Does the student body seem cooperative or competitive?
4 out of 10
Does the environment seem supportive for underrepresented minorities?
1 out of 10
Does the environment seem supportive for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transsexual students?
4 out of 10
Does the environment seem supportive for married students?
6 out of 10
Does the environment seem supportive for students with disabilities?
4 out of 10
Does the environment seem supportive for older/non-traditional students?
4 out of 10
Do you/did you feel well prepared for your board exams?
0 out of 10
How approachable are faculty members?
9 out of 10
What are the facilities and clinics like (old/new, well maintained, etc.)?
Facilities are mostly new and well maintained.
How do students from this program do after graduation - are they adequately prepared for practice?
I have yet to meet an AZCOM alum that was "adequately" prepared for residency. That being said, newly minted physicians out of medical school rarely are. Residency is where the real clinical learning occurs.
What are rotations like?
AZCOM has 3 main cohorts; Arizona, California, Chicago.
Arizona - AZCOM has local agreements with hospitals that students commonly rotate in. Others are preceptor (not ward) based.
Chicago - AZCOM and CCOM are sister schools and share their clinical rotations.
California - Can be a complete crapshoot. Most rotations are preceptor based. All students have at least 1 ward based rotation (in California, will likely only be 1 anyway)
Setting up electives with AZCOM faculty in 4th year is a chore. Coordinators are misguided and misinformed most of the time, documents and agreements are out of date for many sites, VSAS generally is very useless to DO students to begin with.
How do students from this program do in the Match?
Typically very well. This has more to do with individual drive and perseverance than the support of the AZCOM faculty in your matching experience. Students who want plastic surgery work very hard to obtain that residency and that is true about all schools.
Any other information you want to share?
With my experience, AZCOM should be worth half of what the tuition actually costs at most. The interview experience is misleading as you only see what is presented (a very clean facility). The education is not the best and the clinical rotations are adequate at best. The students are the only redeeming quality and it is because of the drive and perseverance to be well educated and ready. AZCOM has not provided me with much to brag about except a 400k+ bill. The faculty is not responsive to student requests, however reasonable they might seem (Uworld instead of COMBANK). The administration is absolutely awful and unorganized. At least the campus always has bright green grass...
