2018-2019 William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine (WCUCOM)

[PickleRickelus]

Thanks, I'll let y'all know how it goes!

Yes please do! Thank you.

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[DameJulie]

I haven't heard from here since I submitted my primary a few weeks ago. Should I be worried for a silent rejection pre-secondary?

 

[PickleRickelus]

I haven't heard from here since I submitted my primary a few weeks ago. Should I be worried for a silent rejection pre-secondary?

It sometimes takes a while. I wouldn't worry about it.

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[psd242]

Hey y'all, I'm a 2nd year student at WCUCOM. I'll be checking into this page from time to time to try and help answer any questions you may have. Good luck to everyone this cycle!

 

[RURF2015]

Hey y'all, I'm a 2nd year student at WCUCOM. I'll be checking into this page from time to time to try and help answer any questions you may have. Good luck to everyone this cycle!

Could you comment on your experience at WCUCOM so far?

What do you like about the school?

What don’t you like about the school?

Do you feel prepared for COMLEX/STEP1?

 

[journeytomed12]

II on 7/10 for 8/13

 

[psd242]

Could you comment on your experience at WCUCOM so far?

What do you like about the school?

What don’t you like about the school?

Do you feel prepared for COMLEX/STEP1?

I'll try to keep it brief and just list 3 for each.

What I like:

• I've had a good experience so far. It's a smaller, newer school, so the administration thus far has been pretty receptive to student feedback. I feel like this would be less likely to occur in older/more entrenched institutions. Some people at other schools have never met the Dean, ours goes on walks with students every Wednesday.
• I like the execution of the attendance policy, since it's more lax in practice than what's written (not as ideal as 0 attendance, but at the end of last year there were maybe 10 people attending one of the classes).
  
• I like the cost of tuition, it's one of the cheapest DO schools available.

What I don't like:

• The setup of the school is such that administration doesn't interfere with course directors much. What the course director for a course says, goes. This made last year rough for some students, but this year none of those course directors are still course directors.
• We don't have heavy research facilities. I know it's one of their priorities to grow these facilities, but they don't exist right now.
• Campus itself doesn't have extensive, dedicated, separate study space. I tend to study in the lecture hall, because it doesn't bother me. But I've heard this concern from other students.

The school is what it is. When you come for your interview, ask a lot of questions! People will be open and honest. If you like what you see and what you hear, then WCUCOM is for you. It's not for everyone, but they tell you what it is.

Boards: I have another year until my boards, but I feel like I have a decent starting point from the the work I put in last year. I, along with a group of classmates, have been studying ahead and doing QBank/board questions daily. I gotta say the 1st year feels a lot more important in retrospect, I didn't respect its importance because I couldn't see the connection to boards, until I started studying for the boards. Foundation is important. The school gives students a couple resources throughout, so you can do as well (or as poorly) as you want depending on how much time you're willing to invest.

The school has been trending up each year on board scores (COMLEX Level 1 First Time Pass Rates - 2012-2016). When they started they clearly weren't doing well at all, but looking at that trend (roughly 72%, 81%, 87%, 89%, 95%, year to year), I decided I was ok with the direction of the school. I'm looking forward to a debrief from the Dean in the next month or two, after all scores are back, to see how the class above mine did.

 

[RURF2015]

I'll try to keep it brief and just list 3 for each.

What I like:

• I've had a good experience so far. It's a smaller, newer school, so the administration thus far has been pretty receptive to student feedback. I feel like this would be less likely to occur in older/more entrenched institutions. Some people at other schools have never met the Dean, ours goes on walks with students every Wednesday.
• I like the execution of the attendance policy, since it's more lax in practice than what's written (not as ideal as 0 attendance, but at the end of last year there were maybe 10 people attending one of the classes).
  
• I like the cost of tuition, it's one of the cheapest DO schools available.

What I don't like:

• The setup of the school is such that administration doesn't interfere with course directors much. What the course director for a course says, goes. This made last year rough for some students, but this year none of those course directors are still course directors.
• We don't have heavy research facilities. I know it's one of their priorities to grow these facilities, but they don't exist right now.
• Campus itself doesn't have extensive, dedicated, separate study space. I tend to study in the lecture hall, because it doesn't bother me. But I've heard this concern from other students.

The school is what it is. When you come for your interview, ask a lot of questions! People will be open and honest. If you like what you see and what you hear, then WCUCOM is for you. It's not for everyone, but they tell you what it is.

Boards: I have another year until my boards, but I feel like I have a decent starting point from the the work I put in last year. I, along with a group of classmates, have been studying ahead and doing QBank/board questions daily. I gotta say the 1st year feels a lot more important in retrospect, I didn't respect its importance because I couldn't see the connection to boards, until I started studying for the boards. Foundation is important. The school gives students a couple resources throughout, so you can do as well (or as poorly) as you want depending on how much time you're willing to invest.

The school has been trending up each year on board scores (COMLEX Level 1 First Time Pass Rates - 2012-2016). When they started they clearly weren't doing well at all, but looking at that trend (roughly 72%, 81%, 87%, 89%, 95%, year to year), I decided I was ok with the direction of the school. I'm looking forward to a debrief from the Dean in the next month or two, after all scores are back, to see how the class above mine did.

Thank you for your detailed response! I appreciate your insight

 

[WorldChanger36]

I'll try to keep it brief and just list 3 for each.

What I like:

• I've had a good experience so far. It's a smaller, newer school, so the administration thus far has been pretty receptive to student feedback. I feel like this would be less likely to occur in older/more entrenched institutions. Some people at other schools have never met the Dean, ours goes on walks with students every Wednesday.
• I like the execution of the attendance policy, since it's more lax in practice than what's written (not as ideal as 0 attendance, but at the end of last year there were maybe 10 people attending one of the classes).
  
• I like the cost of tuition, it's one of the cheapest DO schools available.

What I don't like:

• The setup of the school is such that administration doesn't interfere with course directors much. What the course director for a course says, goes. This made last year rough for some students, but this year none of those course directors are still course directors.
• We don't have heavy research facilities. I know it's one of their priorities to grow these facilities, but they don't exist right now.
• Campus itself doesn't have extensive, dedicated, separate study space. I tend to study in the lecture hall, because it doesn't bother me. But I've heard this concern from other students.

The school is what it is. When you come for your interview, ask a lot of questions! People will be open and honest. If you like what you see and what you hear, then WCUCOM is for you. It's not for everyone, but they tell you what it is.

Boards: I have another year until my boards, but I feel like I have a decent starting point from the the work I put in last year. I, along with a group of classmates, have been studying ahead and doing QBank/board questions daily. I gotta say the 1st year feels a lot more important in retrospect, I didn't respect its importance because I couldn't see the connection to boards, until I started studying for the boards. Foundation is important. The school gives students a couple resources throughout, so you can do as well (or as poorly) as you want depending on how much time you're willing to invest.

The school has been trending up each year on board scores (COMLEX Level 1 First Time Pass Rates - 2012-2016). When they started they clearly weren't doing well at all, but looking at that trend (roughly 72%, 81%, 87%, 89%, 95%, year to year), I decided I was ok with the direction of the school. I'm looking forward to a debrief from the Dean in the next month or two, after all scores are back, to see how the class above mine did.

Be careful with this data!!! Do not misinterpret. National average first time pass rate is 96.54 %. Everyone needs to understand that Carey has never been at or above average for this test. Also this is just first time pass rate for COMLEX level 1. The class that nailed that pass rate of 95ish % also had an average score below the last year before them. It does you no good to just pass. This is just one test, what about the level 2 PE not passing that could prevent graduation, block you from matching and create undue stress.Every single class has serious problems with USMLE, which competitive specialities will require a step 1 and possibly a step 2 CK also. The average comlex scores have an up and down ebb and flo year to year.
Keep in mind other factors too like attrition rate which at carey is on average 10 to 12 percent every year. Keep in mind what that means and ask why is it so high. Dont just look at an average first time pass rate and think because it is increasing that means the school is getting better.
I highly encourage everone considering ANY medical school to do some homework and read the past thread on the school. This is your future you want and deserve the best you can get.

I am tired of the whole “school doesnt has no researches” thing, DO schools dont have much research to start from. If you want research think about WHY that is important to you. If it has to do with being more competitive for residency check to see if those specialities even give you a real advantage by doing research by looking at the most recent program direct survey. You may be surprised to learn that program directors in that speciality put very little to no weight on research while some may expect published work in the field. Dont listen to speculation and rumors, look it up for yourself.
Also if your speciality of interest is super research heavy make sure you arent shooting yourself in the foot by going to a DO school in the first place.

Getting into medical school is not a race, do a masters program maybe land some of that research you were worried about before you get to med school, its way easier to get research done before rather then during med school. Work on your MCAT until you get that rockstar score.
If you rush into med school you can just stop and slow down with out consequences that may change your future. Once you take a board exam and pass that score is forever, you cant just retake it and do better. Failing out of med school is career ending. Transferring to another school is pretty much impossible. Once you are in things get real fast.

 

[premedmommyx2]

How long did it take to get confirmation of secondary receipt?

 

[Xanias]

II today!


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[medschool1718]

When you all submitted your primary, did you get an email stating they received it? Or was the first email you got a secondary invite? I submitted my primary a little over a week ago and didn't even get a confirmation. Is this normal??

