficult to get a hold of. That can at least give you some kind of idea how well schools are preparing students, of course its up to the individual to do well, but schools with 70% passing rates are clearly doing something wrong.
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I agree. I really think the NBEO is doing us a major disservice by not posting the numbers. The pass rates may be our only objective measurement in comparing the colleges. For those interested in schools the only things we really have to go on are costs, "feel," and rumors.
 
zyg0te said:
I agree. I really think the NBEO is doing us a major disservice by not posting the numbers. The pass rates may be our only objective measurement in comparing the colleges. For those interested in schools the only things we really have to go on are costs, "feel," and rumors.
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It all has to do with money actually. The schools with the bottom tier of board passing rates would get less applicants if those results were released. It's the same reason why many of the optometry schools will not want you to write papers bashing commercial optometry (because they are getting money from those corporations).

As an example: if you submit an essay for a scholarship award, and you write how terrible America's Best is, the school will most likely tell you to write "a standard commercial practice" instead of "Americas Best"
 
drbizzaro said:
It all has to do with money actually. The schools with the bottom tier of board passing rates would get less applicants if those results were released. It's the same reason why many of the optometry schools will not want you to write papers bashing commercial optometry (because they are getting money from those corporations).

As an example: if you submit an essay for a scholarship award, and you write how terrible America's Best is, the school will most likely tell you to write "a standard commercial practice" instead of "Americas Best"
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That makes sense, I guess. Are other professional programs' (med, dental, pharm) board rates posted? Since other programs have school rankings, wouldn't they have this same issue?
 
I believe those stats rather than what anyone on here says. I doubt they would be allowed to lie and get a way with it. They are professional programs.
 
I don't know if any one was on the edge of their seat waiting for this reply... but ASCO never responded to my email about adding the schools board passing rates. I wonder why :rolleyes:


You would think its pertinent information that needs to be included here but...


http://www.opted.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3343
 
just so you know, those figures are the amount of students enrolled in each year- i dont konw about every school, but i know at my school what happens is a bunch of people fail out of their class and they go into the class below them- thus keeping the class sizes about the same throughout the four years- thats why it looks like only a couple people get kicked out- most people would rather fall back a year and try again than just leave the school... those stats are not showing people graduating in 4 years- at least 10% of students in my school either graduate in 5 years or dont graduate at all.....
 
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Fonzie, in all honesty, as an Optometry student, do you not think its completely absurd that NOVA requires students who fail 1 course (which they can repeat in the summer) to repeat the whole year?

whats there reason for doing this? they are the only school to do this, from what i've heard.
 
gochi said:
Fonzie, in all honesty, as an Optometry student, do you not think its completely absurd that NOVA requires students who fail 1 course (which they can repeat in the summer) to repeat the whole year?

whats there reason for doing this? they are the only school to do this, from what i've heard.
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fonziefonz said:
I think its a little ridiculous to fail a person out who passes every class easily and has some struggles in only one. Especially when you got this kind of money on the line.
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Fonz already said it a couple times.
 
IcanSEEanOD said:
I don't know if this is accurate, but ASCO has a report on the number of dropouts reported each year from each school, under graduate...

http://www.opted.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3396

nova supposedly only had 10 dropouts in the four years due to academic reasons, and 2 for personal reasons.
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I think it's important to point out that these stats do not include our class, it's from the class that entered 2006/7.
For the record I can also confirm that we did in fact lose 21 students from our class.
 
fonziefonz said:
There's lots good about the school. But like every school, there's also bad. This policy falls in the bad category.
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What does NOVA have to offer that other schools don't? Repeating 1 year after failing 1 course? :idea:
 
gochi said:
Fonzie, in all honesty, as an Optometry student, do you not think its completely absurd that NOVA requires students who fail 1 course (which they can repeat in the summer) to repeat the whole year?

whats there reason for doing this? they are the only school to do this, from what i've heard.
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Just for the record, this is OSU's Policy also. They say it's relative to the sequential nature of the program. Most of the classes taken in optometry school actually are continuations of previous material, so if you don't learn it in the first place, you can't build upon it. It's not like in undergrad where if you fail a course you can take it again next semester or whenever else you feel like it—the college offers each course once a year because they don't have multiple professors teaching the same course at different times. If the colleges had larger class sizes and more faculty, then it might be a possibility to offer remediation, but then you lose some of the personal attention students get from keeping class sizes low...it's a trade-off.
 
fonziefonz said:
Just to update, we have (amazingly) continued to lose students as we have gone into our 3rd year now [we started 3rd year in May]. We've now lost 1 in 5 people from Day One of optometry school. And get this: we had one student who failed 3rd year summer clinic, so guess what Nova decided to do? They're making him repeat 2nd year all over again! Even though he already passed every course in 2nd year!!! Now that's nuts! I don't know what I'd do in that situation.
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That is awful. Why on earth is he repeating 2nd year for that?!

