University of Texas Medical Branch-Galveston

Just wanted to clarify on the previous 2 posts. Austin: 3rd and 4th years can choose to either spend the whole year in Austin or do a couple of rotations there (Brackenridge, Children's). If you spend the whole year, you need to find your own housing for the year. I think there are 24 students there from the current 3rd year class doing the whole year. If you do a couple of rotations in Austin, housing is provided for you for free (4 students per 2 bedroom apts) because they don't want you paying rent for 2 places. Rotations that require a patient simulation to demonstrate your history and physical exam skills (internal med, family med, pedi) will require that you come back to Galveston to take the exam (travel costs are reimbursed but capped). For family med, you can request to go anywhere in Texas. Boards: It's hard to tell whether the curriculum has any affect on anything. The administrators will say "yes" if the results are good and "it's too early to tell" if the results are bad. We're not in class as long as other schools are, which is both good and bad. Students end up skipping class anyways if there're too many classes. Bottom line: Board studying is up to you, how motivated you are, and how much your friends motivate you. The class that had the reputation for the bad board scores/pass rate just graduated (or at least should have). Current 4th years improved on that class, but hovered around the UTMB average (~210, nat'l avg 215) because the people who did poorly did really poorly, dragging the average down. But a lot of people in the current 4th year class did really well because they freaked out over how the class before them did. We freaked out too. The current 3rd year class studied early and studied hard. And when everyone is studying for the Boards, it's hard to slack off. Anyhow, we've always had the 6 weeks of summer break after 2nd year. I don't know if the Dean said this during the info session, but what the Dean's office did was purchase a national prep course/board question bank for ALL OF US for free. We could extend our access to the bank at our own cost. We also had 3rd & 4th years tutor us for free or for a nominal fee. That probably made the difference. The 97% pass rate they're quoting you corresponds to a 225, when the nat'l avg is a 217 this year. At least 111 students scored above 221 (corresponds to a score of 90), and at least 24 students had scores that corresponded to a 99. Obviously, students and faculty are all very excited about this and they want to keep the upward trend going. Hope this helps. Best of luck with interviews!