NSU Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine — Dismissal & Appeals

Written by Zachary Gaynor, attorney · The Florida Bar, admitted 2016 · court admissions. Reviewed 3 September 2026.

Who decides whether an NSU osteopathic medical student is dismissed?

The Student Progress Committee (SPC) recommends and the dean decides at NSU’s Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine. A separate Appeals Board hears appeals from the dean’s decisions. The window is 10 business days, and an appeal filed outside it “shall not be heard.” Legal representation is prohibited at every stage.

The most restrictive provision on legal help in Florida

NSU-KPCOM bars counsel twice over, and then goes further than any other programme in the state:

  • At the SPC meeting: “Legal representation or any other form of representation is prohibited during the meeting.”
  • At the Appeals Board: “Legal representation or any other form of representation during the appeal hearing is prohibited.” The hearing is “internal, private, and closed to nonuniversity persons.”
  • And then: “Participation by legal representatives with regard to preparation of the written appeal is prohibited.”

That last sentence purports to bar an attorney from even helping draft the appeal. We are not aware of another Florida programme that attempts it. Whether such a term is enforceable against a student who obtains legal advice is a separate question, and the College is a private institution, so Fla. Stat. § 1006.60 does not apply. What is clear is the practical position a student is in: the written appeal is the case, and the College says you must produce it alone.

University-wide the position is the same — “Parents, friends, significant others, and/or attorneys are not permitted to participate in, or observe, the disciplinary process,” and attorneys are excluded from investigation interviews unless the allegations involve a crime under the Violence Against Women Act.

Procedural features worth knowing before the hearing

  • You are excluded while witnesses are questioned — at the SPC (“The student will not be present during the questioning of any witnesses”) and again at the Appeals Board.
  • Failing to appear waives the appeal automatically. “Any student who fails to appear at the designated date and time will automatically waive the right to appeal.”
  • “No rules of evidence will be used.”
  • The Appeals Board hears only witnesses whose information is “new and relevant and… not been presented previously.”
  • “All decisions of the Appeals Board will be final and binding. No further option for appeal will be considered.”
  • Only department chairs, course directors or members of the administration may file a written complaint with the SPC chair — students and peers cannot initiate one.

No standard of proof is published for the KPCOM process. Preponderance appears in the University-wide Code of Student Conduct in the same handbook, but that governs a different process and should not be assumed to bind the SPC.

The deadlines

  • Dismissal: 10 business days from the date of dismissal. Suspension: 10 business days from the date of suspension.
  • Appeal to the Appeals Board: 10 business days (excluding school holidays and weekends) after receiving notification of the dean’s decision. Filed late, it “shall not be heard.”
  • Notice of the SPC hearing: at least 2 business days. Your witness list: no later than 2 business days before the meeting or hearing.
  • Grade challenges mix units in one section: initiate “no later than 10 days from the date the grade is posted,” continue at each level “within 10 business days,” with a hard outer bar — “No administrative grade changes will be accepted 60 calendar days after the grade is recorded.”

Treat the bare “10 days” for a grade challenge as ten calendar days. It is the shorter reading and the safe one.

COMLEX limits, and the credit-hour triggers with no remediation

  • COMLEX: dismissal on “a maximum of three failed attempts at any one of the COMLEX-USA examinations or a maximum of six total attempts for all” required for graduation. Level 1 must be taken at least once by 30 November of the M3 year; a third instance of non-compliance means an SPC appearance and possible dismissal.
  • Credit-hour thresholds trigger dismissal with remediation expressly unavailable: 8.5 or more credits failed in the M1 autumn term; 11.5 or more across M1 winter and summer combined; 14.0 or more in M2. Each carries the note “in such cases, no opportunity for remediation will be permitted.” In M3 and M4 it is two clinical rotations, or a repeated rotation.
  • Time limit: completion within 150 per cent of the programme’s length, running from original matriculation — including time at a prior osteopathic or allopathic school for transfers, and including approved leaves.
  • The catch-all: dismissal for “circumstances of a legal, moral, behavioral, ethical, or academic nature that would warrant such action.”

