Touro University - California (TUCOM-CA) Discussion Thread 2016-2017

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Space reserved for prompt.

Please PM the essay prompts when available and I will update this.

Good luck to everyone applying!

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Any current MS here wanna share why they chose to go here? Is it just like what you expected? How do you like the curriculum, staff, fellow students?
 
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Secondary out yet for this school?
 
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Secondary received. I'll post in a second

@AlteredScale
**Edit**
Here you go!

Responses to the following should be limited to 250 words or less:


· Within the last seven years, do you have any academic or legal records available under a different name? If yes, please provide any additional names under which your academic records may be listed.

· Are you a re-applicant who has previously interviewed? If yes, what was the result of that interview and what changes, if any, have you made which should affect a different outcome?

· What is the size of your home town or area – 2,500 to 10,000, 10,000 to 50,000, 50,000 to 100,000, 100,000 to 500,000, 500,000 to 1,000,000+), or Other (please specify)?

· Do you have any relative who is an Osteopathic Physician? Please list their name, relationship to you, COM attended, and year of graduation.

· Please list your favorite hobbies and/or non-academic pursuits.

· Within the last three years, please provide the name of previous employers, your occupation(s), and the duration(s) of your employment.

· Within the last three years, have you been engaged in any volunteer experiences? Please include the type of experience, sponsor, duration, and position.

· Within the last five years, what awards or recognitions (academic or other) have you received?

· Why have you chosen to apply to the TUC College of Osteopathic Medicine?

· Why should the Committee accept you into this year’s class?


Responses to the following should be limited to 500 words or less:


· Please describe the personal characteristics you possess and the life experiences you have had that would contribute to your success at becoming an outstanding Osteopathic Physician. Please include information that will enable the Admissions Committee to understand your unique qualities.

· Please describe your exposure to and understanding of Osteopathic Medicine. Content may include your initial introduction to the profession, its history, use in medical practice today, or any other aspects that may highlight Osteopathic Medicine’s uniqueness and synergy with your envisioned future practice of medicine.
 
Last edited:
Does this school screen pre secondary? Haven't received mine yet...
 
Got my secondary this morning. WTF this is the longest secondary I have ever done.
 
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If we are applying to multiple Touros do we have to pay $200 for each application?
 
I don't understand why this secondary asks a lot of the same information on our primary app (legal action, emergency contact, information about parents, degree/university, etc.)
 
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I don't understand why this secondary asks a lot of the same information on our primary app (legal action, emergency contact, information about parents, degree/university, etc.)

I don't understand why practically every secondary asks things like this, in addition to making us list things that are already in our work / activities section. Not sure if lazy or .... ?
 
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Submitted. Paid about $270 in secondary fees just today!
 
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Hello! Touro OMS III here.

Different people have different attitude about this school. For me personally, I am 11/10 satisfied with it, I think the experience I’ve had here is significantly better than I could have had at any other school, and I am beyond grateful I ended up here.

From what I’ve seen there are 2 (often overlapping demographics) that tend to dislike the school.

1) People who hate osteopathic manipulation and do not believe it should be taught in schools.

2) Gunners who to whom gunning is the end all be all of life.

If you fall into either of those, you probably don’t want to go here.

Beyond the awesome location (Mare Island, where over half the students live, unlike Vallejo is a safe quiet natury friendly communal neighborhood, and basically the only affordable one like that in the Bay Area), there are quite a few strong positives about the school.

General Strengths of the school:

The school has a very focused osteopathic emphasis. Some osteopathic schools are more allopathic and spend very little time on osteopathic work or integrating the principles into the curriculum. Many of the faculty and administration are passionate of maintaining an osteopathic identity to the school. Some students came there for that reason, while others realized they had a deep love for osteopathic manipulation from exposure to this emphasis, and of course a minority regretted this emphasis. There is a lot of fabulous support for OMM, and many students I know at other DO schools (who are passionate for OMM) are basically pissed off they never went here when we’ve compared notes on the OMM programs.

If you take advantage of it and make the effort, a lot of what the OMM program gives is basically magic for 3rd and 4th year, and I cannot count how many people were blown away by what it allowed them to do during clinical years (and many of our long time attendings are comfortable referring tricky cases to the Touro students).

The student base is extremely close and supportive (in other words we are not at a gunner school). On many exams, we’ve gotten through from other students going out of their way big time to help each other, most of the class is on extremely friendly terms with each other, and we can often have fun parties or bonding activities that don’t actually need alcohol to have everyone relax enough to vibe and have fun (although that’s not to say we are opposed to it..).

The administration from my perspective is super cool. They will listen to complaints and suggestions you have, and they go out of their way to open doors for you so that you can succeed or do beneficial things in addition to the normal medical school experience. As far as I can tell, that is not the norm for administrations.

The faculty are also very passionate about supporting their students and go way over the top to support and help their students succeed. Some of the lecturers are also very good. They will also give you a lot of time outside of class to help you succeed.

Give or take all lectures are recorded so you can watch them at home on 2x (or faster with a chrome plugin :p).

We have a very good anatomy program (most schools have significantly less anatomy than me do) and the lab is well ventilated. This might seem like a trivial details, but insufficiently ventilated anatomy labs are a large problem for many individuals I have spoken with.

