5th Semester (now in Miami)

I’m sure that the good ole New York office has proudly told you that 5th semester has been moved to Miami but they probably cannot give you some of the info that you may be wondering. Since the mid 1990’s communication around the organization has been terrible, so it was hard to get info about what you wanted to know. The new CEO has been doing a great job of improving the level of communication between departments so hopefully they have been about to tell you a little. We are very excited because this program has the purpose of training us to be prepared in appropriate clinical skills so that you will be ready to be a good 3rd year student. The second half of what used to be 5th semester was a board review course run by Kaplan. This no longer exists through Ross so the board scores and pass rates they advertise are for a program that has this while yours will not. I doubt the passing rate will drop with the changes and you can always take a Kaplan course on your own.

Right now it’s so new that it’s hard to give much accurate information. Things at Ross change quickly and with little warning so be warned that with a new program like this it is likely to change.

Now to dispel some of the rumors out there I will pass on the information that this is NOT a University of Miami related program. I have heard it is similar to their pre-clinical program but not joint with them. Ross does have accreditation to offer this program as part of it’s clinical program and has solved the initial problems with financial aid. Right now (Spring 2001) this is a 9 week program with about 23 days of hands on experience in the hospital. Following the 9 weeks students will take a “hiatus” up to 16 weeks during which time they can take a step 1 review course if they chose and they must pass step 1 and begin clinical training. The remaining 6 weeks of 5th semester will be the first 6 weeks of clinical rotations. (For financial purposes all semesters are 15 weeks long.)

The bottom line is that this is a very new program but will be a huge benefit to the school and us students. It will help us be much better prepared when we enter third year and rotate along side of us our US counterparts.