Hi, I’m curious to know if anyone has any experience or tips for someone who’s thinking of applying to a brand-new medical school. My undergraduate (University of Houston) is opening its new medical school at exactly the time when I’ll be ready to apply so if I went there I’d be in the first cohort.
Does anyone have any helpful advise on this? I know a few new schools have popped up in the last few years and would love to hear what it was like to be in one of the early classes. I imagine the school wouldn’t be completely organized and that might add some extra stress but it also seems like a neat experience.
Thanks for any feedback! - Maria
I applied to a couple of new-ish schools and found that they tried really hard to recruit a good cohort of folks. They both had novel ideas of training in some aspects, had innovative modalities and tools of teaching, and seemed to at least administrators with some experience in the medical school game. They both went on to have pretty impressive board scores (above national mean) and matches to some pretty recognizable programs across multiple specialties. In that aspect, they were good programs. One (MD) program was linked with a massive hospital system and seemed to be able to pull lecturers with some expertise in pretty niche areas. The other (DO) was a smaller program that seemed to rely on a small subset of lecturers for each subject area. Pluses and minuses to both styles though actually. I attend a school at a tertiary care facility, and having generalized lecturers is actually pretty good for learning about the broad overview of some subjects. Some (not all) of the pretty technical specialists either teach too in the weeds or teach above our level of understanding.
All that to say, if the accreditation board sees fit to approve them to teach medicine, they at least have all of the pieces to give you an adequate education. I don’t think it’s a major gamble. I personally may favor a more established program if the option was there, but I’m a pretty conservative guy. Some of what you get out of medical school is what you put into it on your own time, using other resources. You may want to directly ask them if they provide a strong foundation of medicine or if they “teach to the boards,” which in my experience actually doesn’t teach you everything you need to know for the boards (not to mention you can purchase your own materials that provide “high yield” info).