Readmission is discretionary and slow

A dismissed student is barred for 12 calendar months, may return only as a first-year student, and “all readmissions are determined solely at the discretion of the dean.” A student accused of a violent act or threat may be removed immediately and returns only by written permission of the dean.

Where the governing documents are

The handbook is published as an online flipbook with no downloadable PDF — the standard download paths return 404 — so it must be cited page by page. The core provisions sit at pages 186–187 (SPC procedure), 190–191 (suspension, dismissal and readmission), 192–193 (grievances and grade appeals) and 194–196 (Appeals Board).

As of 3 September 2026 the published edition was still 2025-2026. Confirm which edition governed you on the date the College acted, and preserve page captures — a flipbook can be revised without leaving a trace.

The College operates the Fort Lauderdale/Davie campus and the Tampa Bay Regional Campus in Clearwater, established 2019. COCA lists the latter as an additional location; NSU’s own handbook calls it the Tampa Bay Regional Campus. One handbook governs both.

The credit-hour arithmetic that decides whether you get to remediate

At KPCOM the single most important number in a preclinical year is not your GPA. It is how many credit hours you failed, because the handbook sorts every outcome into one of three bands and the band is fixed by arithmetic before anyone exercises judgment. Cross a line by half a credit hour and the remedy disappears.

M1 fall semester. Fail 6.5 credit hours or less and you are offered a remediation examination in each failed course. Fail 7 to 8 credit hours and remediation is off the table entirely: you must repeat the courses at the next offering, and you may not take M1 winter or summer courses until every repeat is passed. Fail more than 8 credit hours and you go to the Student Progress Committee and are subject to dismissal.

M1 winter and summer semesters, combined. The same three bands at 9.0 or less (remediation offered), 9.5 to 11 (repeat, no remediation, and no progression to M2 until the repeats are passed), and more than 11 (SPC, subject to dismissal).

M2 fall and winter terms, combined. Bands at 9.5 or less, 10 to 13.5, and 14 or more.

Repeated courses, in every year. If you fail a course you are repeating, you are eligible to remediate it. If you fail that remediation, you go to the SPC and are subject to dismissal — regardless of how few credit hours are involved. This is the provision that ends the most careers at KPCOM, because by the time it applies the student has usually already survived two earlier bands.

Two things follow. First, because the band is arithmetic, the real fight in most preclinical cases is not the dismissal decision at all — it is the underlying grade, and the window to challenge a grade is far shorter than the window to appeal a dismissal. Second, a half-credit course that looks trivial in isolation can be the difference between a remediation exam and a referral. Both points argue for getting advice at the first failing grade rather than at the dismissal letter.

The COMSAE gate: how a student is dismissed without ever failing a board exam

KPCOM does not let students sit COMLEX Level 1 on their own judgment. Eligibility runs through a course, COM 6990, and a practice examination, the COMSAE, and the gate is a score of 450.

Every student must enrol in COM 6990 in the summer semester and score at least 450 on the COMSAE administered in that course. Miss it on the first administration and you must meet a faculty adviser in the Department of Medical Education, review your performance profile, build an individualised study plan, complete it, and retake. Miss it again and the same process repeats before a third and final attempt. Fail to reach 450 on that third attempt and you fail COM 6990 — and a student who fails COM 6990 is not eligible to take COMLEX Level 1 and is not eligible to start rotations until the course is passed.

Fail COM 6990 a second time and you are referred to the SPC and subject to dismissal. Read that carefully: a student can be dismissed from KPCOM having never sat, let alone failed, a real licensing examination. The dismissal is driven entirely by a practice test administered in-house.

That matters for two reasons. It puts the reliability, administration and scoring conditions of an internal practice examination at the centre of a dismissal case in a way that a genuine COMLEX failure never would. And because COMSAE sittings happen under testing conditions on campus or, at the student’s own expense, at an approved testing centre, accommodations that were approved for coursework do not automatically follow. Anyone with approved testing accommodations should confirm in writing, well before the COM 6990 administration, that those accommodations are in place for the COMSAE itself.