 

[premedmommyx2]

When you all submitted your primary, did you get an email stating they received it? Or was the first email you got a secondary invite? I submitted my primary a little over a week ago and didn't even get a confirmation. Is this normal??

I only got the secondary email.

II today!


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

when did you submit

 

[Xanias]

When you all submitted your primary, did you get an email stating they received it? Or was the first email you got a secondary invite? I submitted my primary a little over a week ago and didn't even get a confirmation. Is this normal??

I submitted my primary Mid June.
Secondary submitted on 07/24 and confirmation email next day.
Interview today for October 1st.

 

[WorldChanger36]

I have been getting a lot of private messages from peeps asking me what I think about the school and should I go blaa blaa so I will do a more recent review for ya to help you guy collect data and opinions from current students, hopefully other STUDENTS ( Admin/faculty/staff if you post don't pose as a student) will follow.
Again I advise you look at forums from past years and compare and keep in mind the rank of the poster. (A premed that has friends in the school holds less weight than a 3rd year that just took boards but it maybe better to hear from a current 2nd year about 1st year curriculum than a 4th year)

I am a current 4th year. I will be commenting on things that may have changed so you can better understand my perspective and the thinking of the school.
Also a little commentary on changes I feel would improve the school.
Curriculum: General overview :When I was in 1st and 2nd year everything was in a didactic lecture in a pseudo organ system subject by subject style ( You would be in an organ system block like cardio but each individual subject would be taught separately by those departments in a non integrated way, although for some reason that no one understands they called the exams integrated but in truth they were just a mix of the different subjects even graded differently by the different professors. This commonly led to different professors teaching the complete opposite of each other. You can imagine the confusion on the actual test day when you had to figure out if this was a Professor D question or a Dr. Y question. Anyway... You come in the morning got powerpoint lectures until 3 to 4pm then you went home to study some more. Attendance was mandatory and they always checked it, now they seem a bit more lax. For the most part the information presented was correct but from time to time it was incorrect, the professors never corrected these mistakes and they often annoyingly ended up on tests. Tests were also plagued with mis-spellings and grammatical errors, multiple correct answers and the "because I said so" correct answers. Often some of the test scenarios were ridiculous and difficult to follow but for the most part if you were studying for boards and you studied the powerpoints the week of the test Bs were likely.

Histology: Not a bad class at all my year however it would seem that this class got really bad recently but that professor re-retired. Hopefully some really nice 2nd year will post about the new professor. This was the least useful class and the most board irrelevant. Honestly I am not sure why med school still teach this class as it would be way better taught as a microscope pathology class, I mean after all you never know what you'll find between to pieces of glass right. Way easy to test too, just name this thing I am pointing at.

Physio: The most board relevant course but for us was taught like we were *****ic two year olds. This professor too has moved on and has been replaced by two awesome people but thats about all I know. Again perhaps a 2nd year will comment on this course a bit. For us we just rocked out guyton and ignored the lectures and powerpoints, this by far was the most difficult course for us not only because of the way it was taught but just because the subject matter is difficult to master. I really don't understand why this isn't taught over two years in an honest organ system integrated way 1st year and a clinically integrated way in the 2nd but hey what do I know.

Doctoring skills: This was the class that had everybody honestly about to grab pitchforks and start a revolt. It was meant to show us how do each part of the entire clinical exam head to toe and it some how did none of this. Instead it had us writing essays about pictures in the hallways, answering questions about submarine warfare and southern history and do a ton of because I told you so style of busy work. This thing should completely redone and merged with OPP and clinical skills and taught across 3, yes 3 years because all of the how to do a physical exam, how to present to attendings ( not taught in any course), how to properly use medical equipment, what you should expect to see useing that medical equipment ( not taught), how to write a SOAP note PE style ( not taught well), how to write a follow up SOAP note (not taught), how to write a note for a first encounter ( not taught) and how to intergrate OMM into every day practice ( not taught).

OMM/OPP/OMT/the osteopathic stuff : You do this across 4 years per the Aoa requirement for us it was a tuesday thursday thing that had a lecture in the morning and either this was followed by a physical OMM lab or doctoring skills lab ( 1st year) or physical OMM lab or clinical skills lab ( 2nd year). Your first 2 years you will learn to fear this class, we sure did. Now again most of the professors that terrorized us are gone now and the way it has been done has changed so hopefully a 2nd year will pop on here and comment. Our tests were insanely difficult and required hours and hours of physical practice and study more than any other class. You had to put in a solid two weeks of study if you hoped to pass. For me this class was by far the most difficult and every day I just could not understand it. I was very very lucky to have some awesome classmate that literally and figuratively held me up in this class otherwise I would have failed out for sure. Yes the tests were that hard. OPP had its own separate test which made ZERO sense other than it made the OPP department seem more important I guess. On test day you would first do a physical test that was awkward at best. For our year if you didn't do everything perfectly on your first run through to the individual proctors desired wish you had to retest any thing they wanted you to if you didn't do it perfect on the retest YOU FAILED THE COURSE. After that nightmare you took a written test that was some how written worse that the COMLEX OMM questions. You also had horrible weekly quizzes to deal with... Just not fun. Many of us wondered if the department was failing people in the physical test they saw as troublemakers, this certainly increased our suspicion when we were told proctor were randomly assigned but often one person would have the exact same proctor for most of the year!!! Yeah this class scared us and made many of us so resentful we refused to use OMM on any of our clinical rotations. In our 3rd and 4th years we did a little bit of OMM during callbacks or the two week 4th year superdupper OPPaluza. This was a zero stress event where they when back over the things we learned before in 1st and 2nd year and learned a few extra tricks, it kind of sucked if you had to fly or drive back to the hattiesburg because your rotation site was far away but the actual course wasn't bad.

Anatomy: For us this class was awesome. It had a lecture and a cadaver lab and honestly they could drop the lecture because most of the time you could pick up what was being taught in the lecture from the lab and other courses. We had great professors for the most part and it seems everybody loves the new professors too. You do this in your first year not much to add just the lecture was extra not really needed.

Biochem: Oh dear... This course is well not biochem, its actually more the weird pathologies every board exam thinks is super important but instead of teaching it fully we are just gonna brush over it a bit and hope someone else teaches it to you but in your 2nd semester we will do random presentations on the same diseases instead of teaching it to you. Super nice professor and very easy to talk to but the course... needs help. Cut this class should just be path started in your first year. We don't need repeats of the same material leading to conflicts on test day.

Neuroanatomy/neurology: This is a pseudo 1st year mostly a 2nd year course. It too is really good and the professor are great. It had separate tests from integrated too and I still don't understand this because often they would cover the exact same material, they would just do it better than the other lectures. This should be integrated. Just whatever organ system you are on discuss the innervation of the organ system in the first year and teach full on neurology in the 2nd with the other lecturers.

What the Path??/Pathology: In the 1st year you kind of start pathology doing the first 3 or 4 chapters of Robins, while this isn't difficult why don't they start this as a part of the organ systems blocks from day one, its again not efficient or effective. 2nd year you start actual pathology but man oh man is it bad. Poor professor has to cover a ton of material he goes so fast in his lectures you can't understand anything I mean he powers through 500 or so powerpoint slides in 50 mins! It is crazy and his tests are super difficult. Doing pathoma helps a ton but it won't get you the pass on exam day. Luckily though the exam is not were you get most of your points, you get them from extra assignments however these take time something you don't have ANY of in med school. If this started on day one of the first year as a part of the organ systems you wouldn't have to cram a ton of information in like they do and in 2nd year you can make it more clinically relevant to what ever that block is. Currently it just a horrible way to do things.

Microbiology: This one by far is the most well intended course that just doesn't work out. I mean you just feel so bad for the professors they put in a ton of work and they are so nice and it ...just ...doesn't ...work. Every year they change the way they do things so any feedback anyone gives is going to be different from year to year. For the most part they try to teach a little bit in 1st year and the some more in 2nd and they CONSTANTLY repeat similar lectures on similar organisms. Also in 2nd year they TRY to teach antibiotic to kill bugs often leading to conflicting information with the same things being taught from the pharm crew. WHY? Just teach the bugs and how to spot them and leave how to kill them to the pharm crew. Again this is another class that could be started from day one 1st year organ system to organ system on the boring bug stuff then in 2nd year more on how the infection presents clinically and how you spot them.

Pharm: Again another well intended poorly executed course. You start this in 2nd year like many other schools and some of the lectures are good but others are not good and when they were bad WOW it got really bad. The professors that run this course can be super nice one day and the biggest jerks the next especially when there was a conflict with anything they taught. These conflicts could easily and professionally been avoided but often it would result in strongly worded arguments between students and having to guess on tests because you had no idea whos question it was. As stated above biggest conflicts were with micro but sometimes with Clinical sciences and pathology too. This course should start on day one of 1st year ( are you seeing a trend yet?) mostly covering the mechanism of drugs and metabolism and all that boring stuff then in 2nd year should be side effects, drug drug interactions and best drugs for the situation. This is crazy important for microbio/ infections like what is the best drug for a URI when you don't no the organism and PT presents with these symptoms or that but the organism is H.Flu or come back resistant to drug X? Way better than trying to cram all the boring stuff in with the more interesting stuff.