This school is supportive of holistic practices. For example, we got in the news for having an elective that teaches anatomy through yoga (soooo many facebook shares you have no idea…), there is a weekly meditation class and an integrative medicine elective for interested students.

The school puts a fairly large emphasis on training you to be primary care physicians. As a result, we tend to have a lot of labs and education to work with all that stuff (which is actually turning out to be really helpful for 3rd year shelf exams), and we perform better on rotations. A lot of medical students aren’t really prepped for the clinical years, so as a result they struggle on rotations and I think there is some on going debate in the medical community of how much more it needs to be taught pre-clinically, but our school already does it a lot.

I do not have a good comparison of how it’s done at other places, but our school is invested in the students succeeding and has a lot of support systems in place to address all the issues which could commonly come up. From what I’ve seen, they’ve gone far beyond the duty I would expect a school to do in order to help medical students succeed.

The new system clinical distinction system for 3rd year gives an absolutely amazing degree of flexibility for students and ability to succeed as they want to as a physician. I feel very lucky to be in the first class to get it.

The global health program (where you spend a month in a foreign country like cambodia, ethiopia or taiwan practicing medicine) is pretty awesome and available to anyone who wants to do it.

Overall, I feel confident in generalizing that the students here are MUCH happier than students at a typical medical school.

Debatable Weaknesses of the school:

Touro is one of the most competitive DO schools in the country (due to location). As a result, many excellent candidates I would view as perfect fits for the school are not able to get in.

The school is fairly small, so certain resources you would expect to be present at a large school aren’t there. I actually like the small feel because it’s much more informal and allows much greater flexibility, but many things you would normally expect a large institution to have (ie our gym is functional but quite small) aren’t here.

The school is technically Jewish. In reality that doesn’t mean much, but on a practical level:

1) We get different holidays (pro in my opinion)
2) You are not allowed to use club funds for providing non kosher catered food on campus.
3) All the food in the cafeteria is kosher (so no pork basically).
4) There are lots of free jewish dinners/religious services provided and typically some type of jewish ceremonial thing at each assembly we have.
5) I have asked a lot of people and no one has been able to give me a clear answer on if the Jewish name Touro is pronounced Tour-Ooh or Tuh-Row. (people use both, the former is probably safer at interviews).

We bought the historical buildings from the navy and as far as I understand there are various agreements on how much they can be renovated (historical character needs to be maintained), so the campus is not super pretty.

The school is less board focused than other schools, and emphasizes teaching you useful stuff besides busting you case every day non stop to study for tests (thus happier students). A lot of the random stuff we learn ends up being tested on Comlex so we score a bit above average on it, but if we grilled non stop for boards, given the average MCAT of our school (before they switched to new mcat, we were the only DO school to break a 30 average), we probably do a lot better. On the other hand, we aren’t prepared well for USLME (which matters less now due to merger) and we tend to do much better on Comlex 2. At the end of the day, we have a good match list since the non boards part of preclinical is great preparation for years 3 and 4, and thus there are much better letters evals and rotation interviews.

Politically the climate is fairly liberal (bay area medical school). I like it but I have heard conservative students complain.

School is more open than most schools to non traditional applicants.

The school is very open to changing and improving (both from the faculty/admin debating it and from students proposing ideas), so there are often new programs and curriculum changes introduced, and as far as I can tell, the school is a lot more awesome than it was 4 years ago when I initially decided I had to go here.

Students frequently complain about the school health insurance plan. If you are too lazy to find an alternative option you may have dissatisfaction here.

Parts of the osteopathic program (the advanced useful OMM) require you to either have some natural sensitivity or a willingness to practice and quiet your mind. That is a good life skill to have, but if you don’t have it and don’t want to learn it, some of the Osteopathic manipulation in 2nd year will not be your cup of tea, although you aren’t really penalized for lacking sensitivity it in the grades, it’s just more really frustrating to not be able to do what a lot of other people can.

I really like my 3rd year rotation schedule and think I have it much better than most people I know at other schools, but unlike most schools we do not have an affiliated teaching hospital (way too much competition for sites in the bay area), and as a result we have to split into a lot of different groups (which is super sad because we all got super close in the first 2 years). The rotation experience is slightly different, although still cool and you just need to make sure you get the site that fits for you. There is a lottery to select everything afterwards. I am not positive, but I believe almost all of the class got their first or second choices for rotation sites as only 10 people were asking to trade sites once it was worked out.

Parts of Vallejo have crime, but crime on Mare Island is almost non existent.

Objective Weaknesses of the school:


There is a degree of bureaucratic disorganization with the school, which I believe partly comes from the fact we are partially managed by Touro New York, and amongst other things, from my inquiries the time zone difference actually makes things very complicated. Every person I’ve spoken to has a tale or two of something frustrating happening (ie. if you don’t hear back in a few months, you should make sure your application is in the correct pile). I am yet to hear of any issues that were serious problems however.

The pathology program really needs to be supplemented with Pathoma, and I like many wish I had realized this early on (pathology is hard to teach, and pathoma just does it so perfectly…).

The mosquitos here kind of suck, leave actually irritating bites and can bite through clothing. There is due to a nasty asian species that can only live in this specific biome. The mosquitos aren’t unmanageable, and don't carry diseases, but for some reason this year there have not been very many of them, and they are honestly my least favorite thing about this school.

