Questions at med school open house

I’m going to my local med school for an open house on Friday. Are here any questions I should ask or questions you wished you had asked when you visited schools? I have some generic questions in mind but I fee like they would just give me answers that can be found online or in MSAR…

Are you going to meet current medical students? I always ask them to list any negatives or opportunities for improvement for their medical school. For example, at one school, a student complained that because their lectures weren’t recorded, she wasn’t able to study effectively from home when she was sick. At another school, a student complained that he didn’t get a lot of guidance when he was looking at residencies. It sounds a little pessimistic but I feel that it helps me because then I could say, “I can live with that” or “No, I can’t do that”.

I’d ask if they use block scheduling for courses…because the more courses you are taking at a time, the more difficult it can be to study effectively for them…so block scheduling is helpful.


How frequent are exams. Again, I think more frequent is better so you are not trying to learn new stuff and memorize huge chunks of material for the next exam at the same time. Believe me,even with tests every 2 weeks or so, the chunks bill be huge enough!


One thing I asked sometimes was regarding what use the school makes of (or provisions they have in place for) collaborative learning, if you prefer that sort of learning environment.


Those are three things I think have a huge impact on your quality of life at medical school.


Kate

Depending on how well it’s structured they’ll answer all your questions and even those you didn’t know to ask. The ones Kate mentioned I never thought about but they addressed all of them in the curriculum presentation. I usually ask “what would you do differently?”.

Thanks for the responses. The open house was really informal and informative. I didn’t have to ask any questions. One of the students on the panel is a non-trad so it was good to hear her perspective. The best advice given to the traditional premeds was to stay off SDN, and I thought of you crooz…lol.

RE: Ok you…break over! Go back to studying your prereq material. Nothing more to see here!..Seriously…OPM is not going to get you accepted so your 15 minute study break is officially over! Now get to it!


very true…but if it weren’t for OPM, I would have never had the guts to try…

  • corewr Said:
The best advice given to the traditional premeds was to stay off SDN, and I thought of you crooz...lol.