I'm currently trying to finalize my list and was wondering if ARCOM is near a teaching hospital?Hello, ARCOM is close by to the two hospitals in the fort smith city that have limited capacity and can not contain all of the ARCOM students for third year. But, please keep in mind that "No hospital is affiliated with ARCOM".Hello
ARCOM is close to 2 Hospitals (Mercy and Baptist Health). Mercy is about to become a teaching Hospital with ARCOM sponsoring 2 residency programs there in Family Medicine and Internal Medicine soon. And Baptist Health in Fort Smith has a Family Medicine program associated with UAMS, the state only MD school located in Little Rock. We also have an affiliation with another teaching Hospital in the state, Unity Health in Searcy, which has residency programs in Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Psychiatry. Additionally, ARCOM also plans to open other residency programs with other Hospitals too such as CHI St Vincent in Hot Springs and Baptist Health system. At the end of 2nd year, if you choose Little Rock as rotation site, you will rotate (3rd year) at the metro Baptist Health system (3 Hospitals Little Rock, North Little Rock and Conway) which has residencies (IM and FM) associated with UAMS (2 hours from Fort Smith). UAMS also has its own main teaching Hospital (with residency programs pretty much in all specialties) that you could potentially use to do your elective (or audition) rotations in your 4th year. Good luck! (See links for more info)Hello
www.swtimes.com
talkbusiness.net
www.unity-health.org
This may be a better question for admissions considering the non-canonical nature of this application cycle. Wild guess (grain of salt kinda deal) is no since LoRs are a required and essential point of evaluation for all applicants. Keep in mind submitting the application even into October is not considered late for DO.
They are both relatively new programs but the consensus favors ARCOM due to the overall support from the state. Also, tuition tuition tuition (43k vs 60k). New York Institute of Technology in Jonesboro, AR? Always found that weird.
I've been to online fairs/forums and have been really impressed by ARCOM's program from an academic / clinical POV. What I'm curious about is: What's the surrounding area like? Housing costs? Things to do, esp. for families? Do you see yourself settling down here? Are the people progressive or more traditional? Have you made good connections? Thanks!
It's a student on rotations away from Fort Smith, and other schools have had cases too.
I really have no idea why this was relevant to the thread but okay.
They are biased towards people from neighboring states as they do make majority of the class, but not heavily biased because I also know many people from other states and from the North-East in my class.
I think the majority of the class being from neighboring states may be more due to selection bias by the applicants and where they choose to attend school. Im from FL for example and was accepted early in the cycle. A good portion of the 2024 class is from coastal states as well.
Sorry, I should have said the biggest portion of the class is from in-state and neighboring states, like TX, MO, KS, OK. I'm not totally sure if they still make the majority of the class (meaning more than 50% of the class). In fact, like mentioned above the majority of any particular class is from out-of-state and that includes those neighboring states. It says on their ChooseDO page that for the 2019-2020 enrollment there were 23 in-state and 135 out-of-state. Also, I wanna point out that the school does say on their website that they give preference to people from the school service area. With that said, I'd say apply, you still have a fair chance of getting accepted here (Edit: if you have the stats and ECs necessary).
Do you have any info that you can post to support this?
With all due respect to the person who posted that comment, past posts would indicate they are a disgruntled applicant who did not get in off the waitlist. I have never heard of a "reviewer of osteopathic medical schools"...unless you're actually an employee of COCA.
Yeah I looked back after I posted and thought the same thing. I’ve lived in Arkansas most of my life and loved it. Would love to go to ARCOM and stay there. Toured there when it first opened up.. super impressed
If it follows similar trends as previous years, a secondary almost always gets followed by an interview invite after completion. So definitely complete it in a timely manner and good luck.
Yes, from previous years people would get an interview invite 2-4 days after submitting their secondary. Unless the trend changes, a secondary most likely also means an interview invite.
No, the inaugural class is one year ahead of me. Rotation sites are very decent, except preceptors can be very hit or miss with the pandemic going on right now. The school already has academic affiliation with Unity Health (read it here: ARCOM partners with Unity Health for graduate education program) and is working to create new ones with Mercy, $1.3M donation benefits New Mercy, ACHE medical school residency program; Retaining doctors will improve health care, boost economy in River Valley, leaders say | ARCOM, and CHI St Vincent, CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs Announces Residency Program. The one in CHI was supposed to begin this year, but hit some road bumps plus the pandemic, and probably won't start till next year or the year after, or hopefully by the time you graduate for sure. Staff and faculty are very friendly and you'll notice that from the very first time you set foot on campus for your interview, and if you get other interviews, you'll definitely notice the difference at other schools. Yes, the whole northwest area of Arkansas is very outdoorsy and very representative of the state slogan "the natural state". If you like hiking, biking and spending time on lakes, then you'll be very happy here for sure.
Great info, thank you. And thanks for being in the cohort that's dealing with all this unprecedented stuff! I'm sure it's really hard, but the silver lining is that it's helping the rest of the world deal with the nation's response to medical crisis and preparing medical students for that scenario, too.
I emailed today and they stated should be by end of business day monday