Clinical sciences: Like 2nd year doctoring skills but its a mix up of all the subjects above taught system to system with some COMLEX level 2 CE stuff mixed in. This course is a massive chunk of your grades too. They try to teach you all the important things but some how end up focusing on things we don't understand or care about at this level. In a time where we are freaking out about COMLEX level 1 and USMLE step 1they are trying to force LEvel 2 like stuff on us in the most boring and hard to learn way possible. You know the best way to learn clinical skills? IN the clinic!!! It should involve graded SP experences from day one of 1st year and be merged with OMM and Doctoring skills and be taught across 3 years and it should involve student/physician run clinics allowing you to get early clinical exposure.

Some classes/things the school needs... You can read this if you want to just made me feel better to write about it
Medical interpretation and terminology: I can't tell you how bad the school needs to teach how to read radiological images, EKGs and EEGs and proper medical terminology. Outside of a short lecture here or there on CT vs MRI or medical terminology jeopardy, I was never taught this stuff so I struggle to this day to understand it. Overtime I have gotten better at reading EKGs and X rays but medical terms still kill me. This should be a part of every single block and actually teach medical terminology don't just put it on a test and think they will figure it out.

Get rid of the you will learn it later mentality: The assumption that we will learn something next year only to be told you already learned that last year/ should have learn that last year is super frustrating. The school needs a plan for the full instruction of every single student and this student should demonstrate that instruction or they should be retaught it.

Get rid of The fail 'em mentality: The school is quick to slam the fail button on students that really just need a little bit of extra help. I get some people are not cut out for medical school. Have a better selection process only picking students that you know beyond a reasonable doubt will succeed. But what about all those people that should be given the chance to prove they can be great med students, sure give them the chance in a strong medical masters 3 year program that once completed to satisfaction grants admission into the medical school in advanced standing (you start as a 3rd year). The current masters program is way too weak makes people overconfident ( They often struggle 2nd year), you should be doing the exact same stuff the med students do with extra things like research in the summer. Also hire real tutors not other medical students that are busy and note takers when student can't be there due to clinic day or conference or don't want to be.

Early clinical exposure and mock exams: It would be great if there were 3 clinics run by the school. One family med/ urgent care, one Rural OB/gyn care and one peds. It should be a part of your grades to help run these clinics along side physicians and other admin. That means not only will you have days where you see patients and write notes with the doc, but days where you schedule patients, bring them back a triage them or give injections along side a nurse and accept money and learn billing practice and how docs and clinics get paid. It would also be great if there were full on 12 patient OCSEs in the first year, not just your 3rd year with feedback from the SPs and professors on all cases not just a random 3.

Attendance: If you want to take it go for it just don't punish students for it. If there is some rule that mandates X amount of time, ok have the students make up that time in clinic during the summer or before starting 3rd year. You can even take the data and send it to the student showing them that their score have been dropping coincides with their lack of attendance.

Make the lectures interactive: I am not talking about the flipped classroom stuff I am talking about just taking key words out of a powerpoint and having students key in answers with the clicker, not for a grade or anything just to make it more of an activity. You could even send this information back to the student so they can figure out weaknesses quickly.

Test and grade block by block: If you pass that block you pass if you fail that block you remediate that block over winter or summer break. It should be a rapid remediation of the entire block and have a shorter version of a test or some other assignment that is automatically graded. Fail remediation repeat the year. Fail more than 2 blocks in a semester or more than 3 in a year, repeat the year. Make the tests an actual integrated exam, give it the same feel of board exams not just a mix up of different subjects actually integrate the questions like you have to know a little microbio or path in order to figure out the actual drug noted in the question or to figure out the best OMM treatment or the most reasonable medical tool to use in the exam of the patient and give an immediate raw score after taking the test don't make a student wait weeks to figure out they just failed something they thought they did awesome on. Take it easy on linked questions too. A student shouldn't have to miss 5 questions because they couldn't figure out the key question. Geez that sucks.

I am sure there are reasons many of these things can't happen; money, school presidents; faculty, Aoa rules ect...






Location: Hattiesburg. To most people in the US this is a small town but it does have a few good bars and restaurant to decompress in. Rents are cheap and housing is nice. Not too bad of a place to raise chulins but it could be hard for a wife or husband to find a fair paying job. Its also close to New Orleans and not too far from Jackson. Compared to many other spots in MS its not too bad.

Cost: 42 K per year. Still one of the cheaper schools but 42 grand is still a lot of money.

Faculty: meh... Many of the bad ones are gone, jury is still out on the newer ones but so far people are pretty happy with them. The admin and staff thou... That needs some help. It maybe a combo of not knowing what they are doing or laziness but this often results in frustration for everybody. Grades get messed up often, the class rank makes NO sense, your MSPE looks like it was copy and pasted from the NRMP website. There are just way too many short cuts being taken and people that do awesome work are often over worked and not recognized. Overall result leads to things being absolutely a mess for anyone that has to deal with the school.

Reputation: Poor. First of all it is a super small DO school. Often many people (DO students, doctors, programs) have never heard of it. When it has been heard of it is ride or die usually on the last Carey person that went through. If they did awesome often you will hear good things about the school, not so awesome yeah... This becomes a big deal in your 3rd and 4th years. 3rd year preceptors often drop carey students most often due to the school dropping the ball or being too annoying but some times because a student was SO bad. 4th year VSAS stuff can also get messed up by the school sending the wrong paper work but this is rare. Most stuff works out well 4th year. We also have been having board score and attrition rate problems. USMLE is super weak for us and our comlex scores go up one year and drop the next never to beat the national average. PE failure rates are often double other schools even though we have 12 more simulated patient encounters than other schools. Recently the match rates were terrible. Before SOAP and Scramble less than half the class had matched with most scrambling into Aoa spots left over in fields they had no interest in or in weak programs they were not happy with. The whole match for DOs was difficult and this year it will most likely be worse.

Clinical Rotations: 3rd year is preceptor based for 90% of people in a multitude of different sites with most people being in Hattiesburg. Some sites are better organized than others and have smooth transitions with little problems others just have problems all day. Education also varies but for most being taught directly from an attending doesn't let you experience much. Some rotations you can't do anything but watch others you are fully involved. You do everything month to month. Rotations are peds, psych, family 2 months, IM, Surgery, EM, and one elective surgery and one elective medicine. 4th year you are on your own to set up your rotations but it is a total of 36 weeks that is half surgery half medicine ish... tons of exceptions.

Housing: Cheap and available

Study areas: Great. Lots of space to spread out at the school or you can find a coffee shop in town.

Social Scene: Umm meh student, aint gots no times fer dat. For the most part you are gonna be pretty busy but you should have enough time to work out daily at the Y and take a day off on non test weeks to enjoy a few drinks with friends/met people/see family ect. Once you understand the rhythm of study this gets easy

Local Hospitals: Not the best. Again small town equals smaller selection due to lack of competition. Forest General is the "big" hospital but it can be hard to get rotations there in your 3rd year. Most people do most of their 3rd year rotations at hattiesburg clinic or Merit health Wesley. Wesley has a residency program in EM, IM and TRI, while Forest has an FM program. Again smaller hospitals. None of these hospitals are concidered a home program for Carey although they accept many of our grads.

Board Prep: Nope. Mostly on your own. One of the Deans trys to help out by running a board review session but they are short and cover very little.

Specialty match: Most people match in IM or Family. Years past we had one person match Aoa ortho. For the most part though the surgical subs are not gonna work out. Gen surg is common and people do match in EM, Gas and Neuro, few people do match at awesome IM spots and the military match is pretty friendly. Psych, PMR and NMS/Family does happen although this is rare mostly because of a lack of interest in these fields. Many people that want to do rads don't get it right out of the gate but thats ok they like gas and surgery need to do a prelim year anyway and commonly get it after that. People that like Peds and OB/Gyn often have no trouble getting these. So if you do come here just know you may need to apply pretty broadly to programs you want and be ok with traveling and in all likelihood you will match. If you want to be an ortho sport med guy, Urologist, CT surg, Ophthalmologist, Derm, Rad onc, neurosurg or some other weird random double/triple/quad board specialist I can comfortably say thats not gonna happen.

Grades:A/B/C/try again. As stated above grades can be harsh. 3rd and 4th year is Pass/high pass/pass w/a side of honors/ Try again. Getting Honors in your 3rd year can be really difficult some times impossible. Comat scores ( Terrible test by the way) have to exceed 100, all busy work has to be perfect and your preceptor has to give you a 90 or above. Most people couldn't hit the COMAT scores but got great preceptor scores, others would have a ton of time and luck and would land 114 on the comats just to get a 71 from a preceptor. These scores end up in your MSPE. Nothing you do your 4th year ends up in your MSPE... Nothing. No COMATs but a ton of busy work from the school.


Financial Aid: It can be frustrating to figure out when you refund is gonna come but it always does. Carey has full government loans and GI bill stuff.

Technology: We have some cool stuff, patient dummies, clinical exam simulators, practice suture lab stuff... for the most part you never use them. Computers are a constant head ache, the lecture recordings work most of the time and the sound system in the lecture hall is a constant problem. Lights work great though and there is vending machines that are well stocked most of the time.
Library: We keep books there, ones you won't be reading. You can study there if you want to but they open late and close early. Just study in the school or a local coffee shop.



