PSedrishMD

This is a note I've copied from the archives, written last year by "SAR".

WHAT IT IS:
Sophie Davis (SD) is a BS/MD program hosted at City College of the City University of New York. You take all your liberal arts and science courses during the first few years at City College. During the last 2 years at the college, you take all the biomedical courses that you would normally take in medical school. I'm not too sure about the following, but you might actually start taking the med school courses earlier, and take some college courses during the last two years if you're really motivated.

WHAT YOU DO:
For the 5 years you spend at City College, you pay the CUNY tuition rate (which is very low... it's currently $4,000 per YEAR). After you graduate from there, you have something like half a MD and most of your BS. You transfer to a participating med school (there are currently 6--all in NY state--and you apply to them at the end of your third year), where you rotate through clinical classes (patient interaction and stuff) for 2 years. You may apply for any residencies you want--SD has no control over you.

WHAT THERE IS:
Each graduating class is 60-70 students. The curriculum is a bit rigid because of all the classes you have to take in 5 years instead of the standard 6, but you do have room for electives, and you don't have to declare a major or a minor (so you can take pretty much any electives you want to, as long as you have the prerequisites). I would suggest to anyone who wants to attend SD that they load up on AP courses if they can do so without harming their GPA.
You don't have to take the MCATS, but you do have to pass the first step of the USMLE (US Medical Licensing Exam). You take the last 2 steps in the med school you transfer to.

WHAT YOU AGREE TO DO:
When you decide to attend SD, you sign a legal contract that gives you two choices of what to do after graduation and licensing: serve two years as a primary care physician in an area of physician-shortage (it's actually usually an overcrowded urban area), or pay $75,000 to the city. It's a good bargain either way; you get oodles of experience in the physician shortage areas, and you would pay something around $75,000 for the first two years of med school anyway. At SD, you pay only the CUNY tuition for those two years.

WHAT YOU GET:
From what I have heard, the education you receive at SD is comparable to what you would receive at regular med schools. From very early on, you are exposed to community medicine. You are already called "doctor" by some professors (which feels kinda weird, but I guess I can't complain). You are given ample opportunity to succeed, there are plenty of academic and support services, and moral integrity is highly promoted.

WHAT IT HAS:
We have, I think, the most advanced anatomy lab in the state, if not in the nation. And it's being upkept pretty well, too. We also have a patient simulator that I hear is very fun to play with... I'm sure there's more that I'm not yet aware of. Our curriculum is currently undergoing some changes.


About City College: it's quite a change from the atmosphere at Stuyvesant HS (especially the students' attitudes and backgrounds). It's cool. ^_^

The professors I've had so far are all very accessible, and are always willing to listen to and address students' concerns. Almost all of them are willing to answer e-mail, and professors who teach the biomed courses might remember your name forever (creepy). All the advisors have a database of names and pictures of everybody, and they actually study it.

um... yeah. I should be writing my psychology paper, so I'll just shush now...

PSedrishMD

BTW.... http://med.cuny.edu/

boomer01

hey you are from stuyvesant? I went to Bronx science. Great rivarly among them.

mail4nrs

Is this program for NY residents only?

IrresistiblySwt

i think so..

sar

cool!
Thanks PSedrishMD. ^_^

btw, I'm still open to e-mails.

But I hope most of you are already well into your applications for Sophie if you want to apply. lol

boomer01: yes, I went to stuy. I didn't notice or care much about school rivalries. lol

mail4nrs: yes, Sophie is for NY state residents only.

sar

UPDATE

Not all of the med schools are in NYS anymore.

Dartmouth (in NH) has just joined SD. I think one school left, so the number of participating med schools is still 6. I'm not sure about the history of this stuff, but anyway, here's the current list:

1 Albany Medical College
2 Dartmouth Medical School
3 New York Medical College
4 New York University School of Medicine
5 The State University of New York (SUNY) Health Science Center at Brooklyn
6 SUNY at Stony Brook School of Medicine


AND there's a new curriculum that's supposed to be a lot more streamlined, and all that. You can find the new one at SD's official website (as PSedrishMD posted, http://med.cuny.edu).

jksbond007

how can dartmouth have a medical school when it is called "dartmouth college"? "college" implies its just one school (undergrad), if they had graduate programs/additional colleges it would be dartmouth university.

sar

lol Beats me why they named it "Dartmouth College." Its political history might have something to do with it: http://www.dartmouth.edu/home/about/history.html

But they do have a med school http://dms.dartmouth.edu/
--as well as a Graduate School of Arts & Sci, an Engineering School, and a Business School.

Scorpiodiva241

Im like in love with the SD program and im gonna apply next year
sar: do u have ne advise to applicants

sar

scorpiodiva241,
glad to hear you're interested.
can you be more specific please?

Scorpiodiva241

any suggestion on what to do and not to do on applications

sar

hmm. tough one...
besides the general advice, i guess, you should really, *really* pay attention to what you write in your essays--do your research and believe what you write. i'm not sure how the SD students interview HS students, but when i had my interview i had 2 professors and they pretty much memorized what i had written, and asked me many questions about my essays.

don't have unrealistic goals...

don't make excuses for past failures/mistakes; only talk about what you would do to improve...

anything more specific? feel free to e-mail me, btw.

razarhero12

If you dropped a college now class, and it got put on your transcript as a withdraw. How bad do you think this is and how much impact will it have on my application?

slipper1234

Dartmouth is a hybrid: it has a couple grad schools but so do some LACs (Middlebury for example). Overall the focus is on undergraduate education.