If I.A.U. has ...

1. No real campus (3rd floor of temporary building)

2. No real dorms or transportation (private rentals)

3. No real curriculum (unproven case-study method)

4. Non-disclosure of NBME "shelf" grades

5. Less clinicals (Mainly chicago)

6. No state approvals (claims of "working on it" are few years old now)

7. No real teachers (staff has been changing every semester)

8. No one placed into residency yet

9. No housing for clinical students

10. Moderately high tuition for mediocre service

... then what does I.A.U. offer?

1. Well you said it right there (TEMPORARY), its not as though the school plans on staying in that one space forever, they are planning on building a new structure sometime in the near future (whenever that is).

2. Well, there are dorms, people just prefer to use private rentals. Transportation on the island is fairly cheap, and once the new campus has been constructed, you won't have either of those problems. Keep in mind that this is a fairly new school and things are still being put into place for the long run.

3. The curriculum is fairly balanced and the case-study method seems to be effective in helping students learn medicine. And if you don't want to take my word for it, here are some websites that talk about how effective case-based learning is:

MIT Press Journals - Design Issues - First Page

Case Method Teaching - National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science

4. Actually, they do tell you how you scored on your exam, don't really know where you got the info that they didn't... well, I've gotten my exam scores anyway

5. Yes, we do have less clinicals, but we also are a new school - the more students we have, the more clinicals will open up to us. A hospital is not going to give us a rotation if we only send 1 student a year to them. The more students that come and go through IAU will only enhance the number of clinical rotations that will open up for us down the road (as long as the students do well and don't act like idiots)

6. Well, it hasn't been "a few years" now, only about 8 months (as far as I can tell when the first NY team visit was), but realistically speaking, the school needed to make some changes and the changes are being made. The school is looking to get approval for NY sometime in the near future (yeah, I know - sounds like a broken record, but realistically, if NY wanted to shoot us down, they already would have).

7. The staff didn't really change all that much when I was down there (4 semesters), yeah there were a few teachers that came and left, but there was always some one there to replace them - and they are all QUALIFIED teachers. Its not as though they picked up someone who has no idea whats going on...

8. The reason no one has been placed into residency is because the school is too new to have someone placed into a residency. As soon as we get someone placed (which should be within the near future or so), we'll let you know how they did (presuming that person allows us to post his or her info).

9. Really? Housing for clinical students is something that (normally) students have to worry about on their own, even if they go to a larger Caribbean medical school. Now, if I'm wrong, I apologize and someone can correct me, but even then - the school DID give us information as to a place that was located near one of our current hospitals where we could stay on a monthly basis. Its not as though they didn't give us ANY information...

10. Well, tuition is tuition - the way I look at money is that you get what you pay for, and I don't really know the prices of other Caribbean medical schools, so I can't really comment on this point.

Anyway, I hope those counter-points were decent enough for you. Oh, and I believe that you were the one who copied down the 50 or so questions before from CMU's ValueMD page and posted them here - but these questions seem more original - so I guess I should congratulate you on that. Look forward to more of your questions (or points).

well said!

I believe the points stated by iaustudent006 are well said.

Besides, grades for NBME were given to me in the 3 digit and 2 digit format. And housing is always obtained off the hospital grounds, I never heard of a dorm for clinical students.

IAU provides you a ticket to the USMLE. It may not be a first class ticket, but hey you are not exactly using a site that caters towards first class students.

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