advice to prospective students

To any prospective students:

I'm sure you get lots of advice from all around. Here is the advice of a first-year student at LECOM Seton Hill.

1. If you have a choice between LECOM and any other school, choose the other school.
2. If you have a choice of LECOM campuses, choose Bradenton first, Erie second, and Seton Hill last.
3. If you have an option to go to any MD school, choose that over any DO school.

I don't know about Caribbean schools. The education would definitely be better, but rotations might be harder to arrange. If I were rich, I would go to the best European or Caribbean private school I could find, then do my residency in the U.S., rather than go to LECOM.

OMM day

Another long but not-very-taxing day of OMM... I do like that it's easy, and I do like that we get a chance to develop our "professional touch". I will probably never use it once I am not being tested on it - not because it seems like a bad idea, but because we don't know what really works or not. There is little scientific basis to much of it, and we are supposed to take it all on faith, which is sort of hard for me. I definitely don't have enough faith in it to go using it on innocent patients once we get to the wards! But as a class it's fun, and we get to dress casually.

Intro

I am a first year student in my second semester of medical school at the Lake Erie College of Medicine (LECOM) at Seton Hill. This is a new campus in Greensburg, PA of an already existing osteopathic college of medicine. There is one branch campus down in Florida that is apparently pretty good, but we are a "satellite campus" of the one in Erie, PA. Our curriculum is all Independent Learning (like correspondence courses) and Problem Based Learning (PBL), which is a form of small group learning.

For prospective students: it's been a long hard year for us, but hopefully it will be better for you. We have been disappointed in many ways with the school, with Corporate up in Erie, with our education, and with osteopathy and the profession. But still, we're happy to be in med school, and excited about becoming doctors. And, really, it's no worse than a Caribbean school. It's really inexpensive (since we have no labs, not many teachers, scant facilities, and old technology), the attrition rate is not bad (only lost five percent so far), and if you can teach yourself the material you'll do well on the boards. We are all pretty sure that it will be a lot better next year. Check back to see how things progress!

For current students: some of you probably disagree with what I write here. It's just one person's opinion and experience of medical school. I invite you to write your own!