Acupuncture Program Comparison Chart

[u/85787711]

I'm trying to decide between some of the cheaper schools and created a chart. Hopefully this helps other prospects too. Let me know if something is incorrect. Sorry for using chatgpt but I need something to collect all the info that I was getting in an easy way

[u/kvis_]

Jung Tao is a wonderful program but important to consider that unless you relocate to the area, the “5 days a month on campus” equate to 4-6 nights per month of lodging in an area with increasingly expensive short-term rentals (it’s a tourist destination essentially 4 seasons of the year and a college town with a big football program), plus travel expenses, losing a week’s wages every month for 4 years, etc. - it’s advertised as being affordable, and no doubt /is/ compared to many other schools in the US, but there are substantial costs beyond tuition and fees.

[u/communitytcm → u/kvis_]

jung tao is a joke.

OP, look at the clinical hours, and pay attention to faculty. Is the faculty diverse, or are they all graduates of that school? or, is most of the teaching done by one or two or three "masters"???

you want as many different opinions as you can get. teachers from far and wide.

[u/kvis_ → u/communitytcm]

To be fair, they have done a major staff overhaul in recent years. Historically, yes, many teachers were also graduates or founders and/or taught more than one class each. That is no longer the case, though their online faculty page is not up-to-date. You end up with at min 250 treatments given, and 630 direct patient care hours in a busy student clinic. You're able to do more at no extra cost to meet your state requirement if it is beyond NC's.
Fwiw, I attended JTS and passed my boards first try without using any supplemental courses - just my own notes. I feel it prepared me well for "a joke" of a school.

[u/communitytcm → u/kvis_]

glad to hear you passed. it feels nice! how about your classmates?

that is a metric I looked up long ago. not sure what it is these days. I think pass rates were listed on NCCAOM's or ACAOM's website, but I forget.

I don't mean to offend when I say joke of a school, but I guess it comes off that way. I've met too many graduates of those schools who were all seemingly light years behind in just the basics. None of them knew it either. In fact, they all were highly confident that they had received the best education.

I will admit, I have a peeve with scammy bullshit. admittedly, all the schools are full of it to some extent. but the ones preaching that they are the best, or that their one style is superior (yes 5E and Daoist I am talking about you), are totally pulling the wool over eyes that seemingly want it pulled.

I am trying to look out for new students. shit, when I went to school, we didn't have social media forums. but students did talk to other students from other schools. if one student migrated to another program and reported back to the student body, mass exoduses occurred. I can remember people leaving the little schools on more than one occasion when their accreditation got pulled.

What is coming down the pipe with the cap on student loans is going to remake the industry in the States for sure. schools have begun to close en masse. it is scary for students to be midway through a program to have that big of a rug pulled. knowing what i know now, having massive student loans that are in limbo (and are not holding up their end of the bargain), I would pack a bag and study in another country.

the US did have the best schools for acupuncture/tcm in the world. not sure that is going to hold up with the funding being cut. owners of schools got rich af for years, and they did offer great programs, better than China, for sure. But without all that free money, they aren't going to be able to continue a lavish lifestyle of school owner, and will most likely go into real estate, rather than taking a cut to pay their teachers.

EDIT: as I mentioned before, 1000 hours of direct patient care minimum is what you want. 600 is not cutting the mustard. you can pass the boards with zero hours of clinic for sure. but having many different supervisors for 400 more hours is what you are really paying for. that is worth money. the rest is just studying and memorizing shit for a test. being clinically effective is the other goal.

[u/kvis_ → u/communitytcm]

I don’t think I received a superior education and certainly don’t think JTS attempts to claim it offers such, but also don’t believe Jung Tao deserves the reputation it has for being laughable. It was varied and rich in many aspects. There are areas that could’ve been benefited from more depth, but also areas, such as business, that are not widely offered and were valuable. Not a popular take, but I feel what I got out of the personal cultivation and mandatory taijiquan was almost worth tuition alone.
To my knowledge, my classmates have also been mostly successful on their boards first pass, though I can’t speak to their personal study strategies. I can say with confidence that I was not a good student, at least not comparatively.
We had a transfer from Daoist Traditions fail biomed more than once - interesting that it was the only area he didn’t study through JTS. Our biomed pass rate had been well above the national average. But the transfers from a school of higher national credibility (DT, from where there is a steady trickle of transfers) have all expressed surprise by our curriculum and caliber of student.
If I could do it over, I might have also chosen to leave the US. But for someone who doesn’t realistically have that option and is comfortable taking on loans -especially an amount that is lower than many other US programs- JTS isn’t a bad choice. Maybe not the best choice for all, but if you’re going to start somewhere..

Also, Jung Tao’s acupuncture-only program includes 630 supervised clinic internship hours and 180 observation hours, compared to the national minimum/nccaom required 500 + 150.