Hi all!! Before I give any updates, I wanted to say CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE AND THEIR ACCEPTANCES!!!! Welcome!!!! Very excited to meet you all in person and to get to know you more throughout the year!!
Now, some updates and to answer some questions:
1. For those of you stuck between committing to DPMS and committing to a medical school that you may be waitlisted on or waiting to hear a response from: DPMS would rather you accept your seat to the DPMS program ASAP and if you find out later that you were accepted somewhere else, that's fine and you would just need to send an email to DPMS admissions with your acceptance letter to the other school to let them know that you will be forfeiting your seat and someone else can move off the waitlist.
2. Students who are waitlisted do sometimes get moved of the waitlist -- this has happened plenty of times in previous years, it all just depends on which students are accepting their DPMS program seat which can make everything hard to predict. There's not much more I or any of us TA's can say other than that for now unfortunately
3. Regarding Stiles Hall: Stiles Hall is certainly not the prettiest, nicest, or boujee-ist building in Philly, that's for sure. But, I CANNOT recommend Stiles Hall enough for the summer of DPMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The DPMS program is HARDDDD!! Like extremely, and the biggest thing that makes or breaks a students contract 99% of the time is whether or not they have good enough support to make it through and it's so so so so so so helpful to be able to build that community sooner rather than later. I triple majored in biology, neuroscience, and chemistry in undergrad and had 4 jobs and a sport all at once and I just finished my first year of medical school as well and I can still say that for me, personally, DPMS was the hardest academic year I've had so far. The summer program goes by very fast and is a lot of work and is only temporary. Stiles Hall will make it easier to get to your mandatory all-day-ever-day classes/meetings because it's literally right beside the New College Building (where your classes will be). When you and all of your classmates live right beside each other, down the hall, or as roommates, I truly believe you'll feel much happier and reassured when you're building that community. Again, it's only a temporary housing so any of the cons of that building will be fleeting, I assure you.
4. About school supplies: I would say the most mandatory thing to bring is a laptop or like a phone at the bare minimum, but an iPad is borderline mandatory in that it's an absolute lifesaver. All of your lectures (which there will be a lot of) will be delivered to you virtually via PDFs and will undoubtedly require a lot of notetaking, and this is like this throughout DPMS. It's a game-changer to make that transition from pen and paper to iPad. Also, iPads are required for the medical school, so the sooner you get it, the better in my opinion.
5. Regarding orientation: There are two mandatory orientation days on the 27th and 28th that'll help you a lot, and all of summer, in some ways, is one big orientation for all of DPMS and for medical school as well. Like Allyssa said, once the maximum amount of seats are accepted for DPMS, then the sooner you guys will get an email that details everything you need to do and know. We will be having Q&A sessions before the program starts in addition to all the emails you will get to get you started on your journey here. We just can't deliver that very well at the moment until we have everyone registered in Drexel's email system so that we can send those emails out.
It's very, very hard to think this before DPMS even starts because right now and everything leading up to the start of the program feels very hectic (we've all been there), but once the program starts, you won't have to even think about what to do next due to how well organized and detail-oriented the program is.
I'll keep an eye out on this thread as much as I can and my DM's as well if there are any questions!
