Congrats on the interview!! Best of luck !
When you have you interview would you mind sharing your experience and what questions they asked? Would really appreciate it !
So here's a summary of my interview today. I'll make it pretty detailed for everyone who wants to know.
First off, the day is from 9am to 1:30pm so be prepared. Interviews are also the DUCOM (Queen Lane campus), but the DPMS program is at the Center City campus. So from 9 to 10 we settled in, introduced ourselves and met the other people interviewing that day (there were 6 other people there today) and some program details. This included:
Classes start June 19th, the committee will meet the third or fourth week of May and make decisions about who's in.
This years class has 45 seats available, they're doing about 100-115 interviews for these spots
They said 60% matriculation rate; however the former DPMSers said about 50%, so I'm guessing the 60% is based on how many people were left by semester 2.
Summer session is easy and it's important to get all As, this will give you cushion for your overall GPA. Dates are June 19 - July 31.
There's peer mentoring, free tutoring available to everyone. You get almost like a "big" (former DPMSer who can help you with anything)
Fall session is August 7 to mid-December. Possible orientation August 2 and 3 (this is for all the grad students, DPMS might not end up going to it this year)
For people worried about the MCAT, about half the former DPMSers there today had to. You take the Princeton Review MCAT prep course as a part of your DPMS courses, it's 6 credits and Pass/fail. You have 2 attempts at making it, so most people take it in January so they can get their scores back in time to know if they have to take it a second time. Your scores have to be in by sometime in April to make contract. They said that the DPMS courses (outside of the MCAT prep course) GREATLY helped them with the MCAT, especially the Biochem course. For those who don't have to retake the MCAT, you take Neuro (3 credits) and Immunology (3 credits) instead, also Pass/fail.
Most of the lectures are recorded so if you need to miss a day, you can just watch the lecture online.
After the information session, we all split apart to follow our own little schedules. We all did the same thing, just in different orders. So for my first half hour, I had to do the essay first. It was a pretty basic, what would you do in this situation question. They only give you so much space to write too so you have to be concise. My next half hour (which ended up being 40 mins) was my interview. I interviewed with one of the DUCOM professors. He asked some questions like why medicine, explain some strengths and weaknesses of your app, why DPMS, why do you feel you fit into the DPMS program, etc. My next half hour was shadowing the anatomy lab (which was awesome!). Then a half hour break and finally lunch followed by the campus tour. The former DPMSers ate lunch with us and gave us the tour. They were very open and candid about their experiences. They all agreed that it was one of the most stressful things in their lives, but if you stay organized and top of your studying, then you'll succeed. On the plus side, all the course work and stress of DPMS made their first year at DUCOM easy since they took most of those classes already.
Also, the DUCOM curriculum change will be 100% effective next year (the class we'd be starting). So that means courses are all Pass/Fail and the learning is more group oriented. So current students only have to go to campus a few times a week, but the group learning will mean you have to go to class every day.
That's all I can think to add at the moment, hopefully this helps.