I'm a first year at cincy, and here are a few comments about my experience. First off, for those accepted to c/o 2010, congrats! UC is an excellent school, and I can honestly say I'm happy with my decision to go here. For those still choosing b/t schools, hopefully this post will help a little.
This first year has been incredible. I have enjoyed classes much more than I expected coming in. It's true that there is a lot of info to learn, but the first year curriculum is well integrated with labs, clinical cases, and personable, caring faculty that made learning the material much less daunting and actually enjoyable. With maybe only a couple of exceptions, the faculty are fully dedicated and willing to help students really learn and understand the material. They are readily available, very approachable, and probably one of the biggest reasons I have enjoyed this year.
Here are a couple of comments on the grading scale here, as i know pre-meds are always concerned w/ this. In my opinion DO NOT choose a school based on whether it is P/F or H/HP/P/F (like UC's grading scale). In my opinion, the P/F system was created by the private, power schools to reduce competitiveness between students (ie gunners). At UC this is not a problem. All of my classmates are willing to help their peers to succeed, and at UC there is a very friendly, non-competitve attitude amongst students. In fact, I receive daily emails that my classmates send out with useful websites and study guides they've created with the sole purpose of making this available to everyone so that everyone can do their best on exams. Also, I am a procrastinator at heart, and i feel that the extra incentive to get an honors or high pass has motivated me to stay on top of the material. I don't feel that a P/F system would provide this motivation for me. Besides, despite what you may have heard, most P/F schools still keep track of the actual percentage grades for purposes of ranking students in residency apps, which still makes it important to study hard and perform your best at the P/F schools. Take home message: for most students, exams will be stressful at any school, and I don't feel that the H/HP/P/F system here was in any way detrimental to stress levels. If anything, it has helped me learn the material better by offering study incentive.
The construction around UC hasn't affected me at all; I study at home and am only at school for labs and clinical correlations, which are unaffected by the construction.
The area around UC is not any more dangerous than other metropolitan campuses. It depends on your preference: either go to school at a metropolitan campus, which has its advantages with many nearby options for shopping, dining, nightlife, etc and deal with the higher crime rates, or go to a suburban campus with fewer options. For some reason, UC has a bad rep for crime rates. I don't feel it is any worse than going to school at Case or OSU, which people often overlook as being close to some pretty ****ty areas in terms of violent crime.
I have also been very impressed with research opportunity here at UC. My email this winter has been overwhelmed by summer research opportunities sponsored by the school, by uiversity hospital, and by children's hospital. Children's hospital alone is a top 5 pediatric center, and along with this comes mucho research $$$ and high-power research faculty.
Overall, I have been very happy with my choice to go to UC. Good luck all, and I hope this helps.
i go to a gym that's closer to where i live. but i do know that people in my class play pickup bball pretty often as well as intermural with the undergrads.