I will admit in writing this I am super biased towards this school. In the past the only reason I paid for college was because you had to to get the degree, but in Touro’s case, I actually feel like the education I am getting is basically worth what I am paying for the degree. I also probably forgot a few pro/cons but that was everything off the top of my head and a pretty good list.

Good luck!
 
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Hello! Touro OMS III here.

Different people have different attitude about this school. For me personally, I am 11/10 satisfied with it, I think the experience I’ve had here is significantly better than I could have had at any other school, and I am beyond grateful I ended up here.

From what I’ve seen there are 2 (often overlapping demographics) that tend to dislike the school.

1) People who hate osteopathic manipulation and do not believe it should be taught in schools.

2) Gunners who to whom gunning is the end all be all of life.

If you fall into either of those, you probably don’t want to go here.

Beyond the awesome location (Mare Island, where over half the students live, unlike Vallejo is a safe quiet natury friendly communal neighborhood, and basically the only affordable one like that in the Bay Area), there are quite a few strong positives about the school.

General Strengths of the school:

The school has a very focused osteopathic emphasis. Some osteopathic schools are more allopathic and spend very little time on osteopathic work or integrating the principles into the curriculum. Many of the faculty and administration are passionate of maintaining an osteopathic identity to the school. Some students came there for that reason, while others realized they had a deep love for osteopathic manipulation from exposure to this emphasis, and of course a minority regretted this emphasis. There is a lot of fabulous support for OMM, and many students I know at other DO schools (who are passionate for OMM) are basically pissed off they never went here when we’ve compared notes on the OMM programs.

If you take advantage of it and make the effort, a lot of what the OMM program gives is basically magic for 3rd and 4th year, and I cannot count how many people were blown away by what it allowed them to do during clinical years (and many of our long time attendings are comfortable referring tricky cases to the Touro students).

The student base is extremely close and supportive (in other words we are not at a gunner school). On many exams, we’ve gotten through from other students going out of their way big time to help each other, most of the class is on extremely friendly terms with each other, and we can often have fun parties or bonding activities that don’t actually need alcohol to have everyone relax enough to vibe and have fun (although that’s not to say we are opposed to it..).

The administration from my perspective is super cool. They will listen to complaints and suggestions you have, and they go out of their way to open doors for you so that you can succeed or do beneficial things in addition to the normal medical school experience. As far as I can tell, that is not the norm for administrations.

The faculty are also very passionate about supporting their students and go way over the top to support and help their students succeed. Some of the lecturers are also very good. They will also give you a lot of time outside of class to help you succeed.

Give or take all lectures are recorded so you can watch them at home on 2x (or faster with a chrome plugin :p).

We have a very good anatomy program (most schools have significantly less anatomy than me do) and the lab is well ventilated. This might seem like a trivial details, but insufficiently ventilated anatomy labs are a large problem for many individuals I have spoken with.

This school is supportive of holistic practices. For example, we got in the news for having an elective that teaches anatomy through yoga (soooo many facebook shares you have no idea…), there is a weekly meditation class and an integrative medicine elective for interested students.

The school puts a fairly large emphasis on training you to be primary care physicians. As a result, we tend to have a lot of labs and education to work with all that stuff (which is actually turning out to be really helpful for 3rd year shelf exams), and we perform better on rotations. A lot of medical students aren’t really prepped for the clinical years, so as a result they struggle on rotations and I think there is some on going debate in the medical community of how much more it needs to be taught pre-clinically, but our school already does it a lot.

I do not have a good comparison of how it’s done at other places, but our school is invested in the students succeeding and has a lot of support systems in place to address all the issues which could commonly come up. From what I’ve seen, they’ve gone far beyond the duty I would expect a school to do in order to help medical students succeed.

The new system clinical distinction system for 3rd year gives an absolutely amazing degree of flexibility for students and ability to succeed as they want to as a physician. I feel very lucky to be in the first class to get it.

The global health program (where you spend a month in a foreign country like cambodia, ethiopia or taiwan practicing medicine) is pretty awesome and available to anyone who wants to do it.

Overall, I feel confident in generalizing that the students here are MUCH happier than students at a typical medical school.

Debatable Weaknesses of the school:

Touro is one of the most competitive DO schools in the country (due to location). As a result, many excellent candidates I would view as perfect fits for the school are not able to get in.

The school is fairly small, so certain resources you would expect to be present at a large school aren’t there. I actually like the small feel because it’s much more informal and allows much greater flexibility, but many things you would normally expect a large institution to have (ie our gym is functional but quite small) aren’t here.

The school is technically Jewish. In reality that doesn’t mean much, but on a practical level:

1) We get different holidays (pro in my opinion)
2) You are not allowed to use club funds for providing non kosher catered food on campus.
3) All the food in the cafeteria is kosher (so no pork basically).
4) There are lots of free jewish dinners/religious services provided and typically some type of jewish ceremonial thing at each assembly we have.
5) I have asked a lot of people and no one has been able to give me a clear answer on if the Jewish name Touro is pronounced Tour-Ooh or Tuh-Row. (people use both, the former is probably safer at interviews).

We bought the historical buildings from the navy and as far as I understand there are various agreements on how much they can be renovated (historical character needs to be maintained), so the campus is not super pretty.