Overall Grade: Pass. Hey Carey has problems some are really bad but it is still a medical school and well worth sending an app to. Things are improving, Just do not come here expecting awesome research, early or great clinical exposure, good board prep or a match in a super competitive specialty. Don't expect things to change while you are here either or think you are going to be a huge force that will reshape the school. Take it as it is.

I encourage everyone to review your options wisely. Don't fall for false promises or half truths, don't chase research you don't need. You want a school that is going to make your first two years as painless as possible but know it is hard every where, best schools are going to make things easy for you to learn and motivate you to remember it. Good schools get out of your way and let you take boards when YOU are ready. Good schools guide you in your 3rd and 4th years giving you the best clinical exposure on resident run teams. Expect to be busy all 4 years.

 

[PickleRickelus]

I have been getting a lot of private messages from peeps asking me what I think about the school and should I go blaa blaa so I will do a more recent review for ya to help you guy collect data and opinions from current students, hopefully other STUDENTS ( Admin/faculty/staff if you post don't pose as a student) will follow.
Again I advise you look at forums from past years and compare and keep in mind the rank of the poster. (A premed that has friends in the school holds less weight than a 3rd year that just took boards but it maybe better to hear from a current 2nd year about 1st year curriculum than a 4th year)

I am a current 4th year. I will be commenting on things that may have changed so you can better understand my perspective and the thinking of the school.
Also a little commentary on changes I feel would improve the school.
Curriculum: General overview :When I was in 1st and 2nd year everything was in a didactic lecture in a pseudo organ system subject by subject style ( You would be in an organ system block like cardio but each individual subject would be taught separately by those departments in a non integrated way, although for some reason that no one understands they called the exams integrated but in truth they were just a mix of the different subjects even graded differently by the different professors. This commonly led to different professors teaching the complete opposite of each other. You can imagine the confusion on the actual test day when you had to figure out if this was a Professor D question or a Dr. Y question. Anyway... You come in the morning got powerpoint lectures until 3 to 4pm then you went home to study some more. Attendance was mandatory and they always checked it, now they seem a bit more lax. For the most part the information presented was correct but from time to time it was incorrect, the professors never corrected these mistakes and they often annoyingly ended up on tests. Tests were also plagued with mis-spellings and grammatical errors, multiple correct answers and the "because I said so" correct answers. Often some of the test scenarios were ridiculous and difficult to follow but for the most part if you were studying for boards and you studied the powerpoints the week of the test Bs were likely.

Histology: Not a bad class at all my year however it would seem that this class got really bad recently but that professor re-retired. Hopefully some really nice 2nd year will post about the new professor. This was the least useful class and the most board irrelevant. Honestly I am not sure why med school still teach this class as it would be way better taught as a microscope pathology class, I mean after all you never know what you'll find between to pieces of glass right. Way easy to test too, just name this thing I am pointing at.

Physio: The most board relevant course but for us was taught like we were *****ic two year olds. This professor too has moved on and has been replaced by two awesome people but thats about all I know. Again perhaps a 2nd year will comment on this course a bit. For us we just rocked out guyton and ignored the lectures and powerpoints, this by far was the most difficult course for us not only because of the way it was taught but just because the subject matter is difficult to master. I really don't understand why this isn't taught over two years in an honest organ system integrated way 1st year and a clinically integrated way in the 2nd but hey what do I know.

Doctoring skills: This was the class that had everybody honestly about to grab pitchforks and start a revolt. It was meant to show us how do each part of the entire clinical exam head to toe and it some how did none of this. Instead it had us writing essays about pictures in the hallways, answering questions about submarine warfare and southern history and do a ton of because I told you so style of busy work. This thing should completely redone and merged with OPP and clinical skills and taught across 3, yes 3 years because all of the how to do a physical exam, how to present to attendings ( not taught in any course), how to properly use medical equipment, what you should expect to see useing that medical equipment ( not taught), how to write a SOAP note PE style ( not taught well), how to write a follow up SOAP note (not taught), how to write a note for a first encounter ( not taught) and how to intergrate OMM into every day practice ( not taught).

OMM/OPP/OMT/the osteopathic stuff : You do this across 4 years per the Aoa requirement for us it was a tuesday thursday thing that had a lecture in the morning and either this was followed by a physical OMM lab or doctoring skills lab ( 1st year) or physical OMM lab or clinical skills lab ( 2nd year). Your first 2 years you will learn to fear this class, we sure did. Now again most of the professors that terrorized us are gone now and the way it has been done has changed so hopefully a 2nd year will pop on here and comment. Our tests were insanely difficult and required hours and hours of physical practice and study more than any other class. You had to put in a solid two weeks of study if you hoped to pass. For me this class was by far the most difficult and every day I just could not understand it. I was very very lucky to have some awesome classmate that literally and figuratively held me up in this class otherwise I would have failed out for sure. Yes the tests were that hard. OPP had its own separate test which made ZERO sense other than it made the OPP department seem more important I guess. On test day you would first do a physical test that was awkward at best. For our year if you didn't do everything perfectly on your first run through to the individual proctors desired wish you had to retest any thing they wanted you to if you didn't do it perfect on the retest YOU FAILED THE COURSE. After that nightmare you took a written test that was some how written worse that the COMLEX OMM questions. You also had horrible weekly quizzes to deal with... Just not fun. Many of us wondered if the department was failing people in the physical test they saw as troublemakers, this certainly increased our suspicion when we were told proctor were randomly assigned but often one person would have the exact same proctor for most of the year!!! Yeah this class scared us and made many of us so resentful we refused to use OMM on any of our clinical rotations. In our 3rd and 4th years we did a little bit of OMM during callbacks or the two week 4th year superdupper OPPaluza. This was a zero stress event where they when back over the things we learned before in 1st and 2nd year and learned a few extra tricks, it kind of sucked if you had to fly or drive back to the hattiesburg because your rotation site was far away but the actual course wasn't bad.

Anatomy: For us this class was awesome. It had a lecture and a cadaver lab and honestly they could drop the lecture because most of the time you could pick up what was being taught in the lecture from the lab and other courses. We had great professors for the most part and it seems everybody loves the new professors too. You do this in your first year not much to add just the lecture was extra not really needed.

Biochem: Oh dear... This course is well not biochem, its actually more the weird pathologies every board exam thinks is super important but instead of teaching it fully we are just gonna brush over it a bit and hope someone else teaches it to you but in your 2nd semester we will do random presentations on the same diseases instead of teaching it to you. Super nice professor and very easy to talk to but the course... needs help. Cut this class should just be path started in your first year. We don't need repeats of the same material leading to conflicts on test day.

Neuroanatomy/neurology: This is a pseudo 1st year mostly a 2nd year course. It too is really good and the professor are great. It had separate tests from integrated too and I still don't understand this because often they would cover the exact same material, they would just do it better than the other lectures. This should be integrated. Just whatever organ system you are on discuss the innervation of the organ system in the first year and teach full on neurology in the 2nd with the other lecturers.

What the Path??/Pathology: In the 1st year you kind of start pathology doing the first 3 or 4 chapters of Robins, while this isn't difficult why don't they start this as a part of the organ systems blocks from day one, its again not efficient or effective. 2nd year you start actual pathology but man oh man is it bad. Poor professor has to cover a ton of material he goes so fast in his lectures you can't understand anything I mean he powers through 500 or so powerpoint slides in 50 mins! It is crazy and his tests are super difficult. Doing pathoma helps a ton but it won't get you the pass on exam day. Luckily though the exam is not were you get most of your points, you get them from extra assignments however these take time something you don't have ANY of in med school. If this started on day one of the first year as a part of the organ systems you wouldn't have to cram a ton of information in like they do and in 2nd year you can make it more clinically relevant to what ever that block is. Currently it just a horrible way to do things.

Microbiology: This one by far is the most well intended course that just doesn't work out. I mean you just feel so bad for the professors they put in a ton of work and they are so nice and it ...just ...doesn't ...work. Every year they change the way they do things so any feedback anyone gives is going to be different from year to year. For the most part they try to teach a little bit in 1st year and the some more in 2nd and they CONSTANTLY repeat similar lectures on similar organisms. Also in 2nd year they TRY to teach antibiotic to kill bugs often leading to conflicting information with the same things being taught from the pharm crew. WHY? Just teach the bugs and how to spot them and leave how to kill them to the pharm crew. Again this is another class that could be started from day one 1st year organ system to organ system on the boring bug stuff then in 2nd year more on how the infection presents clinically and how you spot them.

Pharm: Again another well intended poorly executed course. You start this in 2nd year like many other schools and some of the lectures are good but others are not good and when they were bad WOW it got really bad. The professors that run this course can be super nice one day and the biggest jerks the next especially when there was a conflict with anything they taught. These conflicts could easily and professionally been avoided but often it would result in strongly worded arguments between students and having to guess on tests because you had no idea whos question it was. As stated above biggest conflicts were with micro but sometimes with Clinical sciences and pathology too. This course should start on day one of 1st year ( are you seeing a trend yet?) mostly covering the mechanism of drugs and metabolism and all that boring stuff then in 2nd year should be side effects, drug drug interactions and best drugs for the situation. This is crazy important for microbio/ infections like what is the best drug for a URI when you don't no the organism and PT presents with these symptoms or that but the organism is H.Flu or come back resistant to drug X? Way better than trying to cram all the boring stuff in with the more interesting stuff.

