Dell was an amazing school to interview at, very impressive. Baylor, Dell, and UTMB are the three schools in Texas that left me feeling that I'd belong there. The only thing I didn't like about Dell was that I believe many of the classes are mandatory attendance and not streamed. But with only 1 year of pre-clinical not that big of a deal.
Classes are not mandatory, i.e. there is no impact on your grade for not attending, except for whatever information is lost. The 'goal' of the classes are to be flipped (as Morthy c137 suggested) such that video recordings of the class would not be helpful; if a significant portion of the time is spent discussing things in small groups or answering questions from the professors, then a recording would not be particularly valuable. More on this in response to his statement below.
Further, with such small class sizes (50) it is nice to be at the school if not at class, if only for bonding reasons. We're a pretty tight knit community in each class, and so we do encourage people to come to our learning space rather than staying home (which, is not possible with are CBL/PBL schedule, which are in the mornings, are mandatory, and take place immediately before our 'classes'); but again, no faculty pressure to attend and no upperclassman pressure to attend, more of just a student culture thing that has developed organically in each class so far.
Yeah I agree with you, but my med student guide told me that the classes aren’t traditional at all. They are flipped so there isn’t really a “lecture” to be streamed. Just students and professors discussing the topics!
Your med student guide is right in that there are earnest attempts being made to that end. However, because we do have clinicians and other people coming in at times to present cases, etc. that are not aware of the curriculum, the "flipped style" to classical lecture ratio is something like 3:1. It is still a valid criticism if people value not going to class and doing things on their own time. But there are plenty of students who really enjoy how we do it here and we feel like it is a great way to learn, so we're not really trying to please everyone in this regard - if it is a deal breaker, other Texas schools are *excellent* places to become physicians too, so my advice to those with reservations is to make decisions that you feel are best for you.