The school is less board focused than other schools, and emphasizes teaching you useful stuff besides busting you case every day non stop to study for tests (thus happier students). A lot of the random stuff we learn ends up being tested on Comlex so we score a bit above average on it, but if we grilled non stop for boards, given the average MCAT of our school (before they switched to new mcat, we were the only DO school to break a 30 average), we probably do a lot better. On the other hand, we aren’t prepared well for USLME (which matters less now due to merger) and we tend to do much better on Comlex 2. At the end of the day, we have a good match list since the non boards part of preclinical is great preparation for years 3 and 4, and thus there are much better letters evals and rotation interviews.

Politically the climate is fairly liberal (bay area medical school). I like it but I have heard conservative students complain.

School is more open than most schools to non traditional applicants.

The school is very open to changing and improving (both from the faculty/admin debating it and from students proposing ideas), so there are often new programs and curriculum changes introduced, and as far as I can tell, the school is a lot more awesome than it was 4 years ago when I initially decided I had to go here.

Students frequently complain about the school health insurance plan. If you are too lazy to find an alternative option you may have dissatisfaction here.

Parts of the osteopathic program (the advanced useful OMM) require you to either have some natural sensitivity or a willingness to practice and quiet your mind. That is a good life skill to have, but if you don’t have it and don’t want to learn it, some of the Osteopathic manipulation in 2nd year will not be your cup of tea, although you aren’t really penalized for lacking sensitivity it in the grades, it’s just more really frustrating to not be able to do what a lot of other people can.

I really like my 3rd year rotation schedule and think I have it much better than most people I know at other schools, but unlike most schools we do not have an affiliated teaching hospital (way too much competition for sites in the bay area), and as a result we have to split into a lot of different groups (which is super sad because we all got super close in the first 2 years). The rotation experience is slightly different, although still cool and you just need to make sure you get the site that fits for you. There is a lottery to select everything afterwards. I am not positive, but I believe almost all of the class got their first or second choices for rotation sites as only 10 people were asking to trade sites once it was worked out.

Parts of Vallejo have crime, but crime on Mare Island is almost non existent.

Objective Weaknesses of the school:


There is a degree of bureaucratic disorganization with the school, which I believe partly comes from the fact we are partially managed by Touro New York, and amongst other things, from my inquiries the time zone difference actually makes things very complicated. Every person I’ve spoken to has a tale or two of something frustrating happening (ie. if you don’t hear back in a few months, you should make sure your application is in the correct pile). I am yet to hear of any issues that were serious problems however.

The pathology program really needs to be supplemented with Pathoma, and I like many wish I had realized this early on (pathology is hard to teach, and pathoma just does it so perfectly…).

The mosquitos here kind of suck, leave actually irritating bites and can bite through clothing. There is due to a nasty asian species that can only live in this specific biome. The mosquitos aren’t unmanageable, and don't carry diseases, but for some reason this year there have not been very many of them, and they are honestly my least favorite thing about this school.

I will admit in writing this I am super biased towards this school. In the past the only reason I paid for college was because you had to to get the degree, but in Touro’s case, I actually feel like the education I am getting is basically worth what I am paying for the degree. I also probably forgot a few pro/cons but that was everything off the top of my head and a pretty good list.

Good luck!

Thanks for your input!
 
Hello! Touro OMS III here.

Different people have different attitude about this school. For me personally, I am 11/10 satisfied with it, I think the experience I’ve had here is significantly better than I could have had at any other school, and I am beyond grateful I ended up here.

From what I’ve seen there are 2 (often overlapping demographics) that tend to dislike the school.

1) People who hate osteopathic manipulation and do not believe it should be taught in schools.

2) Gunners who to whom gunning is the end all be all of life.

If you fall into either of those, you probably don’t want to go here.

Beyond the awesome location (Mare Island, where over half the students live, unlike Vallejo is a safe quiet natury friendly communal neighborhood, and basically the only affordable one like that in the Bay Area), there are quite a few strong positives about the school.

General Strengths of the school:

The school has a very focused osteopathic emphasis. Some osteopathic schools are more allopathic and spend very little time on osteopathic work or integrating the principles into the curriculum. Many of the faculty and administration are passionate of maintaining an osteopathic identity to the school. Some students came there for that reason, while others realized they had a deep love for osteopathic manipulation from exposure to this emphasis, and of course a minority regretted this emphasis. There is a lot of fabulous support for OMM, and many students I know at other DO schools (who are passionate for OMM) are basically pissed off they never went here when we’ve compared notes on the OMM programs.

If you take advantage of it and make the effort, a lot of what the OMM program gives is basically magic for 3rd and 4th year, and I cannot count how many people were blown away by what it allowed them to do during clinical years (and many of our long time attendings are comfortable referring tricky cases to the Touro students).

The student base is extremely close and supportive (in other words we are not at a gunner school). On many exams, we’ve gotten through from other students going out of their way big time to help each other, most of the class is on extremely friendly terms with each other, and we can often have fun parties or bonding activities that don’t actually need alcohol to have everyone relax enough to vibe and have fun (although that’s not to say we are opposed to it..).

The administration from my perspective is super cool. They will listen to complaints and suggestions you have, and they go out of their way to open doors for you so that you can succeed or do beneficial things in addition to the normal medical school experience. As far as I can tell, that is not the norm for administrations.