Clinical sciences: Like 2nd year doctoring skills but its a mix up of all the subjects above taught system to system with some COMLEX level 2 CE stuff mixed in. This course is a massive chunk of your grades too. They try to teach you all the important things but some how end up focusing on things we don't understand or care about at this level. In a time where we are freaking out about COMLEX level 1 and USMLE step 1they are trying to force LEvel 2 like stuff on us in the most boring and hard to learn way possible. You know the best way to learn clinical skills? IN the clinic!!! It should involve graded SP experences from day one of 1st year and be merged with OMM and Doctoring skills and be taught across 3 years and it should involve student/physician run clinics allowing you to get early clinical exposure.

Some classes/things the school needs... You can read this if you want to just made me feel better to write about it
Medical interpretation and terminology: I can't tell you how bad the school needs to teach how to read radiological images, EKGs and EEGs and proper medical terminology. Outside of a short lecture here or there on CT vs MRI or medical terminology jeopardy, I was never taught this stuff so I struggle to this day to understand it. Overtime I have gotten better at reading EKGs and X rays but medical terms still kill me. This should be a part of every single block and actually teach medical terminology don't just put it on a test and think they will figure it out.

Get rid of the you will learn it later mentality: The assumption that we will learn something next year only to be told you already learned that last year/ should have learn that last year is super frustrating. The school needs a plan for the full instruction of every single student and this student should demonstrate that instruction or they should be retaught it.

Get rid of The fail 'em mentality: The school is quick to slam the fail button on students that really just need a little bit of extra help. I get some people are not cut out for medical school. Have a better selection process only picking students that you know beyond a reasonable doubt will succeed. But what about all those people that should be given the chance to prove they can be great med students, sure give them the chance in a strong medical masters 3 year program that once completed to satisfaction grants admission into the medical school in advanced standing (you start as a 3rd year). The current masters program is way too weak makes people overconfident ( They often struggle 2nd year), you should be doing the exact same stuff the med students do with extra things like research in the summer. Also hire real tutors not other medical students that are busy and note takers when student can't be there due to clinic day or conference or don't want to be.

Early clinical exposure and mock exams: It would be great if there were 3 clinics run by the school. One family med/ urgent care, one Rural OB/gyn care and one peds. It should be a part of your grades to help run these clinics along side physicians and other admin. That means not only will you have days where you see patients and write notes with the doc, but days where you schedule patients, bring them back a triage them or give injections along side a nurse and accept money and learn billing practice and how docs and clinics get paid. It would also be great if there were full on 12 patient OCSEs in the first year, not just your 3rd year with feedback from the SPs and professors on all cases not just a random 3.

Attendance: If you want to take it go for it just don't punish students for it. If there is some rule that mandates X amount of time, ok have the students make up that time in clinic during the summer or before starting 3rd year. You can even take the data and send it to the student showing them that their score have been dropping coincides with their lack of attendance.

Make the lectures interactive: I am not talking about the flipped classroom stuff I am talking about just taking key words out of a powerpoint and having students key in answers with the clicker, not for a grade or anything just to make it more of an activity. You could even send this information back to the student so they can figure out weaknesses quickly.

Test and grade block by block: If you pass that block you pass if you fail that block you remediate that block over winter or summer break. It should be a rapid remediation of the entire block and have a shorter version of a test or some other assignment that is automatically graded. Fail remediation repeat the year. Fail more than 2 blocks in a semester or more than 3 in a year, repeat the year. Make the tests an actual integrated exam, give it the same feel of board exams not just a mix up of different subjects actually integrate the questions like you have to know a little microbio or path in order to figure out the actual drug noted in the question or to figure out the best OMM treatment or the most reasonable medical tool to use in the exam of the patient and give an immediate raw score after taking the test don't make a student wait weeks to figure out they just failed something they thought they did awesome on. Take it easy on linked questions too. A student shouldn't have to miss 5 questions because they couldn't figure out the key question. Geez that sucks.

I am sure there are reasons many of these things can't happen; money, school presidents; faculty, Aoa rules ect...






Location: Hattiesburg. To most people in the US this is a small town but it does have a few good bars and restaurant to decompress in. Rents are cheap and housing is nice. Not too bad of a place to raise chulins but it could be hard for a wife or husband to find a fair paying job. Its also close to New Orleans and not too far from Jackson. Compared to many other spots in MS its not too bad.

Cost: 42 K per year. Still one of the cheaper schools but 42 grand is still a lot of money.

Faculty: meh... Many of the bad ones are gone, jury is still out on the newer ones but so far people are pretty happy with them. The admin and staff thou... That needs some help. It maybe a combo of not knowing what they are doing or laziness but this often results in frustration for everybody. Grades get messed up often, the class rank makes NO sense, your MSPE looks like it was copy and pasted from the NRMP website. There are just way too many short cuts being taken and people that do awesome work are often over worked and not recognized. Overall result leads to things being absolutely a mess for anyone that has to deal with the school.

Reputation: Poor. First of all it is a super small DO school. Often many people (DO students, doctors, programs) have never heard of it. When it has been heard of it is ride or die usually on the last Carey person that went through. If they did awesome often you will hear good things about the school, not so awesome yeah... This becomes a big deal in your 3rd and 4th years. 3rd year preceptors often drop carey students most often due to the school dropping the ball or being too annoying but some times because a student was SO bad. 4th year VSAS stuff can also get messed up by the school sending the wrong paper work but this is rare. Most stuff works out well 4th year. We also have been having board score and attrition rate problems. USMLE is super weak for us and our comlex scores go up one year and drop the next never to beat the national average. PE failure rates are often double other schools even though we have 12 more simulated patient encounters than other schools. Recently the match rates were terrible. Before SOAP and Scramble less than half the class had matched with most scrambling into Aoa spots left over in fields they had no interest in or in weak programs they were not happy with. The whole match for DOs was difficult and this year it will most likely be worse.

Clinical Rotations: 3rd year is preceptor based for 90% of people in a multitude of different sites with most people being in Hattiesburg. Some sites are better organized than others and have smooth transitions with little problems others just have problems all day. Education also varies but for most being taught directly from an attending doesn't let you experience much. Some rotations you can't do anything but watch others you are fully involved. You do everything month to month. Rotations are peds, psych, family 2 months, IM, Surgery, EM, and one elective surgery and one elective medicine. 4th year you are on your own to set up your rotations but it is a total of 36 weeks that is half surgery half medicine ish... tons of exceptions.

Housing: Cheap and available

Study areas: Great. Lots of space to spread out at the school or you can find a coffee shop in town.

Social Scene: Umm meh student, aint gots no times fer dat. For the most part you are gonna be pretty busy but you should have enough time to work out daily at the Y and take a day off on non test weeks to enjoy a few drinks with friends/met people/see family ect. Once you understand the rhythm of study this gets easy

Local Hospitals: Not the best. Again small town equals smaller selection due to lack of competition. Forest General is the "big" hospital but it can be hard to get rotations there in your 3rd year. Most people do most of their 3rd year rotations at hattiesburg clinic or Merit health Wesley. Wesley has a residency program in EM, IM and TRI, while Forest has an FM program. Again smaller hospitals. None of these hospitals are concidered a home program for Carey although they accept many of our grads.

Board Prep: Nope. Mostly on your own. One of the Deans trys to help out by running a board review session but they are short and cover very little.

Specialty match: Most people match in IM or Family. Years past we had one person match Aoa ortho. For the most part though the surgical subs are not gonna work out. Gen surg is common and people do match in EM, Gas and Neuro, few people do match at awesome IM spots and the military match is pretty friendly. Psych, PMR and NMS/Family does happen although this is rare mostly because of a lack of interest in these fields. Many people that want to do rads don't get it right out of the gate but thats ok they like gas and surgery need to do a prelim year anyway and commonly get it after that. People that like Peds and OB/Gyn often have no trouble getting these. So if you do come here just know you may need to apply pretty broadly to programs you want and be ok with traveling and in all likelihood you will match. If you want to be an ortho sport med guy, Urologist, CT surg, Ophthalmologist, Derm, Rad onc, neurosurg or some other weird random double/triple/quad board specialist I can comfortably say thats not gonna happen.

Grades:A/B/C/try again. As stated above grades can be harsh. 3rd and 4th year is Pass/high pass/pass w/a side of honors/ Try again. Getting Honors in your 3rd year can be really difficult some times impossible. Comat scores ( Terrible test by the way) have to exceed 100, all busy work has to be perfect and your preceptor has to give you a 90 or above. Most people couldn't hit the COMAT scores but got great preceptor scores, others would have a ton of time and luck and would land 114 on the comats just to get a 71 from a preceptor. These scores end up in your MSPE. Nothing you do your 4th year ends up in your MSPE... Nothing. No COMATs but a ton of busy work from the school.