The COMLEX ladder, step by step

Once you are eligible, KPCOM imposes its own deadlines on top of the national ones, and the escalation is documented at every stage.

The November 30 deadline. Every student must have sat COMLEX Level 1 at least once by November 30 of the M3 year. Miss it and you receive a letter of unprofessional behaviour in your academic file and 30 days to comply. Miss that and you are placed on behavioural probation with another 30 days. Miss a third time and you appear before the SPC and are subject to disciplinary action up to dismissal. Note what happens here: a scheduling failure is converted into a professionalism record, and the professionalism record is what the committee sees.

First Level 1 failure. Removal from clinical rotations and a mandatory eight-week administrative break in enrollment for board study. A student who has not used the vacation block may apply it to four of those eight weeks. Retake must happen in week 8 or as soon as NBOME availability allows. Missed rotations are pushed to the end of the third year.

Second Level 1 failure. Removal from rotations, a mandatory administrative break at the end of the third year, and a 12-week study programme including at least eight weeks of a structured board review course approved by the assistant dean of Medical Education — at the student’s own expense. The third attempt comes in week 13.

Level 2-CE follows the same shape with a four-week break after the first failure and the same 12-week programme after the second.

Three strikes. After a third failed attempt at Level 1 the handbook says a student may be referred to the SPC and may be subject to dismissal. After a third failed attempt at Level 2-CE it says the student will be referred and will be subject to dismissal. That difference in wording is not decoration, and it is worth pressing on if it is your Level 1 attempt that is at issue.

KPCOM’s cap is stricter than the national one. The NBOME permits four scored attempts at each COMLEX-USA level. KPCOM allows a maximum of three attempts at any one examination and six combined attempts across Level 1 and Level 2-CE, and dismisses beyond that. In other words the school’s own limit bites a full attempt before the national limit does. A student who still has an NBOME attempt available may nonetheless have run out of school attempts — and the fourth attempt the NBOME would allow is worth nothing without a school willing to certify eligibility.

Two more provisions in the same section deserve attention. Retakes of COMLEX examinations are treated as remediations and are subject to every remediation policy in the handbook, which quietly links board failures to the credit-hour rules above. And a student who has failed a COMLEX examination is not eligible for an administrative break in enrollment except for documented medical reasons or special circumstances approved by the dean’s office — so the pause that would give a struggling student time to recover is the one thing the failure takes away.

What academic probation actually costs at KPCOM

Probation reads like a warning. In practice it is a set of restrictions with consequences that outlast the probation itself.

  • You cannot sit a board examination while on academic probation or under other disciplinary action until the Office of Student Affairs notifies you that you are eligible. If you have already scheduled a board examination you must cancel and reschedule it, and you pay the cancellation and rescheduling costs.
  • Clinical sites are told. The Office of Clinical Education is required to notify rotation sites when a student is placed on academic probation, and the handbook states plainly that many sites will not take a student who is on probation. A probation imposed in the preclinical years can therefore reshape the clinical years.
  • Officerships, employment and outside courses go. Students who fail more than three credit hours in a class year must resign all national, class and club offices, step down from representing KPCOM in any capacity, withdraw from any course outside the required KPCOM curriculum, and resign any NSU employment.
  • Professional or behavioural probation and suspension are recorded on the MSPE — the Medical Student Performance Evaluation that goes to residency programmes. The handbook says so directly and adds that it may negatively affect the ability to obtain a residency position.
  • An MSPE already uploaded to ERAS gets replaced. If you appear before the SPC and disciplinary action follows after your MSPE has gone into ERAS, an updated MSPE including that disciplinary action is uploaded in its place. Discipline late in the M4 year reaches programmes that have already read your file.

The practical point is that the moment to contest a characterisation is when probation is imposed, not when the MSPE is drafted. By then the record is already written.

