Hey guys I'm an M2 here and I recently was PM'd by a potential interviewee who had some questions about our school and I thought I'd just throw it on here. I was asked about what I thought were pros and cons and how I felt about the likelihood of LCME accreditation and so forth. I hope this can help quell some of your understandable apprehension.
Sure I'll go over cons first. So there are the obvious: for profit status, no federal loans, new school. I honestly think that the only real issue is lack of federal loans. Getting private loans isn't a big deal, but if that's your only option and your credit score isn't great, then that makes attending our school difficult. For example, I have no one that can cosign for my loans, so my interest rate is higher than those who were able to get cosigners and if for whatever reason I wasn't approved for loans (that hasn't happened... yet), then I would not be able to pay for tuition or living expenses. In terms of interest rates and things like that, the private loans aren't that much worse, it's just that with federal loans you can do loan forgiveness programs and things like that but not with private loans. One interesting thing is that apparently you can file bankruptcy and try to get private loans discharged which you can't with federal loans, but I don't think that happens very often. The for profit status... yeah it's not something to be proud of, but I don't think that makes our school inherently worse than non profit schools. Being a new school is also rough -- our class definitely had it rough but I know that there are lots of improvements that are happening quickly so even the class below us is having a much easier time than we are. The lectures are so much better for the class below us -- I'm jealous haha. So don't be too worried about that; our class is getting the brunt of it since we're the guinea pigs but it's getting better fast. The only thing that I really wish our school would fix is the lack of federal loans and even that wasn't a huge deal breaker for me.
As to the quality of professors, I remember reading some of the posts. The ob/gyn who wasn't licensed to practice, well, she was a professor and not working as a physician so I don't think it's that bad that she wasn't licensed to practice but for some reason people on here were very fixated on that. Anyway she was only at our school for one block and then quit and went to another school. We've definitely had some turnover happen (faculty members quitting and moving to other schools) but this year we've really ramped up our number of faculty, and I'm very happy with the changes. Our head of anatomy/physiology professor, Dr. Mason, was also mentioned on here a few times because she's a fresh PhD graduate (I think she graduated in 2015 right before we started M1 year). I don't know if you've read my post about her but I like her a lot. She's a very passionate teacher and uses more technology in her lectures (she brings in a tablet and annotates her lecture slides as she lectures, so it's really nice to annotate with her on my iPad -- and if you don't have a tablet, you can just print out the lectures and annotate with pen; also she emails the annotated lecture slides so you don't have to freak out if you miss anything). Also the school hired an anatomy professor who is one of the anatomy professors at UCSF -- Dr. Dhillon. He's super knowledgeable and really great -- I have no doubt that the anatomy curriculum will improve even more. I also really like our pharmacology professor Dr. Gerriets. She's really good at teaching pharm and her lectures I will make an effort to try to go to because they're very helpful.
On to the pros. So I said that things are getting much better for the class below us and future classes and I really mean that. Our curriculum has improved so much even just between our two classes that I have no doubt that things will be even better for the incoming class. I also feel confident that our class will do well on boards. The curriculum is no frills and teaches to boards which is really great. Lectures are recorded and available online and we have very few mandatory lectures, so you can study at home and have a pretty flexible studying schedule. I like our grading system -- we have formative exams which are basically like practice exams since they don't count in our grades. We have one summative exam at the end of every block and that's the one that counts. Usually around 70-80% of the grade is the summative exam. But since you have all block to prepare for the exam, it's really not that bad. Also both the formative and summative exams are ALL questions from NBME (questions that used to be on boards and were retired), which I think is a great way to become comfortable with the boards type questions. I've heard of other schools where all their lectures are mandatory and there's a business casual dress code for every lecture... Not our school. Super chill. The only time they get strict with dress code is medical skills, which is where we practice medical skills with standardized patients and preceptors.
Also another thing is that the admin is very receptive to our feedback. I'm sure you'll hear that a lot from other students too. We have lots of students participating in committees such as the curriculum committee and admissions committee. Especially for us in the inaugural class because we're the first to experience everything for the first time, they really listen to us and try to fix things when we point out things that can be improved. Tons of opportunities for students to become involved. We have lots of interest groups and committees for students to get involved in. It's very easy to get involved in an interest group and become a leader in it (e.g. president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, etc).
The facilities are great. The building is new and the second floor has the library and college of pharmacy, and the first floor is for college of medicine. We have colleges (think of them like houses in Harry Potter) and college rooms that students can hang out and study in. The anatomy lab is probably the best part of the facilities -- it is gorgeous. I've talked with students who've done SMPs at other med schools and they said that the ventilation in our anatomy lab is much, much better (good ventilation = less smelling cadavers which is always great). There's also another building that is in the process of being renovated and will add an auditorium, lots of study space and recreational space. It's not finished yet but hopefully it'll be ready soon.
Lastly in terms of peers. Our school is on the smaller side, with 90 kids per class (our class has 60). I think being in a small (by small I mean fewer than 100) class is awesome because you can get to know everyone in your class. In terms of cutthroat, if you mean like, do we have a lot of gunners? If by gunners you mean people who study a lot, then yes we have gunners. But definitely not the type that will go out of their way to sabotage people or make others look bad. We share information and tips and such on Facebook all the time, e.g. a helpful youtube video that explains a difficult concept.
Please feel free to ask any more questions (on here or PM). I can't promise that a ton of the M2s will respond since we're fast approaching dedicated period, but I will try my best to answer questions and some other students can answer them too. Also good luck to those interviewing this upcoming Friday!
