Session 120 As you build your school list, you may find that there are new medical schools opening when you are applying. Is it a good idea to apply to those schools? This is a question that has been coming up more often since more and more new medical schools are opening. If you have questions you want answered here, go to the Nontrad Premed Forum to ask away and hopefully it would be answered here on this podcast. [01:13] OldPreMeds Question of the Week: "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 school, 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 advice on this? I know new few 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 imagined a school wouldn't be completely organized and that might add some extra stress but it also seems like a neat experience." [01:55] The Risks of Applying to a New School When you look at LCME (Liaison Committee on Medical Education) that does the accreditation for MD medical schools and COCA (The AOA Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation) for DO schools, they go through this whole process. As soon as a school says about starting a new school in the city and who's going to run it, all of these conversations will take place with the accreditation bodies. "A school can't start accepting students until they get the preliminary accreditation through these bodies." This means that the school will have to get a preliminary accreditation through these bodies. And in order for the school to get to that point, they'd have to have shown a lot of things. They have to show their curriculum or the administrative structure and facilities in place. So there's a lot that they have to do to get to this point. All this being said, you're not going to show up to a school that doesn't have a building or a faculty or leadership or administration set up. All that has been going on for years prior to the school accepting their fires class. [03:47] Help with the Boards A lot of students are worried about curriculum when it comes to new schools. "Is the school going to prepare me for the boards?" And as I've said, the school doesn't help you score well on your board exams. Only you do that. Yes, they may have resources and they may buy you access to certain test prep materials. But it's you that puts in the effort day in and day out to make sure that you score the best you can do on your board exams. "The school doesn't help you score well on your board exams, only you do that." You shouldn't be worried about the school preparing your for the boards. The boards is an open book test for you and medical schools. You know what's going to be on the boards. You know how you have to prepare. If the school isn't providing that, you have to go out and seek out the resources necessary for you. Even if the school does provide those resources, if they're not providing them in a way that you learn the best, then you're likely to go out and seek out other materials or resources where you can learn better. So from a curriculum and a boards preparation standpoint, don't worry about whether or not the school is prepared to help you on those tests. Again, through the accreditation process, the curriculum is evaluated. Then the accreditation bodies make sure that you are as prepared as possible to get you the information that you need to succeed. [06:06] Concern with Residency Programs Program directors know that students coming from these universities, they've been able to judge those students over the years as to how prepared they are to come out. However, the preparation is not necessarily the school, but the clinical rotations. What is expected of you in those clinical rotations? What responsibilities do you have in