Financial Aid: It can be frustrating to figure out when you refund is gonna come but it always does. Carey has full government loans and GI bill stuff.

Technology: We have some cool stuff, patient dummies, clinical exam simulators, practice suture lab stuff... for the most part you never use them. Computers are a constant head ache, the lecture recordings work most of the time and the sound system in the lecture hall is a constant problem. Lights work great though and there is vending machines that are well stocked most of the time.
Library: We keep books there, ones you won't be reading. You can study there if you want to but they open late and close early. Just study in the school or a local coffee shop.



Overall Grade: Pass. Hey Carey has problems some are really bad but it is still a medical school and well worth sending an app to. Things are improving, Just do not come here expecting awesome research, early or great clinical exposure, good board prep or a match in a super competitive specialty. Don't expect things to change while you are here either or think you are going to be a huge force that will reshape the school. Take it as it is.

I encourage everyone to review your options wisely. Don't fall for false promises or half truths, don't chase research you don't need. You want a school that is going to make your first two years as painless as possible but know it is hard every where, best schools are going to make things easy for you to learn and motivate you to remember it. Good schools get out of your way and let you take boards when YOU are ready. Good schools guide you in your 3rd and 4th years giving you the best clinical exposure on resident run teams. Expect to be busy all 4 years.

 

[psd242]

I have been getting a lot of private messages from peeps asking me what I think about the school and should I go blaa blaa so I will do a more recent review for ya to help you guy collect data and opinions from current students, hopefully other STUDENTS ( Admin/faculty/staff if you post don't pose as a student) will follow.
Again I advise you look at forums from past years and compare and keep in mind the rank of the poster. (A premed that has friends in the school holds less weight than a 3rd year that just took boards but it maybe better to hear from a current 2nd year about 1st year curriculum than a 4th year)

I am a current 4th year. I will be commenting on things that may have changed so you can better understand my perspective and the thinking of the school.
Also a little commentary on changes I feel would improve the school.
Curriculum: General overview :When I was in 1st and 2nd year everything was in a didactic lecture in a pseudo organ system subject by subject style ( You would be in an organ system block like cardio but each individual subject would be taught separately by those departments in a non integrated way, although for some reason that no one understands they called the exams integrated but in truth they were just a mix of the different subjects even graded differently by the different professors. This commonly led to different professors teaching the complete opposite of each other. You can imagine the confusion on the actual test day when you had to figure out if this was a Professor D question or a Dr. Y question. Anyway... You come in the morning got powerpoint lectures until 3 to 4pm then you went home to study some more. Attendance was mandatory and they always checked it, now they seem a bit more lax. For the most part the information presented was correct but from time to time it was incorrect, the professors never corrected these mistakes and they often annoyingly ended up on tests. Tests were also plagued with mis-spellings and grammatical errors, multiple correct answers and the "because I said so" correct answers. Often some of the test scenarios were ridiculous and difficult to follow but for the most part if you were studying for boards and you studied the powerpoints the week of the test Bs were likely.

Histology: Not a bad class at all my year however it would seem that this class got really bad recently but that professor re-retired. Hopefully some really nice 2nd year will post about the new professor. This was the least useful class and the most board irrelevant. Honestly I am not sure why med school still teach this class as it would be way better taught as a microscope pathology class, I mean after all you never know what you'll find between to pieces of glass right. Way easy to test too, just name this thing I am pointing at.

Physio: The most board relevant course but for us was taught like we were *****ic two year olds. This professor too has moved on and has been replaced by two awesome people but thats about all I know. Again perhaps a 2nd year will comment on this course a bit. For us we just rocked out guyton and ignored the lectures and powerpoints, this by far was the most difficult course for us not only because of the way it was taught but just because the subject matter is difficult to master. I really don't understand why this isn't taught over two years in an honest organ system integrated way 1st year and a clinically integrated way in the 2nd but hey what do I know.

Doctoring skills: This was the class that had everybody honestly about to grab pitchforks and start a revolt. It was meant to show us how do each part of the entire clinical exam head to toe and it some how did none of this. Instead it had us writing essays about pictures in the hallways, answering questions about submarine warfare and southern history and do a ton of because I told you so style of busy work. This thing should completely redone and merged with OPP and clinical skills and taught across 3, yes 3 years because all of the how to do a physical exam, how to present to attendings ( not taught in any course), how to properly use medical equipment, what you should expect to see useing that medical equipment ( not taught), how to write a SOAP note PE style ( not taught well), how to write a follow up SOAP note (not taught), how to write a note for a first encounter ( not taught) and how to intergrate OMM into every day practice ( not taught).

OMM/OPP/OMT/the osteopathic stuff : You do this across 4 years per the Aoa requirement for us it was a tuesday thursday thing that had a lecture in the morning and either this was followed by a physical OMM lab or doctoring skills lab ( 1st year) or physical OMM lab or clinical skills lab ( 2nd year). Your first 2 years you will learn to fear this class, we sure did. Now again most of the professors that terrorized us are gone now and the way it has been done has changed so hopefully a 2nd year will pop on here and comment. Our tests were insanely difficult and required hours and hours of physical practice and study more than any other class. You had to put in a solid two weeks of study if you hoped to pass. For me this class was by far the most difficult and every day I just could not understand it. I was very very lucky to have some awesome classmate that literally and figuratively held me up in this class otherwise I would have failed out for sure. Yes the tests were that hard. OPP had its own separate test which made ZERO sense other than it made the OPP department seem more important I guess. On test day you would first do a physical test that was awkward at best. For our year if you didn't do everything perfectly on your first run through to the individual proctors desired wish you had to retest any thing they wanted you to if you didn't do it perfect on the retest YOU FAILED THE COURSE. After that nightmare you took a written test that was some how written worse that the COMLEX OMM questions. You also had horrible weekly quizzes to deal with... Just not fun. Many of us wondered if the department was failing people in the physical test they saw as troublemakers, this certainly increased our suspicion when we were told proctor were randomly assigned but often one person would have the exact same proctor for most of the year!!! Yeah this class scared us and made many of us so resentful we refused to use OMM on any of our clinical rotations. In our 3rd and 4th years we did a little bit of OMM during callbacks or the two week 4th year superdupper OPPaluza. This was a zero stress event where they when back over the things we learned before in 1st and 2nd year and learned a few extra tricks, it kind of sucked if you had to fly or drive back to the hattiesburg because your rotation site was far away but the actual course wasn't bad.

Anatomy: For us this class was awesome. It had a lecture and a cadaver lab and honestly they could drop the lecture because most of the time you could pick up what was being taught in the lecture from the lab and other courses. We had great professors for the most part and it seems everybody loves the new professors too. You do this in your first year not much to add just the lecture was extra not really needed.

Biochem: Oh dear... This course is well not biochem, its actually more the weird pathologies every board exam thinks is super important but instead of teaching it fully we are just gonna brush over it a bit and hope someone else teaches it to you but in your 2nd semester we will do random presentations on the same diseases instead of teaching it to you. Super nice professor and very easy to talk to but the course... needs help. Cut this class should just be path started in your first year. We don't need repeats of the same material leading to conflicts on test day.

Neuroanatomy/neurology: This is a pseudo 1st year mostly a 2nd year course. It too is really good and the professor are great. It had separate tests from integrated too and I still don't understand this because often they would cover the exact same material, they would just do it better than the other lectures. This should be integrated. Just whatever organ system you are on discuss the innervation of the organ system in the first year and teach full on neurology in the 2nd with the other lecturers.

What the Path??/Pathology: In the 1st year you kind of start pathology doing the first 3 or 4 chapters of Robins, while this isn't difficult why don't they start this as a part of the organ systems blocks from day one, its again not efficient or effective. 2nd year you start actual pathology but man oh man is it bad. Poor professor has to cover a ton of material he goes so fast in his lectures you can't understand anything I mean he powers through 500 or so powerpoint slides in 50 mins! It is crazy and his tests are super difficult. Doing pathoma helps a ton but it won't get you the pass on exam day. Luckily though the exam is not were you get most of your points, you get them from extra assignments however these take time something you don't have ANY of in med school. If this started on day one of the first year as a part of the organ systems you wouldn't have to cram a ton of information in like they do and in 2nd year you can make it more clinically relevant to what ever that block is. Currently it just a horrible way to do things.

Microbiology: This one by far is the most well intended course that just doesn't work out. I mean you just feel so bad for the professors they put in a ton of work and they are so nice and it ...just ...doesn't ...work. Every year they change the way they do things so any feedback anyone gives is going to be different from year to year. For the most part they try to teach a little bit in 1st year and the some more in 2nd and they CONSTANTLY repeat similar lectures on similar organisms. Also in 2nd year they TRY to teach antibiotic to kill bugs often leading to conflicting information with the same things being taught from the pharm crew. WHY? Just teach the bugs and how to spot them and leave how to kill them to the pharm crew. Again this is another class that could be started from day one 1st year organ system to organ system on the boring bug stuff then in 2nd year more on how the infection presents clinically and how you spot them.