We lost two more people after spring semester, so our class has lost 3 people so far.
 
Making someone repeat a year's coursework? What an excellent way to swindle a person.
 
All of this doesn't really come as a big surprise. Nova administration was filled with swindlers when I went there so I guess not much has changed. Our class had over 10-15% failure/repeat rate too. A lot of us felt that there wasn't enough faculty to support such a high number of students. The OD faculty had to balance between being in lectures/labs and being in the clinic and the medical sciences faculty had to balance between teaching the ODs as well as the DO, DDS, PA, and PT students. If you needed extra help, it may have been hard to come by. I can only hope they listened to our surveys and hired more people.
 
Commando303 said:
Making someone repeat a year's coursework? What an excellent way to swindle a person.
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Unless this ridiculous policy was in writing somewhere prior to this incidence and has a legitimate reason for existence, I would say that student should sue the pants off of NOVA! :)
 
Also, looking at the data - grand total of repeats 1st through 4th year students at each school during 2008-2009 (second page), it's interesting to note that IU had the most repeats at about 3%, then PUCO at 2.8%, UCBSO at 2.5%. Would not have guessed these 3 had the highest % of overall repeats. Then IAUPR and NOVA at 2%. MCO at 1.3%, then ICO/OSU/UAB at about 1%. SCCO/PCO/SUNY were less than 1%, and NECO, NSUCO/SCO/HOU/UMSL had zero.

Not surprisingly, first year's had the most students repeating, with IU still the highest at 8.2%, NOVA at 7.3%, MCO at 5.3%, OSU at 4.5%, ICO at 3.6%, IAUPR at 3.2%, UCBSO at 1.5%, PCO at 1.2% and PUCO/SCCO at 1%. All others 0%. Overall, 2.2% repeated 1st yr.

Make it through first year and things look better with only .7% overall repeating 2nd year. Berkeley must be tough 2nd year, because they had the highest at 4.8%, then IAUPR at 4.2%, then UAB at 2%, IU at 1.3%, PUCO at 1.2% Scco at 1% and PCO at .7%. All others 0%.

Third year is even better with .4% overall with UCBSO at the highest at 3.3%, IU at 2.9%, UAB at 2.3% and SCCO at 1%. All others 0%.

Only PUCO and suny had repeats the fourth year. One person at suny which = 1.4%, but PUCO had 8 people repeat fourth year for 8.7% repeat!!! What happened there????

Unfortunately, this info doesn't include fail-outs/drop-outs. I think that might change these numbers quite a bit for some schools.
 
fonziefonz said:
Lol. I'm not sure where they got these numbers or when. But I can literally name 21 people lost in my class so far alone for academic and/or personal reasons. I also think they're not counting all the people who return to repeat the year as 'drop outs'.
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Just found this previous post by fonzie while reading back a page on this topic. Guess this isn't such great info.
 
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.I am a student at NOVA and I think NOVA is a very good school. Remember you are in graduate school not in high school so don’t expect your professor to come knocking on your door asking why you’re not coming to class or not doing well. You seek help when you deem necessary. .
. .
.If someone really wants honest answers from any school then ask the successful students currently enroll at that school to see how they do it. Don’t listen to the critics on this forum because you might get the wrong info and pass a good opportunity.

.
.Here are the facts for student who fails any classes at NOVA:
1. If someone fails a class, he/she will have one chance to retake a comprehensive exam (usually few weeks after the final exams). <70% is failing and most of the classes here DO NOT curve or give extra credits. I think that’s fair because who would wants a doctor that know nothing or didn’t learn anything in school. If 100 out of 110 students can pass the class then maybe that 10 failing students didn’t study as hard. .
.2. If that student fails the retake then the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs will help he/she appeal to the Dean..
.3. If the Dean finds the reason to be legitimated then he/she can repeat the year over again. .
.4. If the Dean vetoed it then the appeal will go the committee (the professor in charge of that class will also be in the committee)..
.5. If committee sign it then you can come back if not then you are officially kick out. From what I heard the committee is more lenient on students who already completed a few semesters here because they truly want the student to pass. Since they only offer the class once a year so you have to repeat the whole year again..
. .
.After all that and ones still get kick out then please don’t blame on the school. I came to the U.S. when I was 15 so English isn’t my first language but I can still manage to pass with a 3.75 GPA at NOVA. It’s very hard to get kick out of NOVA unless you don’t try and don’t study. The course loads at NOVA are very intense: 1st year credit hours: 21 Fall, 22 Spring, 6 summer and so on. You don’t have the whole summer break like other schools. They want you to succeed and be an excellent doctor. The HIGHEST test grade for National Board Part I is a student from NOVA and I think 100% pass rate for part II.
.
.Good luck to everyone….
 
My class at NECO started with 115 and is now down to 103. I'm in my third year now, but the last person to drop out, left in the middle of second year.
 
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