Is there anyone else that was dissapointed with the interview day? It was one of the shortest interview days I had in the cycle and I felt that we weren't given any new/compelling info about the school?
The Admissions Director didn't know too much about CCOM or the cycle, the interview was 20 minutes long, the tour lasted 15 minutes, financial aid officer was unhelpful...
I still don't really know how the curriculum works. Because it follows the traditional form of medical education, do students have finals all on the same week? Some students here mentioned that the clinical curriculum might be changing but no one touched on the subject during the day. Do students get fridays off?
How do students with families deal with the high tuition? Why is the tuition so high in the first place? Why isn't the school working to make CCOM more affordable and , instead, just saying that the tuition will go up every year?
I loved the complimentary lunch (best lunch I had at a med school interview, both MD and DO) but I was a little disspointed at how unimformative the interview day was. Maybe because the cycle is wrapping up? Did anyone else have a similar experience?
I'm not a current student, but I'll try to answer what I know from these questions to the best of my ability based on what I learned from students/profs recently. In terms of curriculum, the school is on the quarter system. They don't follow a systems-based approach, and instead have you start first year with biochem, histo, OMM class, anatomy, clinical skills, etc. Second year is primarily path, pharm, etc. Here is the page that lists classes for each year:
https://www.midwestern.edu/course_c...llege_of_osteopathic_medicine/curriculum.html. Typically, it sounds like students have more frequent exams than other schools, some of which are at 7am, some of which are in the evenings. Students are given note packets for most core classes in lieu of specific books, so you can use that to guide your studies for particular classes and then add your own extra study material as needed. Most lectures are recorded. First year students do NOT have class on Fridays, second years do. Seems like most students plan to take step 1. You get 5 weeks of dedicated study time to prep for comlex/step 1.
As far as tuition, I've heard that student gov and other groups are maybe trying to lobby the admin to stop with the ridiculous rises in tuition. From a doc I know who went to Midwestern about 12 years ago, they've really transformed the campus and made things nicer in general, but I also agree its absolutely insane, maybe second only to the OOS tuition for MSU. There are options for financial aid esp for military and primary care specialties (e.g. HPSP, NHSC), but seems like most people just take the loans they need then opt for PAYE (pay as you earn)/IBR (income based repayment) payback plans where you do something like 10-15% of your monthly income going to loans during residency so you don't have to live out of a cardboard box. Note those programs typically only apply to federal, not private, student loans. I certainly am curious about how CCOM alums who go into peds/family med fare with paying back loans as attendings, but I know a CCOM alum (ED doc) who was very frugal his first few years practicing out of residency and now is debt-free. That's just n=1 tho, esp since you can make pretty decent money in emergency med these days.
If you have more questions, I'm betting students in the FB group or maybe
@ananasmed would be happy to answer whatever you're interested in. If you need a link to that let me know. I'm sorry you had a less than stellar experience interviewing!
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