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This school is a joke


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I am just about done with the entire program at Idaho state.  Unfortunately I have hardly anything positive to say about the program.  1st its super expensive, and half of all of your lectures from DY year are distant/virtual.  So if you like to spend a lot of money to teach yourself then by all means this is the place for you.  They treat you like a child.  Attendance mandatory every day, even when we went to home learning during the pandemic they required us to login and put in an emailed code to make sure we were in attendance, I had more freedom when i was a freshman in undergrad.  The advisors are garbage, they dont provide any direction or help.  

THe clinical year is not any better.  they hardly have any preceptors, no relations with any of the local hospitals so students are traveling all over the western US because the only preceptors they have are previous graduates.  Thank god i set up my rotations myself.  The professors that handle the clinical year are a joke.  They provide zero direction, I have talked to my clnical year professor 1 time in the last year- not sure where my 15K a semester is going for Clinical year.  they dont pay the preceptors, the staff doesnt do anything, and I am not utilizing any brick/mortar structure.  

pros: the staff is nice- I too would be nice though if I was collecting a paycheck for doing jack.  

So if you feel that you want to pay a lot, to be treated like a child, and teach yourself I advise you to go here, if you have other options I suggest going there.  Unfortunately we all know PA school is super competitive and thats why they can get away with acting like this.  I am also not just so disgruntled student- I am doing well in the program with a 3.6 gpa and have no fears about graduating, I just wanted to warn future prospects about making the same mistake i made. 

Edited by panamaredfish
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  • 4 weeks later...

Hey,

    Just curious where you did your undergraduate degree at?  I'm an Idaho native and went out of state to a private institution and took summer courses at BSU and noticed a HUGE difference in teaching capabilities and quality of education between my primary university.  ISU in general is not known as a high level of education value across the state, but is the only "healthcare" related state school.  We all know people are flocking to the Idaho region, making the PA program there that much more competitive.  I'm about to start a program this fall with the intent of moving back to Boise afterwards, how's the job outlook with such a large student cohort being pumped out from ISU annually? 

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  • 1 month later...

I'm a fellow student of panamaredfish and definitely have had a different experience. Yes, it is expensive (are any really cheap?), but the cost is laid out up front so that should be no surprise. Yes, the DY lectures a lot of times are distant/virtual BUT they are live from 1 of the 3 campuses so you are able to ask questions/interact as much as you want. Of course you have to teach yourself a lot but that is because there is a TON to learn. If you are going into PA school thinking you can just sit through lectures and be good to go, you are fooling yourself. We did have to enter a code to show we were in attendance when home during the pandemic and a lot of people felt like it was childish, but hey, it took 3 seconds to do. The 1 or 2 times I logged on a few minutes late I sent an email and was good to go. I believe the NCCPA requires attendance so this was the way the school could show that requirement was met. Plus, why pay for the lectures and not be in attendance for them? I set up a few of my rotations and all the ones that I got at random have been in Idaho. I do know some students have had to travel more than they would like so I would try to set some up if you can. If you can't, you may find yourself traveling but it is only for 5 weeks at a time. I could definitely list out some complaints I have about the clinical year team but it hasn't ruined my 2nd year and was able to get stuff figured out. When I have reached out to them with questions I have gotten the answers I needed from them. 

As you can see, PA programs can be a different experience for different people. At the end of the day work your butt off, learn what you can, survive the 2 years, and you come out a PA-C. Hope this helps! Also, if you have any specific questions feel free to message me.

Edited by CardiacKiddo
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  • 5 weeks later...

The NCCPA does not require attendance, cardiac kiddo doesnt know what he/she is talking about.  Hence this year the program does not require attendance.  Like I said if you want to fork out 100K to teach yourself and pay for additional lodging out of state for your rotations and have no options for electives by all means apply here.  This program cares about one thing, that is making money.  

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  • 4 weeks later...

That's why I said "I believe" they require attendance which is what the school told us as why they wanted to track it. If you all can't tell, panamaredfish is just a disgruntled person because they had to actually study outside of school (crazy that medicine requires self study) and had to actually find rotations (even though if you found 0 on your own the school always found one to put you in as 0 classmates were left without a rotation). 

I also find it funny that someone complains about both having to "teach yourself everything" and also about being required to attend lectures. Sort of ironic

 

 

Edited by CardiacKiddo
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  • 4 weeks later...