Pharm: Again another well intended poorly executed course. You start this in 2nd year like many other schools and some of the lectures are good but others are not good and when they were bad WOW it got really bad. The professors that run this course can be super nice one day and the biggest jerks the next especially when there was a conflict with anything they taught. These conflicts could easily and professionally been avoided but often it would result in strongly worded arguments between students and having to guess on tests because you had no idea whos question it was. As stated above biggest conflicts were with micro but sometimes with Clinical sciences and pathology too. This course should start on day one of 1st year ( are you seeing a trend yet?) mostly covering the mechanism of drugs and metabolism and all that boring stuff then in 2nd year should be side effects, drug drug interactions and best drugs for the situation. This is crazy important for microbio/ infections like what is the best drug for a URI when you don't no the organism and PT presents with these symptoms or that but the organism is H.Flu or come back resistant to drug X? Way better than trying to cram all the boring stuff in with the more interesting stuff.

Clinical sciences: Like 2nd year doctoring skills but its a mix up of all the subjects above taught system to system with some COMLEX level 2 CE stuff mixed in. This course is a massive chunk of your grades too. They try to teach you all the important things but some how end up focusing on things we don't understand or care about at this level. In a time where we are freaking out about COMLEX level 1 and USMLE step 1they are trying to force LEvel 2 like stuff on us in the most boring and hard to learn way possible. You know the best way to learn clinical skills? IN the clinic!!! It should involve graded SP experences from day one of 1st year and be merged with OMM and Doctoring skills and be taught across 3 years and it should involve student/physician run clinics allowing you to get early clinical exposure.

Some classes/things the school needs... You can read this if you want to just made me feel better to write about it
Medical interpretation and terminology: I can't tell you how bad the school needs to teach how to read radiological images, EKGs and EEGs and proper medical terminology. Outside of a short lecture here or there on CT vs MRI or medical terminology jeopardy, I was never taught this stuff so I struggle to this day to understand it. Overtime I have gotten better at reading EKGs and X rays but medical terms still kill me. This should be a part of every single block and actually teach medical terminology don't just put it on a test and think they will figure it out.

Get rid of the you will learn it later mentality: The assumption that we will learn something next year only to be told you already learned that last year/ should have learn that last year is super frustrating. The school needs a plan for the full instruction of every single student and this student should demonstrate that instruction or they should be retaught it.

Get rid of The fail 'em mentality: The school is quick to slam the fail button on students that really just need a little bit of extra help. I get some people are not cut out for medical school. Have a better selection process only picking students that you know beyond a reasonable doubt will succeed. But what about all those people that should be given the chance to prove they can be great med students, sure give them the chance in a strong medical masters 3 year program that once completed to satisfaction grants admission into the medical school in advanced standing (you start as a 3rd year). The current masters program is way too weak makes people overconfident ( They often struggle 2nd year), you should be doing the exact same stuff the med students do with extra things like research in the summer. Also hire real tutors not other medical students that are busy and note takers when student can't be there due to clinic day or conference or don't want to be.

Early clinical exposure and mock exams: It would be great if there were 3 clinics run by the school. One family med/ urgent care, one Rural OB/gyn care and one peds. It should be a part of your grades to help run these clinics along side physicians and other admin. That means not only will you have days where you see patients and write notes with the doc, but days where you schedule patients, bring them back a triage them or give injections along side a nurse and accept money and learn billing practice and how docs and clinics get paid. It would also be great if there were full on 12 patient OCSEs in the first year, not just your 3rd year with feedback from the SPs and professors on all cases not just a random 3.

Attendance: If you want to take it go for it just don't punish students for it. If there is some rule that mandates X amount of time, ok have the students make up that time in clinic during the summer or before starting 3rd year. You can even take the data and send it to the student showing them that their score have been dropping coincides with their lack of attendance.

Make the lectures interactive: I am not talking about the flipped classroom stuff I am talking about just taking key words out of a powerpoint and having students key in answers with the clicker, not for a grade or anything just to make it more of an activity. You could even send this information back to the student so they can figure out weaknesses quickly.

Test and grade block by block: If you pass that block you pass if you fail that block you remediate that block over winter or summer break. It should be a rapid remediation of the entire block and have a shorter version of a test or some other assignment that is automatically graded. Fail remediation repeat the year. Fail more than 2 blocks in a semester or more than 3 in a year, repeat the year. Make the tests an actual integrated exam, give it the same feel of board exams not just a mix up of different subjects actually integrate the questions like you have to know a little microbio or path in order to figure out the actual drug noted in the question or to figure out the best OMM treatment or the most reasonable medical tool to use in the exam of the patient and give an immediate raw score after taking the test don't make a student wait weeks to figure out they just failed something they thought they did awesome on. Take it easy on linked questions too. A student shouldn't have to miss 5 questions because they couldn't figure out the key question. Geez that sucks.

I am sure there are reasons many of these things can't happen; money, school presidents; faculty, Aoa rules ect...






Location: Hattiesburg. To most people in the US this is a small town but it does have a few good bars and restaurant to decompress in. Rents are cheap and housing is nice. Not too bad of a place to raise chulins but it could be hard for a wife or husband to find a fair paying job. Its also close to New Orleans and not too far from Jackson. Compared to many other spots in MS its not too bad.

Cost: 42 K per year. Still one of the cheaper schools but 42 grand is still a lot of money.

Faculty: meh... Many of the bad ones are gone, jury is still out on the newer ones but so far people are pretty happy with them. The admin and staff thou... That needs some help. It maybe a combo of not knowing what they are doing or laziness but this often results in frustration for everybody. Grades get messed up often, the class rank makes NO sense, your MSPE looks like it was copy and pasted from the NRMP website. There are just way too many short cuts being taken and people that do awesome work are often over worked and not recognized. Overall result leads to things being absolutely a mess for anyone that has to deal with the school.

Reputation: Poor. First of all it is a super small DO school. Often many people (DO students, doctors, programs) have never heard of it. When it has been heard of it is ride or die usually on the last Carey person that went through. If they did awesome often you will hear good things about the school, not so awesome yeah... This becomes a big deal in your 3rd and 4th years. 3rd year preceptors often drop carey students most often due to the school dropping the ball or being too annoying but some times because a student was SO bad. 4th year VSAS stuff can also get messed up by the school sending the wrong paper work but this is rare. Most stuff works out well 4th year. We also have been having board score and attrition rate problems. USMLE is super weak for us and our comlex scores go up one year and drop the next never to beat the national average. PE failure rates are often double other schools even though we have 12 more simulated patient encounters than other schools. Recently the match rates were terrible. Before SOAP and Scramble less than half the class had matched with most scrambling into Aoa spots left over in fields they had no interest in or in weak programs they were not happy with. The whole match for DOs was difficult and this year it will most likely be worse.

Clinical Rotations: 3rd year is preceptor based for 90% of people in a multitude of different sites with most people being in Hattiesburg. Some sites are better organized than others and have smooth transitions with little problems others just have problems all day. Education also varies but for most being taught directly from an attending doesn't let you experience much. Some rotations you can't do anything but watch others you are fully involved. You do everything month to month. Rotations are peds, psych, family 2 months, IM, Surgery, EM, and one elective surgery and one elective medicine. 4th year you are on your own to set up your rotations but it is a total of 36 weeks that is half surgery half medicine ish... tons of exceptions.

Housing: Cheap and available

Study areas: Great. Lots of space to spread out at the school or you can find a coffee shop in town.

Social Scene: Umm meh student, aint gots no times fer dat. For the most part you are gonna be pretty busy but you should have enough time to work out daily at the Y and take a day off on non test weeks to enjoy a few drinks with friends/met people/see family ect. Once you understand the rhythm of study this gets easy

Local Hospitals: Not the best. Again small town equals smaller selection due to lack of competition. Forest General is the "big" hospital but it can be hard to get rotations there in your 3rd year. Most people do most of their 3rd year rotations at hattiesburg clinic or Merit health Wesley. Wesley has a residency program in EM, IM and TRI, while Forest has an FM program. Again smaller hospitals. None of these hospitals are concidered a home program for Carey although they accept many of our grads.

Board Prep: Nope. Mostly on your own. One of the Deans trys to help out by running a board review session but they are short and cover very little.

Specialty match: Most people match in IM or Family. Years past we had one person match Aoa ortho. For the most part though the surgical subs are not gonna work out. Gen surg is common and people do match in EM, Gas and Neuro, few people do match at awesome IM spots and the military match is pretty friendly. Psych, PMR and NMS/Family does happen although this is rare mostly because of a lack of interest in these fields. Many people that want to do rads don't get it right out of the gate but thats ok they like gas and surgery need to do a prelim year anyway and commonly get it after that. People that like Peds and OB/Gyn often have no trouble getting these. So if you do come here just know you may need to apply pretty broadly to programs you want and be ok with traveling and in all likelihood you will match. If you want to be an ortho sport med guy, Urologist, CT surg, Ophthalmologist, Derm, Rad onc, neurosurg or some other weird random double/triple/quad board specialist I can comfortably say thats not gonna happen.

Grades:A/B/C/try again. As stated above grades can be harsh. 3rd and 4th year is Pass/high pass/pass w/a side of honors/ Try again. Getting Honors in your 3rd year can be really difficult some times impossible. Comat scores ( Terrible test by the way) have to exceed 100, all busy work has to be perfect and your preceptor has to give you a 90 or above. Most people couldn't hit the COMAT scores but got great preceptor scores, others would have a ton of time and luck and would land 114 on the comats just to get a 71 from a preceptor. These scores end up in your MSPE. Nothing you do your 4th year ends up in your MSPE... Nothing. No COMATs but a ton of busy work from the school.