The faculty are also very passionate about supporting their students and go way over the top to support and help their students succeed. Some of the lecturers are also very good. They will also give you a lot of time outside of class to help you succeed.

Give or take all lectures are recorded so you can watch them at home on 2x (or faster with a chrome plugin :p).

We have a very good anatomy program (most schools have significantly less anatomy than me do) and the lab is well ventilated. This might seem like a trivial details, but insufficiently ventilated anatomy labs are a large problem for many individuals I have spoken with.

This school is supportive of holistic practices. For example, we got in the news for having an elective that teaches anatomy through yoga (soooo many facebook shares you have no idea…), there is a weekly meditation class and an integrative medicine elective for interested students.

The school puts a fairly large emphasis on training you to be primary care physicians. As a result, we tend to have a lot of labs and education to work with all that stuff (which is actually turning out to be really helpful for 3rd year shelf exams), and we perform better on rotations. A lot of medical students aren’t really prepped for the clinical years, so as a result they struggle on rotations and I think there is some on going debate in the medical community of how much more it needs to be taught pre-clinically, but our school already does it a lot.

I do not have a good comparison of how it’s done at other places, but our school is invested in the students succeeding and has a lot of support systems in place to address all the issues which could commonly come up. From what I’ve seen, they’ve gone far beyond the duty I would expect a school to do in order to help medical students succeed.

The new system clinical distinction system for 3rd year gives an absolutely amazing degree of flexibility for students and ability to succeed as they want to as a physician. I feel very lucky to be in the first class to get it.

The global health program (where you spend a month in a foreign country like cambodia, ethiopia or taiwan practicing medicine) is pretty awesome and available to anyone who wants to do it.

Overall, I feel confident in generalizing that the students here are MUCH happier than students at a typical medical school.

Debatable Weaknesses of the school:

Touro is one of the most competitive DO schools in the country (due to location). As a result, many excellent candidates I would view as perfect fits for the school are not able to get in.

The school is fairly small, so certain resources you would expect to be present at a large school aren’t there. I actually like the small feel because it’s much more informal and allows much greater flexibility, but many things you would normally expect a large institution to have (ie our gym is functional but quite small) aren’t here.

The school is technically Jewish. In reality that doesn’t mean much, but on a practical level:

1) We get different holidays (pro in my opinion)
2) You are not allowed to use club funds for providing non kosher catered food on campus.
3) All the food in the cafeteria is kosher (so no pork basically).
4) There are lots of free jewish dinners/religious services provided and typically some type of jewish ceremonial thing at each assembly we have.
5) I have asked a lot of people and no one has been able to give me a clear answer on if the Jewish name Touro is pronounced Tour-Ooh or Tuh-Row. (people use both, the former is probably safer at interviews).

We bought the historical buildings from the navy and as far as I understand there are various agreements on how much they can be renovated (historical character needs to be maintained), so the campus is not super pretty.

The school is less board focused than other schools, and emphasizes teaching you useful stuff besides busting you case every day non stop to study for tests (thus happier students). A lot of the random stuff we learn ends up being tested on Comlex so we score a bit above average on it, but if we grilled non stop for boards, given the average MCAT of our school (before they switched to new mcat, we were the only DO school to break a 30 average), we probably do a lot better. On the other hand, we aren’t prepared well for USLME (which matters less now due to merger) and we tend to do much better on Comlex 2. At the end of the day, we have a good match list since the non boards part of preclinical is great preparation for years 3 and 4, and thus there are much better letters evals and rotation interviews.

Politically the climate is fairly liberal (bay area medical school). I like it but I have heard conservative students complain.

School is more open than most schools to non traditional applicants.

The school is very open to changing and improving (both from the faculty/admin debating it and from students proposing ideas), so there are often new programs and curriculum changes introduced, and as far as I can tell, the school is a lot more awesome than it was 4 years ago when I initially decided I had to go here.

Students frequently complain about the school health insurance plan. If you are too lazy to find an alternative option you may have dissatisfaction here.

Parts of the osteopathic program (the advanced useful OMM) require you to either have some natural sensitivity or a willingness to practice and quiet your mind. That is a good life skill to have, but if you don’t have it and don’t want to learn it, some of the Osteopathic manipulation in 2nd year will not be your cup of tea, although you aren’t really penalized for lacking sensitivity it in the grades, it’s just more really frustrating to not be able to do what a lot of other people can.

I really like my 3rd year rotation schedule and think I have it much better than most people I know at other schools, but unlike most schools we do not have an affiliated teaching hospital (way too much competition for sites in the bay area), and as a result we have to split into a lot of different groups (which is super sad because we all got super close in the first 2 years). The rotation experience is slightly different, although still cool and you just need to make sure you get the site that fits for you. There is a lottery to select everything afterwards. I am not positive, but I believe almost all of the class got their first or second choices for rotation sites as only 10 people were asking to trade sites once it was worked out.

Parts of Vallejo have crime, but crime on Mare Island is almost non existent.

Objective Weaknesses of the school:


There is a degree of bureaucratic disorganization with the school, which I believe partly comes from the fact we are partially managed by Touro New York, and amongst other things, from my inquiries the time zone difference actually makes things very complicated. Every person I’ve spoken to has a tale or two of something frustrating happening (ie. if you don’t hear back in a few months, you should make sure your application is in the correct pile). I am yet to hear of any issues that were serious problems however.

