YCOM is the most unorganized medical school in the U.S. I challenge anyone to refute this. Many of you that have applied there have an idea of how unorganized it is because they tend to lose many files and their mailing is very random. I am a second year student, and half of this year we didn't know what our schedule will be for the coming month, until a couple of weeks before. It is the second biggest medical school in the U.S., which means that it has one of the highest incomes, but at the same time it is the poorest medical school. It has the lowest accpetance numbers (avg. GPA, MCAT), it has the lowest board scores out of any D.O. school, and it has the lowest retention rate out of any medical school in the U.S. Anyone that knows NYCOM knows that it is only there to make money. Most people choose NYCOM either because they didn't get into anywhere else (as one of the deans openly admits), or they choose NYCOM only because it is close to home and they want to live at home.
The administration doesn't care about the students. One of the students is pregnant and is due around the time of board exams. She made a simple request for them to accomodate her by giving her a bigger chair for the exam since she can't fit in the seats in the auditorium in which we take our exams. They rejected her request!! Dealing with the administration is sometimes like dealing with the mafia.
Each incoming class has around 330 people in it. There are around 600 people studying at the NYCOM campus at the same time, including the first year class, the second year class, and those that are there for their third year (which don't make up for the number of people that have dropped out, therefore only around 600 total). It has a total of 3 small buildings for all of these people, which are shared with the PA students, nutrition students, etc. The library is very small and very often during exams studying space is hard to find. The air conditioning is often broken. In the summer, they set it to extremely low tempratures sometimes, and in the winter it is just as unpredictable. Some people might not think that this is a problem, but it is extremely annoying when you have to bring a jacket with you in the summer, or when you're freezing during an exam.
The education is very poor at NYCOM. The following are just some of the examples from the second year courses, but the first year courses are just as bad. For some courses, like cardiology and gastroenterology, the teaching is so horrible that they give us a "review" at the end of the course and they actually give us the questions to the exam including some of the answers, because they know that nobody will pass if they don't. On the other hand, for some courses, like dermatology and toxicology, they give us a review in which they tell us what we 'need to know' for the exam, and then they give us something completely different on the actual exam.
Pediatrics is on a category by itself. It was so poorly taught, and the exam questions were so bad that they ended up either throwing out or accepting multiple answers for a third of the exam, and 30 people still failed it! If you are thinking that they will change something about the course after something like this happens, you are wrong. Last year was just as bad. Last year, they ended up just passing everyone, because the average score was something like a 30%, and nothing changed about the course for this year.
OMM, which is what is unique about D.O. schools, and is partly the reason that I chose NYCOM over an M.D. school, is a complete joke and waste of time at NYCOM. The way that they have taught us OMM has made most people reject it. A few years ago, NYCOM had a very good OMM department and had some amazing teachers. For political reasons that have been kept away from us, almost all of those teachers left NYCOM in the last two years. There are only two OMM professors that stayed, one taking over the first year and one taking over the second year. The course director for the second year is incompetent and doesn't know how to talk. I doubt that there are more than a few people that actually respect him in the whole school. Since the beginning of the year, they have aquired two new full time OMM faculty, but four teachers for 600 students is still pretty pathetic in my opinion. NYCOM has a fellowship program in which the students accepted into the program get their tuition paid for in return for spending an additional year at NYCOM to be OMM fellows. In the past, about 3 people applied for every position into the program. This year, they didn't even have enough applying to the program, forcing them to extend the deadline so that they could go around begging people to become fellows.
Choose your school very carefully. Some people say that it doesn't matter what school you go to and that it is all in your hands to educate yourself. These people are just trying to make themelves feel better for going to a bad school. You do have to work hard no matter where you go, and you are responsible for doing the work, but anyone with common sense knows that you will get more and do better if you go to a good school as opposd to going to a bad school. There are two people that I know that dropped out of NYCOM after the first year and started over at a different medical school, and both say that their new school isn't even comparable to NYCOM. This brings me to the next point. 10-20% of people drop out of NYCOM, mostly after the first year. If it is not a bad school, then why do so many people run away?
Going to NYCOM is like going to war. The good thing is that it has brought us students together, as is what typically happens in times of crisis. Studying all of the material in medical school is hard enough by itself. What is going on at NYCOM not only doesn't make it easier, but in many instances proves to hinder our ability to learn. Those that are concerned about the reputation of their school will try to argue otherwise, but NYCOM is a school to stay away from for the next few years at least.