Rotations: the failure arithmetic, and the appeal that is not one

In the clinical years the counting rules change but the structure is the same. A student who fails two four-week rotations, or fails a single rotation twice, may be suspended and is subject to dismissal. Only one opportunity to remediate a failed rotation is allowed, the Office of Clinical Education schedules it, and it may extend the academic year and delay graduation. Fail the repeated rotation and you are referred to the SPC and subject to dismissal.

Two details inside the rotation rules cost students rotations without anyone intending it:

  • Failing to appear for a scheduled COMAT counts as a failure and consumes one of the two COMAT attempts that a rotation pass depends on. A missed examination and a failed examination are treated identically.
  • Lateness and early departure are counted twice. Arriving more than 30 minutes late or leaving more than 30 minutes early may be counted as an absence in the rotation total — and, separately, any lateness at all, even under 30 minutes, may be deemed unprofessional and referred to the SPC. An absence not reported to the Office of Clinical Education within three business days may itself trigger a referral.

And then the sentence that catches students out: the six-level administrative chain for contesting a rotation grade — preceptor, clinical assistant dean, department chair, associate dean of Clinical Education, executive associate dean of your home campus, dean — is described in the handbook as the only appeal available to a student contesting a nonfailing clinical rotation grade. A comment written on a Preceptor Evaluation of Student form is inside that process. If you do not use it within 10 business days, the comment stands, and it is the sort of comment that reappears in front of the SPC a year later.

The Appeals Board: who sits on it, and what it is allowed to hear

An appeal from the dean’s decision goes to an Appeals Board, and its composition and rules are set out in the handbook.

  • Membership: a representative of the College’s administration, six faculty members, and a chair drawn from the college faculty and appointed by the dean — the same dean whose decision is under appeal. The associate dean of Student Affairs and the chair of the SPC attend but do not vote.
  • Deadline: the written appeal must reach the chair of the Appeals Board within 10 business days, excluding weekends and school holidays, of the date you receive notice of the dean’s decision. An appeal filed late shall not be heard. There is no published discretion to extend.
  • Content: a concise statement of all relevant facts and the result sought.
  • New witnesses only. Your witness list is due in writing no later than two business days before the hearing, and only witnesses with information that is new and relevant and has not been presented previously to the dean or the SPC will be considered. Anything you held back at the SPC stage cannot be introduced later.
  • Quorum and vote: 50 percent or more of the voting membership including the chair. Decisions are by majority of those present. The chair votes only to break a tie or where counted for quorum.
  • Non-appearance is waiver. A student who fails to appear at the designated date and time automatically waives the right to appeal.
  • Finality: the board’s decision is final and binding, and the handbook states that no further option for appeal will be considered.

The hearing itself is described as informal, with no rules of evidence. Witnesses are questioned individually with the student out of the room; the student is present only for their own statement and to answer questions. And representation is barred at every point, including — on the handbook’s wording — in preparing the written appeal itself.

All of which means the written appeal is very nearly the whole case. It is filed on a fixed short clock, it is the last document in a process that ends there, and by the time the board reads it the arguments and the evidence must already be complete.

Grade challenges run on their own, far shorter, clocks

Dismissal appeals get 10 business days. Grade disputes get less, and they are the disputes that determine whether a dismissal rule is triggered at all.

  • Examination question challenges close the same night. A preclinical student who wants to challenge a question must submit it in writing to the class curriculum committee student representative by 8:00 p.m. on the day of the examination, identifying the topic, the concern, and the required course material supporting it. The representative consolidates the class’s challenges and submits them by 8:00 a.m. the next business day. Challenges to makeup examinations follow the same 8:00 p.m. deadline. Challenges are not accepted for remediation examinations at all — the highest-stakes examinations in the handbook are the ones whose questions cannot be questioned.
  • Course and assignment grades: action must be initiated in writing no later than 10 days from the date the grade is posted, then within 10 business days at each further level. The chain is course director, department chair, associate dean of Preclinical Education, executive associate dean of your home campus, dean.
  • A hard stop at 60 days. No administrative grade change is accepted 60 calendar days after the grade is recorded, whatever the merits.
  • The dean is final on all grade disputes. The handbook says so in terms.