The pathology program really needs to be supplemented with Pathoma, and I like many wish I had realized this early on (pathology is hard to teach, and pathoma just does it so perfectly…).

The mosquitos here kind of suck, leave actually irritating bites and can bite through clothing. There is due to a nasty asian species that can only live in this specific biome. The mosquitos aren’t unmanageable, and don't carry diseases, but for some reason this year there have not been very many of them, and they are honestly my least favorite thing about this school.

I will admit in writing this I am super biased towards this school. In the past the only reason I paid for college was because you had to to get the degree, but in Touro’s case, I actually feel like the education I am getting is basically worth what I am paying for the degree. I also probably forgot a few pro/cons but that was everything off the top of my head and a pretty good list.

Good luck!

Awesome. Thanks for this.
 
One of the prompts asks whether the applicant has been placed on academic discipline/suspension/probation. I received conduct probation and indicated this on my AACOMAS application as well. Do I still need to answer "Yes" to this prompt?
 
One of the prompts asks whether the applicant has been placed on academic discipline/suspension/probation. I received conduct probation and indicated this on my AACOMAS application as well. Do I still need to answer "Yes" to this prompt?
I think so because if you answered "No" that would be a lie, right?

Thank you @Lycian ! Working on my secondary now..

I'm wondering if we should just list vs put descriptions on the work experience and volunteer experience?
 
I think so because if you answered "No" that would be a lie, right?

Thank you @Lycian ! Working on my secondary now..

I'm wondering if we should just list vs put descriptions on the work experience and volunteer experience?

I'm tempted to put "yes" and just explain that it was conduct probation and not academic probation. At the same time, I don't want to put "yes" if it'll automatically screen me out because technically, I was never on an academic probation.
 
Hello! Touro OMS III here.

Different people have different attitude about this school. For me personally, I am 11/10 satisfied with it, I think the experience I’ve had here is significantly better than I could have had at any other school, and I am beyond grateful I ended up here.

From what I’ve seen there are 2 (often overlapping demographics) that tend to dislike the school.

1) People who hate osteopathic manipulation and do not believe it should be taught in schools.

2) Gunners who to whom gunning is the end all be all of life.

If you fall into either of those, you probably don’t want to go here.

Beyond the awesome location (Mare Island, where over half the students live, unlike Vallejo is a safe quiet natury friendly communal neighborhood, and basically the only affordable one like that in the Bay Area), there are quite a few strong positives about the school.

General Strengths of the school:

The school has a very focused osteopathic emphasis. Some osteopathic schools are more allopathic and spend very little time on osteopathic work or integrating the principles into the curriculum. Many of the faculty and administration are passionate of maintaining an osteopathic identity to the school. Some students came there for that reason, while others realized they had a deep love for osteopathic manipulation from exposure to this emphasis, and of course a minority regretted this emphasis. There is a lot of fabulous support for OMM, and many students I know at other DO schools (who are passionate for OMM) are basically pissed off they never went here when we’ve compared notes on the OMM programs.

If you take advantage of it and make the effort, a lot of what the OMM program gives is basically magic for 3rd and 4th year, and I cannot count how many people were blown away by what it allowed them to do during clinical years (and many of our long time attendings are comfortable referring tricky cases to the Touro students).

The student base is extremely close and supportive (in other words we are not at a gunner school). On many exams, we’ve gotten through from other students going out of their way big time to help each other, most of the class is on extremely friendly terms with each other, and we can often have fun parties or bonding activities that don’t actually need alcohol to have everyone relax enough to vibe and have fun (although that’s not to say we are opposed to it..).

The administration from my perspective is super cool. They will listen to complaints and suggestions you have, and they go out of their way to open doors for you so that you can succeed or do beneficial things in addition to the normal medical school experience. As far as I can tell, that is not the norm for administrations.

The faculty are also very passionate about supporting their students and go way over the top to support and help their students succeed. Some of the lecturers are also very good. They will also give you a lot of time outside of class to help you succeed.

Give or take all lectures are recorded so you can watch them at home on 2x (or faster with a chrome plugin :p).

We have a very good anatomy program (most schools have significantly less anatomy than me do) and the lab is well ventilated. This might seem like a trivial details, but insufficiently ventilated anatomy labs are a large problem for many individuals I have spoken with.

This school is supportive of holistic practices. For example, we got in the news for having an elective that teaches anatomy through yoga (soooo many facebook shares you have no idea…), there is a weekly meditation class and an integrative medicine elective for interested students.

The school puts a fairly large emphasis on training you to be primary care physicians. As a result, we tend to have a lot of labs and education to work with all that stuff (which is actually turning out to be really helpful for 3rd year shelf exams), and we perform better on rotations. A lot of medical students aren’t really prepped for the clinical years, so as a result they struggle on rotations and I think there is some on going debate in the medical community of how much more it needs to be taught pre-clinically, but our school already does it a lot.

I do not have a good comparison of how it’s done at other places, but our school is invested in the students succeeding and has a lot of support systems in place to address all the issues which could commonly come up. From what I’ve seen, they’ve gone far beyond the duty I would expect a school to do in order to help medical students succeed.

The new system clinical distinction system for 3rd year gives an absolutely amazing degree of flexibility for students and ability to succeed as they want to as a physician. I feel very lucky to be in the first class to get it.

