Met with the profs today, and they all were extremely nice and helpful to my dad and I...They were friendly, and mostly all from Canada or the US (easy to understand). Met a lot more students as well, and they were all so nice! An interesting thing that I learned about today, is that the current 2nd semester class got caught cheating (I wasn't clear of what they were doing exactly) but what happened was their reputation with the professors went DOWN exponentially! I guess they couldnt catch the few students who were cheating, and the whole class got punished. They made/are making their tests extremely hard-impossible to "punish" the students. Everyone says that your class's reputation is VERY important, so lets hope our class has no cheaters in it...Kind of sucks that a lot of people had to suffer for one or two people's idiotic decision to cheat...=( JANUARY 2009-->NO CHEATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOL!!! Yeah, I know one of the guys who "cheated"; He memorized everything in the lecture notes so well that he was teaching that block to everyone the night before. In fact, he cheated so well that he was able to explain everything that was asked of him. The reason they weren't able to pin it on him was because all his notes were in his head, so there wasn't any tangible evidence to substantiate all the "cheating" he did. LOL!!!

Remember folks, if somebody says it or writes it, it MUST be true!!!! So lets believe everything everyone says; and not practice evidence-based decision making.

I'ma get my pitchfork ma; we's gonna find us a witch!

He memorized everything in the lecture notes so well that he was teaching that block to everyone the night before.

What is wrong with memorizing lecture notes and helping his fellow students. There had to be more than that.

Im confused, hows that cheating???

When I was at MIT, I had a course in fluid mechanics which, as you probably know can be a very difficult course. I am no fluid mechanics genious but I somehow got lucky on the midterm -- I got a 94. The next closest score was 65 and the class average was 31. So the prof thought I must have cheated. No cheating -- I just got lucky. But, alas, the fluid mechanics gods are fickle -- one day they smile on you and the next they smite you down. I ended the course with a B-.

I will make no claims to sainthood, but I have never cheated in school. I had another course in queuing theory (stochastic processes) and the professor gave a take home test that consisted of problems assigned from the text. I am a bit of a book nut and I happened to have a copy of the answer book to the text -- which stayed closed until I turned in the exam. I got a B- in the course.

granted, this thread is on point but the most important thing is you cant cheat on the step 1 which people routinely fail/do subpar on after studying a lot and "not cheating" to begin with. personally there were cheaters in my class i just didnt care as i knew the day step 1 rolled around theyd get PWNED HARD and at the end of the day would not be competing with me for residency spots. And just so u guys know, being an IMG with less than a 90 on the USMLE, you can get a residency but expect to get owned hardcore, work ridiculous hours way over the 80/hr a week limit and basically expect nothing but "pooh pooh" (thats for the admins so they cant say i curse) for your entire residency. The hospital I am rotating at now has an average USMLE score of 95 for incoming internal med residents and out of 15 only 2 are from US schools....and I know many others that arent even University-affiliated that require 95 to even apply for Internal Med, forget specialties.

Just for you incoming students to keep in mind = focus on your goal at the end of Saba, dont get hung up on little tests in little classes. Personally, I came close to failing anatomy but I think i made it out ok in the end......

__________________
AKA ICEMAN

You're everyone's problem. That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous - Iceman (Top Gun)

Cheating or allegations of cheating happens every year, and happens at every school, offshore or otherwise. It happened when I was on the island. I agree that "punishing" a whole class with even tougher tests is not the best solution. When I was teaching I remember staff sometimes threatening to do this to try to bring peer pressure to bear on students and thus prevent cheating. It is a common tactic in med school and in training programs of all types, as I'm sure you've noticed. Sometimes it works.
The paramount thing to do as a student is to remain above reproach and show your professors that as a group you are hard working regardless of what else is going on. Communication builds trust.

__________________
Saba Forum Moderator
Saba University School of Medicine, MSIV
Interests: Pediatrics, Psychiatry

I'm a little confused here. You first say:

"An interesting thing that I learned about today, is that the current 2nd semester class got caught cheating"

But you later go on to say:

"I guess they couldnt [sic] catch the few students who were cheating"

Perhaps what you meant to say is that some among the second semester class were suspected of cheating. As a matter of fact there was insufficient evidence to prove that anyone cheated.

I would hope that the administration would not be so immature as to punish an entire class for the alleged sins of a few. So far, that doesn't seem to be the case....thank goodness. The block 4 histology test was extremely hard and the majority of the class failed, but the block 5 test yielded the highest class average of the semester.The level of difficulty in anatomy remained unchanged and in fact many did extremely well on the final exams.

Have the profs decided to make semester 2 much harder? I guess we'll find out soon enough

cheating is taken very seriously here. Anyone caught will get kicked out. Just dont do it.

I think its unfair to punish the whole class but thats what happened (66% class average on that exam that teacher suspected cheating occurred).
And now the upcoming class has like a 32% cumulative final for histology and the presentation 4% now (which helps failing ppl pass) which I think is absurd.

Just look at it as another hurdle that you have to cross and you'll be fine. Hope the 2nd semester profs treat current 2nd's well. They did great for us

Study hard, and let the system weed out the cheaters cuz in the end it will be the USMLE that separates the people that worked hard and the people that cheated.

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Saba University

Fall 07'

This has gotta be one of the most un-productive posts I've seen yet on ValueMD.

1) You shouldn't cheat (period), the reasons should be very clear. USMLE / Morals / etc etc etc and NOT because of the punishments that could come from it.
2) Why post something that now labels a 'semester' as cheaters, even though there was NOT any evidence nor was there any accusations of it.
3) A post like this would only degrade SUSOM in the eyes of the medical community and nothing positive would come out of it.

Please, "Margie" next time, think through before you post an un-productive message, that has no bases and an obvious meaning.