Because the credit-hour bands and the promotion rules run on grades, the 10-day grade clock is very often the clock that actually mattered. It usually expires while a student is still deciding whether the problem is serious enough to do something about.

The rules that build a file before anyone mentions dismissal

By the time a student reaches the SPC there is usually a file, and it is generally assembled out of provisions that had nothing to do with academics:

  • Arrests must be reported in writing to the associate dean of Student Affairs and the dean within 10 business days, regardless of the reason or the status of the case. Failure to report is itself treated as a more serious infraction warranting more serious discipline than the underlying matter.
  • Any absence beyond two weeks (10 business days) results in an administrative break in enrollment. There is no financial aid during an ABE regardless of the reason, previously disbursed money may have to be returned, and the SPC may have to clear you before you resume — it makes a recommendation to the dean on whether you may return at all.
  • Drug and alcohol testing may be required on grounds that include direct observation, erratic or disruptive behaviour, an arrest on or off campus, a complaint from a credible source, or possession of paraphernalia. A repeated inconclusive or diluted screen places the student on an administrative break in enrollment and before the SPC. NSU’s drug-free schools policy prohibits marijuana regardless of a valid prescription.
  • Contacting a clinical site yourself to change a core rotation is a referral to the SPC with discipline up to dismissal.
  • Elective and selective paperwork must be submitted at least 30 days ahead, and 60 days where an affiliation agreement is needed. Missing it may mean denial, no credit, failure of the rotation, and a referral.
  • Dress code violations may be noted on the MSPE and repeated violations treated as improper professional behaviour.
  • Failing to report someone else’s violation is itself a violation, and every member of the college community has what the handbook calls an affirmative duty to participate in an investigation.

One structural protection is worth knowing. Only department chairs, course directors, or members of the KPCOM administration may file a written complaint with the chair of the SPC. A classmate, a preceptor’s resident, or a staff member cannot open a case directly. If a matter has reached the committee, someone in one of those three categories put it there, and it is fair to ask who and on what record.

Separately, the College reserves the right to remove a student immediately where the student is accused of a violent act or threat or an act violating criminal law, with the student unable to return without written permission from the dean. That is an interim measure taken before any hearing, and it is the one situation where the process starts with the consequence.

How dismissal works across osteopathic medical education

The rules at this programme sit inside a national framework that is the same everywhere: COCA accreditation requires every college of osteopathic medicine to publish and follow its promotion, dismissal, grievance and appeal policies; the NBOME caps COMLEX-USA attempts and your school usually caps them lower; and the degree must be completed within 150 percent of standard time. Osteopathic medical school dismissal: the rules every DO programme runs on explains the accreditation elements, the attempt limits, how progress committees are structured, and what the law gives a dismissed DO student at a public school and at a private one.

Related reading

Other Florida health-professional programs

Every school writes its own dismissal, appeal and conduct rules, and the filing deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other Florida health-professional programs:

Common questions

Can a lawyer help me with an NSU-KPCOM appeal?

The College prohibits legal representation at the SPC meeting and the Appeals Board, and states that participation by legal representatives in preparing the written appeal is also prohibited. NSU is private, so Florida’s student due-process statute does not apply. Anyone considering legal advice at NSU should discuss that provision directly and early.

How long do I have to appeal a dismissal?

Ten business days from the date of dismissal, and ten business days from receiving the dean’s decision to reach the Appeals Board. An appeal filed outside that window will not be heard.

Will I be in the room when witnesses are questioned?

No. NSU excludes the student during the questioning of witnesses at both the SPC and the Appeals Board.

How many COMLEX failures before dismissal?

Three failed attempts at any single level, or six failed attempts in total across all required levels — whichever comes first.

What happens if I miss the hearing?

Missing it waives the right to appeal automatically. If you cannot attend, say so in writing before the date and ask for a rescheduling in the same message.