The global health program (where you spend a month in a foreign country like cambodia, ethiopia or taiwan practicing medicine) is pretty awesome and available to anyone who wants to do it.

Overall, I feel confident in generalizing that the students here are MUCH happier than students at a typical medical school.

Debatable Weaknesses of the school:

Touro is one of the most competitive DO schools in the country (due to location). As a result, many excellent candidates I would view as perfect fits for the school are not able to get in.

The school is fairly small, so certain resources you would expect to be present at a large school aren’t there. I actually like the small feel because it’s much more informal and allows much greater flexibility, but many things you would normally expect a large institution to have (ie our gym is functional but quite small) aren’t here.

The school is technically Jewish. In reality that doesn’t mean much, but on a practical level:

1) We get different holidays (pro in my opinion)
2) You are not allowed to use club funds for providing non kosher catered food on campus.
3) All the food in the cafeteria is kosher (so no pork basically).
4) There are lots of free jewish dinners/religious services provided and typically some type of jewish ceremonial thing at each assembly we have.
5) I have asked a lot of people and no one has been able to give me a clear answer on if the Jewish name Touro is pronounced Tour-Ooh or Tuh-Row. (people use both, the former is probably safer at interviews).

We bought the historical buildings from the navy and as far as I understand there are various agreements on how much they can be renovated (historical character needs to be maintained), so the campus is not super pretty.

The school is less board focused than other schools, and emphasizes teaching you useful stuff besides busting you case every day non stop to study for tests (thus happier students). A lot of the random stuff we learn ends up being tested on Comlex so we score a bit above average on it, but if we grilled non stop for boards, given the average MCAT of our school (before they switched to new mcat, we were the only DO school to break a 30 average), we probably do a lot better. On the other hand, we aren’t prepared well for USLME (which matters less now due to merger) and we tend to do much better on Comlex 2. At the end of the day, we have a good match list since the non boards part of preclinical is great preparation for years 3 and 4, and thus there are much better letters evals and rotation interviews.

Politically the climate is fairly liberal (bay area medical school). I like it but I have heard conservative students complain.

School is more open than most schools to non traditional applicants.

The school is very open to changing and improving (both from the faculty/admin debating it and from students proposing ideas), so there are often new programs and curriculum changes introduced, and as far as I can tell, the school is a lot more awesome than it was 4 years ago when I initially decided I had to go here.

Students frequently complain about the school health insurance plan. If you are too lazy to find an alternative option you may have dissatisfaction here.

Parts of the osteopathic program (the advanced useful OMM) require you to either have some natural sensitivity or a willingness to practice and quiet your mind. That is a good life skill to have, but if you don’t have it and don’t want to learn it, some of the Osteopathic manipulation in 2nd year will not be your cup of tea, although you aren’t really penalized for lacking sensitivity it in the grades, it’s just more really frustrating to not be able to do what a lot of other people can.

I really like my 3rd year rotation schedule and think I have it much better than most people I know at other schools, but unlike most schools we do not have an affiliated teaching hospital (way too much competition for sites in the bay area), and as a result we have to split into a lot of different groups (which is super sad because we all got super close in the first 2 years). The rotation experience is slightly different, although still cool and you just need to make sure you get the site that fits for you. There is a lottery to select everything afterwards. I am not positive, but I believe almost all of the class got their first or second choices for rotation sites as only 10 people were asking to trade sites once it was worked out.

Parts of Vallejo have crime, but crime on Mare Island is almost non existent.

Objective Weaknesses of the school:


There is a degree of bureaucratic disorganization with the school, which I believe partly comes from the fact we are partially managed by Touro New York, and amongst other things, from my inquiries the time zone difference actually makes things very complicated. Every person I’ve spoken to has a tale or two of something frustrating happening (ie. if you don’t hear back in a few months, you should make sure your application is in the correct pile). I am yet to hear of any issues that were serious problems however.

The pathology program really needs to be supplemented with Pathoma, and I like many wish I had realized this early on (pathology is hard to teach, and pathoma just does it so perfectly…).

The mosquitos here kind of suck, leave actually irritating bites and can bite through clothing. There is due to a nasty asian species that can only live in this specific biome. The mosquitos aren’t unmanageable, and don't carry diseases, but for some reason this year there have not been very many of them, and they are honestly my least favorite thing about this school.

I will admit in writing this I am super biased towards this school. In the past the only reason I paid for college was because you had to to get the degree, but in Touro’s case, I actually feel like the education I am getting is basically worth what I am paying for the degree. I also probably forgot a few pro/cons but that was everything off the top of my head and a pretty good list.

Good luck!


Also a student here and completely agree. They also have really good brownies and put peanut butter on them when I ask.
 
Anyone feel like "Why should the Committee accept you into this year’s class?" and "Please describe the personal characteristics you possess and the life experiences you have had that would contribute to your success at becoming an outstanding Osteopathic Physician" have pretty extensive overlap? Or is someone else seeing this question differently than I am?
 
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Anyone feel like "Why should the Committee accept you into this year’s class?" and "Please describe the personal characteristics you possess and the life experiences you have had that would contribute to your success at becoming an outstanding Osteopathic Physician" have pretty extensive overlap? Or is someone else seeing this question differently than I am?


