I was recently accepted to WVSOM for 2007. Now I need to determine whether I want to do PBL or SBL. PBL sounds like the path for me, however I'm concerned I won't be able to keep up with everything I need to learn. How does the PBL curriculum compare to that of SBL? What about test scores?
PBL does require a lot of responsibility on your part. This might be the downside to it when national boards come - on the other hand, some PBLers, because of all that spare time they have use it to study the USMLE and COMLEX and end up with some really phenomenal scores. I'm a little under the impression that the PBLers are either outright brilliant...or perform not so great....so I guess it boils down to personal responsibility.
All PBLers have good anatomy skills here. Very good.
I am an SBLer, and the PBLers helped me out a lot on clinical skills/patient relationship tactics.
I'm afraid I can't really say anything else about PBL, other than they are a tight knit group. They're like a mini family in a bigger family if you know what I mean. They work in small group settings and have many case studies.
As for SBL, you will break your balls each night until 2AM in the morning. Not kiddin. The days run from 8AM to 5:30PM - so some people decide not to come to class, and that might be a good thing for them, but I am someone that needs to come to class. They don't take attendance. Histology is very rough here. I sat down and memorrized the entire slide box, and when the practical came, I still had it rough.
Biochem - Not too rough. If you are a biochem major in undergrad, then this is probably cake. If you were a biology major like me, then it was fairly hard. Some of the professors are easy, some are not.
Developmental Genetics - Phenomenal Class. Starts out really hard and gets easier as time goes by. This is more of a developmental class than a Genetics class. The real gentics class doesn't start until later in the year.
Physiology - It starts off easy and gets really really hard. We have just finnished respiratory. A lot of concepts.
Histology - Fear it. It will make undergrad histology look like nothing.
Both SBLers, and PBLers take
OPP and
Gross Anantomy. Gross Anatomy is also fairly rough and will keep you up all night long as an SBLer because you will not have a lot of spare time. Honestly I have lost a lot of sleep over anatomy.
Clinical skills - the PBLers are good at it. They are at the school's health clinics like 20 times a semester.
So Thanksgiving has finally set it, and we SBLers are half broken. My upper right shoulder is killing me.
Testing - I'm not sure how PBL works. In SBL you take a test every 2 weeks. This is both good and bad. Good in that it makes everything really intensive and you are continously studying each night. Bad because...well you get the picture. For SBLers, there are test on Monday (8AM-12) and Tuesday (8-10) that are devoted to just the testing and practicals. They are very long drawn out affairs for me - though I have seen some people work through the problems at a phenomenal pace, but as for me...I'm a snail.
After the morning testing is done, then come the Histology, Gross Anantomy, OPP, and clinical skills practical. In both SBL and PBL, you always have Gross Anatomy. You might then have a combo of histology/OPP or then OPP/Clinical skills.
I would try to write something more coherent for you to work with, but I am only a first year student here and we have not yet gotten through half the semester. There are going to be more upcomming classes that SBLers will soon have to tangle with. Immunology and Nutrition are comming up in 1 week to replace Histology and Developmental Genetics.
I'll write again tonight or tommorow.
I am now in exhile.