Bwahahahahahahaha!  This thread is absolutely hilarious to read!  I too am a classmate of both panamaredfish and cardiackiddo.  Panamaredfish is a disgruntled student, for some unknown reason, who is still going to be graduating from our program with a Masters degree this Friday. I completely disagree with everything panamaredfish has to say about the program.  The faculty and staff are extremely caring and I have had multiple emails and conversations with the staff and faculty throughout my time here, especially over the clinical year when I haven’t even seen some of them in 18 months thanks to the pandemic.  I’ve even had random emails just asking how I’m doing and saying they miss me.  If this wasn’t the case for panamaredfish, then perhaps they need to do some introspection and figure out why nobody missed them very much!  I find it wholly unprofessional to take to anonymous blogs such as this just to tell people how terrible your program was and tell them not to come here.  My advisors were Christine, and Anntara and they were both absolutely amazing.  Is PA school hard?  Yep.  Hardest thing you’ll probably ever do in your life!  But I’m almost 40, have a wife and 2 children, and spent my weekends attending drill with my army unit when panamaredfish was likely binging a new show on Netflix and I still found a way to succeed in the program.  Don’t talk to me about how hard it was or how much you taught yourself!  Did I spend an inordinate amount of time learning on my own?  You betcha!  Had to completely change my approach to learning when the pandemic hit.  Is it expensive?  Yes.  Not as expensive as some other programs.  Meridian campus was right about $72k for the whole program.  I maxed out my loans so my wife could be home with my kids during school and I’m walking away with $147k in loans.  So what!  I’m going to have a job making 6 figures and will easily be able to pay this back.  Did I have to travel for rotations?  Yes.  For 1.  I lived in a hotel in SLC for 5 weeks while completing an amazing surgery rotation.  My remaining 7 rotations were in the Treasure Valley.  Did I mention I also learned Spanish during PA school and received a graduate certificate in medical Spanish through the Latino Health track?  Was attendance mandatory? Yup.  We didn’t find this out until the shutdown.  It was so cumbersome that I had to set my alarm for 0755 every morning so I could copy and paste the code from my email into Moodle while I was still in bed and roll out of bed still in my pajamas and complete the 30 second commute all the way downstairs to my den so I could log onto lecture at 0800!  In case you couldn’t tell by my sarcasm, it was a minor inconvenience!  Altogether, ISU is a great program and I recommend it to everyone!  Do not listen to the rantings of a disgruntled student like Panamaredfish!  They obviously have some major growing up to do!

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  • 4 months later...

Yes yes we know aaron you loved PA school,   you are literally the only one.  everyone was so tired of you thanking the staff every time for how flexible they were during the pandemic.  Thank you for doing your jobs that i am paying you 250.00 a day to do.  I dont remember fellatio being a topic in PA school but it appears you excelled in it.  Its like you have never actually worked in the real world, you like being coddled like a child at the age of almost 40? BTW attendance was mandatory the entire time, if you didnt know about it before the pandemic you must not have read your 80 page rule book you had to sign prior starting PA school.  I should really change the title of this to ISU is a joke unless you are 40 and like being treated like you are 12.  You only recommend this school cause you never went to a decent school.  There are 100s of PA programs, I wish i had read about about what a joke ISU was before I decided to go there, I would have applied somewhere else.  

Lets go through some issues:

Physiology, have a professor that does not reply to email or phone calls.  literally tells you the wrong answer in class and then puts a different on the test multiple times, and yet is still employed.  real great for a distance learning course when the prof wont answer your questions. BTW I got an A in this course- but i am pretty sure i learned more about roadkill than physiology- luckily i was able to teach myself again.

Ultrasound: its a hands on instructor based program that is only good if the instructor is in the room with you, doesnt work well in a distance learning program.  

Grume for Path:  I know you struggled with this, I didnt, but lets be honest no one knew what he was talking about.  So here are some slides, teach yourself.  

Dave martin: His tests are ridiculous, he is not flexible in his answers even when he writes the questions incorrectly.  

Dave talford:  couldnt tell me the difference between herpes zoster and varicella- he was teaching a DERM PA COURSE!

How many of the slide decks were dated 2017/2018 with outdated info on them? again you are paying 100K for someone who is too lazy to update their slides? 

Clinical year:  many people didnt have their rotations set up until the week before, or were set up where lodging wasnt available without time to even look.  How many people had to travel from montana to california to arizona because the school has zero connections to any health systems in the area even though they have been in boise for over a decade.  the ICOM med school has all of their rotations set up at st als and lukes for their students with name badge ready and they have only been in the valley for 3 years.  Oh and their cost is not really that much more than ISU.  

I am glad you had the time of your life, but for many of us the program was a joke, when compared to other schools.

 

Oh and to top if off the school raised our tuition during the pandemic when we were all at learning from home and the schools costs actually went down, so please tell me again how this school emphasizes learning over making money.   

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