I'm not really sure how spartan is. My entire opinion is based off what I hear from the other students, and the few spartan students I have met. The school itself is across the street from a heinekin/guiness brewery. I've heard that they don't have the case based study, nor do they have the clinics in town. So you are automatically losing out on the extra hands on training, and the case studies.

Their school is located outside of the main town. The facilities look old, but relatively well maintained. I have not been inside them. They have been around for a while, but have been banned from a few states.

I think the key difference is the case studies and clinics that IAU offers. A typical week at spartan would include lectures and most likely a few lab classes. My week is much more involved. We have the lectures, and the labs, as any medical school would. However, we also add the clinics and cases as more classes.

Lectures + Labs + clinical rotations (us based)= typical school (spartan)

Lectures + Labs + clinics + case study + Kaplan review + Intro to clinical medicine + Clinical Rotations (US based) = IAU

We also take the US board exams. The same exams the US schools give out. Yeah, IAU is alot more work, but as someone previously stated "how bad do you want to be a doctor"? Although, from what I hear the spartan kids do throw nice parties.

I'll try to elaborate on tuesdays (case study presentation) festivities. I'll also try to post my thoughts on the exams since this will be the first of many to come.