Financial Aid: It can be frustrating to figure out when you refund is gonna come but it always does. Carey has full government loans and GI bill stuff.

Technology: We have some cool stuff, patient dummies, clinical exam simulators, practice suture lab stuff... for the most part you never use them. Computers are a constant head ache, the lecture recordings work most of the time and the sound system in the lecture hall is a constant problem. Lights work great though and there is vending machines that are well stocked most of the time.
Library: We keep books there, ones you won't be reading. You can study there if you want to but they open late and close early. Just study in the school or a local coffee shop.



Overall Grade: Pass. Hey Carey has problems some are really bad but it is still a medical school and well worth sending an app to. Things are improving, Just do not come here expecting awesome research, early or great clinical exposure, good board prep or a match in a super competitive specialty. Don't expect things to change while you are here either or think you are going to be a huge force that will reshape the school. Take it as it is.

I encourage everyone to review your options wisely. Don't fall for false promises or half truths, don't chase research you don't need. You want a school that is going to make your first two years as painless as possible but know it is hard every where, best schools are going to make things easy for you to learn and motivate you to remember it. Good schools get out of your way and let you take boards when YOU are ready. Good schools guide you in your 3rd and 4th years giving you the best clinical exposure on resident run teams. Expect to be busy all 4 years.

Wow, thanks for the write up! I had no idea what kind of things y'all went through. I can't speak to any of the complaints regarding 2nd/3rd/4th year, I just started 2nd year. Someone else passing by will have to confirm/deny those issues . I can respond to the ones that changed in the last few years though.

Instead it had us writing essays about pictures in the hallways, answering questions about submarine warfare and southern history and do a ton of because I told you so style of busy work.

We didn't have to do any of this last year in Doc Skills... That's completely unrelated to doc skills, and if that happened last year we probably would have also had pitchforks ready to go. That just sounds infuriating.

They made it pretty chill/lowkey for us last year. People kinda put the class on the backburner and floated out without much hard work.

The most board relevant course but for us was taught like we were *****ic two year olds. This professor too has moved on and has been replaced by two awesome people but thats about all I know

Physio was fine for us. Some people DID fail, so the class wasn't easy, but overall I think the new professors were good. I didn't know of the previous professors though, so I can't compare/contrast.

Your first 2 years you will learn to fear this class, we sure did. Now again most of the professors that terrorized us are gone now and the way it has been done has changed so hopefully a 2nd year will pop on here and comment.

Similar to physio in that the professors were good. There were some things I had issue with (some CSA shenanigans), but I don't think we were overall terrorized. 5 out of the 6 exams were fair imo, 1 was physically painful.

 

[WorldChanger36]

Physio was fine for us. Some people DID fail, so the class wasn't easy, but overall I think the new professors were good. I didn't know of the previous professors though, so I can't compare/contrast.

Similar to physio in that the professors were good. There were some things I had issue with (some CSA shenanigans), but I don't think we were overall terrorized. 5 out of the 6 exams were fair imo, 1 was physically painful.

Glad to see things are improving.

 

[drtacocat]

Current 1st year, never on here and hardly in any position to give advice or answer questions about the school, but wanted to pop in and say to all applicants - DO NOT freak out about not getting an interview when your app was submitted yesterday. Our class has people who interviewed in April or maybe even later. It's barely August, yo. For this school you aren't late one bit - the 2nd group of interviews of the season was today. And there is generally WL movement. If anyone has questions about my stats or anything, PM me but I can't guarantee that I'll remember to check. IMO the advice is best left to the 2nd years and up. Good luck all and hope to see lots of you next year!

 

[WorldChanger36]

Current 1st year, never on here and hardly in any position to give advice or answer questions about the school, but wanted to pop in and say to all applicants - DO NOT freak out about not getting an interview when your app was submitted yesterday. Our class has people who interviewed in April or maybe even later. It's barely August, yo. For this school you aren't late one bit - the 2nd group of interviews of the season was today. And there is generally WL movement. If anyone has questions about my stats or anything, PM me but I can't guarantee that I'll remember to check. IMO the advice is best left to the 2nd years and up. Good luck all and hope to see lots of you next year!

This is true however if you have not received a 2ndary after 3 months of waiting just know your stuff has been covered up by 3 months of others people. Same again when you submit your secondary and it takes longer than 3 months to get an invite. When they review app they just go from the top of the pile to bottom, top of the pile being the most recent received information. This doesnt mean that you wont eventually get an invite but makes it less likely. There is not much forgiveness from the pile.

 

[doc1994]

Accepted!

 

[journeytomed12]

Accepted!

How did you find out? Did you call and ask? Official letters dont got out until October 1st

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[doc1994]

How did you find out? Did you call and ask? Official letters dont got out until October 1st

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Yeah I called

 

[journeytomed12]

Yeah I called

When did you interview?

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[doc1994]

When did you interview?

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Last Monday

 

[PickleRickelus]

Accepted!

Congratulations! I guess they make a decision pretty quickly. What was the interview format? Was it traditional or MMI?

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[doc1994]

Congratulations! I guess they make a decision pretty quickly. What was the interview format? Was it traditional or MMI?

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Thanks! It was traditional and super laid-back

 

[PickleRickelus]

Thanks! It was traditional and super laid-back

Nice that's what I'm hoping for! Anyway congratulations man and thanks for the heads up. By the way what was your impression of the campus overall?

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[doc1994]

Nice that's what I'm hoping for! Anyway congratulations man and thanks for the heads up. By the way what was your impression of the campus overall?

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Thanks man! I went in with low expetations but came out with a good impression of the school. The campus is a bit small but gets the job done. They have an on-campus cafeteria that was actually pretty good. Housing is also dirt cheap from what I heard

 

[neurophilic]

Hey just wondering how long it took to get confirmation that they received your secondary. Anyone care to shed some light?

 

[premedmommyx2]

Hey just wondering how long it took to get confirmation that they received your secondary. Anyone care to shed some light?

24 hrs for me

 

[PB3220]

Accepted! WCUCOM felt like home. The staff who interviewed were very nice. #southernhospitality

 

[doc1994]

Recently interviewed here and am patiently waiting for the committee meeting on Wednesday afternoon. For those who have interviewed previously, at the end of your interview did Dr. Weir remind you again to call his office for some "feedback" after the committee meeting? Maybe I'm just overthinking things but wasn't sure if he personally says that to everyone or what.

Yeah that's what he told us. I called him last Wednesday and he gave me the "good news." Don't trip, I'm sure you got in

 

[jt4]

Yeah that's what he told us. I called him last Wednesday and he gave me the "good news." Don't trip, I'm sure you got in

Thanks! I'm hoping so. I was really impressed with their school. I asked the med students what the post interview acceptance rate was but they weren't sure. They only could say the rate is high.

 

[doc1994]

Thanks! I'm hoping so. I was really impressed with their school. I asked the med students what the post interview acceptance rate was but they weren't sure. They only could say the rate is high.

I'm sure it's relatively high. They only interview students they truly want

 

[Scrublife17]

II yesterday for November 2nd!

 

[Noeo]

II yesterday for November 2nd!

Congrats! When were you complete and what are your stats? I was complete 8/2/2018, LizzyM 62, OOS (California), still no response. I really like the mission of this school and I think I'm a good fit but we will have to see.

 

[journeytomed12]

Accepted!!!!

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[Scrublife17]

Congrats! When were you complete and what are your stats? I was complete 8/2/2018, LizzyM 62, OOS (California), still no response. I really like the mission of this school and I think I'm a good fit but we will have to see.

Was complete 8/8, II 8/21. Will pm about stats

 

[premedmommyx2]

Was complete 8/8, II 8/21. Will pm about stats

i was complete 8/9-- care to share with me as well?

 

[jt4]

Accepted!!!!

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Congratulations!! When did you interview?

 

[journeytomed12]

Congratulations!! When did you interview?

Thank you!! Aug 13

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[idk23341]

Thank you!! Aug 13

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How did u figure out u were accepted, did u call Dr. Weir?

 

[journeytomed12]

How did u figure out u were accepted, did u call Dr. Weir?

Yep!! He was extremely nice!!

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[idk23341]

Yep!! He was extremely nice!!

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Lol I called today (interviewed Aug 17th), he told us to call this Wednesday as he would give us the good news. I tried calling, but there was no answer. I think I got rejected

 

[journeytomed12]

Lol I called today (interviewed Aug 17th), he told us to call this Wednesday as he would give us the good news. I tried calling, but there was no answer. I think I got rejected

Oh I dont think so! I interviewed on the 13th and he said they were making decisions for our group on the 15th so they probably didnt make the decision yet when you called!

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[idk23341]

Maybe he meant the following Wednesday? o man im not gonna call them again

 

[journeytomed12]

Maybe he meant the following Wednesday? o man im not gonna call them again

I'd be nervous too lol October isn't too long of a wait!

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[Xanias]

Anybody interviewing here on October 1st ?

 

[txco1994]

If I submitted a primary on 7/16 and have not heard back, should I send an email?