I completely agree! I just submitted my secondary. This one took me longer than some others to complete. A big part of that was because I struggled to keep those two answers from overlapping too much.
 
for the 500 words limit, is that for each question or total for both questions? thank you!
 
Anyone feel like "Why should the Committee accept you into this year’s class?" and "Please describe the personal characteristics you possess and the life experiences you have had that would contribute to your success at becoming an outstanding Osteopathic Physician" have pretty extensive overlap? Or is someone else seeing this question differently than I am?

I completely agree! I just submitted my secondary. This one took me longer than some others to complete. A big part of that was because I struggled to keep those two answers from overlapping too much.

I completely agree with you guys. I submitted yesterday, but it was challenging differentiating the two questions without sounding repetitive.
 
Anyone feel like "Why should the Committee accept you into this year’s class?" and "Please describe the personal characteristics you possess and the life experiences you have had that would contribute to your success at becoming an outstanding Osteopathic Physician" have pretty extensive overlap? Or is someone else seeing this question differently than I am?

For the "Why?" question I described the ways in which I have demonstrated that I will be a valuable student. For the "Describe" questions I used bullet points with demonstrated qualities/characteristics that support osteopathic/medical philosophy.
 
does it bug anyone else that half of the secondary was re-entering info that is already on primaries? Fill out detail about my mother/father/spouse and list my siblings? What years did I attend post-secondary schools?!

I HATE secondaries that make you do this - and of course my first two both had ridiculous things (Chicago wanted a resume - wtf, really?)
 
does it bug anyone else that half of the secondary was re-entering info that is already on primaries? Fill out detail about my mother/father/spouse and list my siblings? What years did I attend post-secondary schools?!

I HATE secondaries that make you do this - and of course my first two both had ridiculous things (Chicago wanted a resume - wtf, really?)

Some interviews are closed-file interviews so interviewers do not receive your primary.


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Right. But they shouldn't need my parents addresses on a closed interview file for example.


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Right. But they shouldn't need my parents addresses on a closed interview file for example.


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If you're so offended by it, maybe you should contact TUCOM and voice your concerns with them.


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I thought SDN was a place where people were free to voice their frustrations with the application process, but apparently you feel like being a dick for no apparent reason. Excuse me for thinking that trivial redundant data entry is ridiculous when you're filling a high volume of secondaries, and many other schools have systems in place that utilize information you have already provided. :shrug:
 
I thought SDN was a place where people were free to voice their frustrations with the application process, but apparently you feel like being a dick for no apparent reason. Excuse me for thinking that trivial redundant data entry is ridiculous when you're filling a high volume of secondaries, and many other schools have systems in place that utilize information you have already provided. :shrug:

Relax man. It sucks, but it's just one of the many hoops we have to jump through. I just made a word doc with my entire work and activities section written in different words.
 
I thought SDN was a place where people were free to voice their frustrations with the application process, but apparently you feel like being a dick for no apparent reason. Excuse me for thinking that trivial redundant data entry is ridiculous when you're filling a high volume of secondaries, and many other schools have systems in place that utilize information you have already provided. :shrug:

How was I being a dick? If you have a legitimate concern with filling out the same information on TUCOM's secondary application as you already did on the primary application, then you should give them feedback regarding it - as you did so here.


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Does anyone notice the entry year on the previewed PDF isn't entered?
 
Last edited:
Does anyone notice the entry year on the previewed PDF isn't entered?

I emailed the tech people about it cause I saw that too. Here's what they said:

"Thank you for your message.

Please be aware that the PDF preview file is an unofficial document and is not used by the institution. They will pull all of your answers directly from the online application, not the PDF preview file, into their databases. You can feel confident that your information will reach them correctly as long as the answers in the application have been completed.

If your online form is due shortly, you may want to check the pages of your form carefully before you submit it to ensure that your answers were saved properly.

Regards,
Hobsons Technical Support"

So it sounds like it should be fine. Hope that helps!
 
Hey,

For the secondary (the ones with 250 words limit) where they ask you about your previous work history and volunteer positions- Do you list them in point form?

Also do we just answer those questions in the same Word document and upload it to the portal?

Thanks!
 
Hey,

For the secondary (the ones with 250 words limit) where they ask you about your previous work history and volunteer positions- Do you list them in point form?

Also do we just answer those questions in the same Word document and upload it to the portal?

Thanks!

Thats basically what I did
 
Also, I am confused about the whole LOR deal here. Do we have to have our letter writers submit letters all over again, but this time directly to Touro?
 
Hey guys! Do we have to upload our unofficial transcripts if we have already done so through AACOMAS? What is the CAS service that TUCOM is talking about?
 
Submitted 6/24 "complete and under review" email received today at 1107.
 
For the question--"Please list your favorite hobbies and/or non-academic pursuits."

Is everyone just listing their hobbies and pursuits? or do you describe them as well?
 
For the question--"Please list your favorite hobbies and/or non-academic pursuits."

Is everyone just listing their hobbies and pursuits? or do you describe them as well?

I just listed them because my hobbies are pretty straight forward. If you have something really cool you could briefly elaborate. Like if you hiked the complete Appalachian trail, climbed Danali, or ruined your first marriage by playing too much world of Warcraft.
 
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Also, I am confused about the whole LOR deal here. Do we have to have our letter writers submit letters all over again, but this time directly to Touro?
Bump, for those that are complete what did you do?
 
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