Hey @laochou, thanks for following the thread and starting this process early as a parent. Congrats to your daughter for starting high school. It can be a major transition from middle school, so good luck to her!
So I think your concern is a valid one, and is not something that is looked at often enough by high school students and their parents, when it comes to applying to and choosing among various Bachelor/MD program acceptances. Part of the compromise you’re making by doing a Bachelor/MD program is committing to that specific medical school early on, without always having all the facts, info, strengths/weaknesses, at your fingertips, but I guess that’s what College Confidential is for![ul]
[]You can see prior UMKC residency match lists from 2003-2014 here from @UMKCRoosMD for yourself: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/17808190#Comment_17808190
[]You can see the 2015 match list here: http://med.umkc.edu/sa/match-day-2015/
[]You can see my analysis of the 2015 match list here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18245792/#Comment_18245792
[]You can see @UMKCRoosMD’s analysis of the 2015 match list here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18254031/#Comment_18254031[/ul]
I always paste this when it comes to students asking questions about medical schools: http://arts-sciences.und.edu/pre-health/_files/docs/thirty-five-questions.pdf, the questions come from the American Assocation of Medical Colleges (AAMC) when it comes to finding out information about a school that would be relevant to you as a student.
So to answer your question, I think the UMKC match lists have improved somewhat when it comes to match lists over the years (BUT realize at baseline, ALL med schools will improve in various ways, the question is what were they starting at to begin with [hard to know as an applicant], by how much it changed, and in what areas were those changes in). It’s kind of like if you were to look at dollar amounts of a salary. For any job, salaries are higher now than they were 10-15 years ago, but that doesn’t mean more earning power, because inflation now is also higher.
But I really do believe the UMKC match lists are more a function of the type of students coming in these days, than the actual medical school being any better necessarily. For example, when I entered the program it was 90% in-state, 10% out-of-state, as it had always been. It has now changed to 65% in-state; 35% (regional + out-of-state). The school also takes more MD-only students (who replace any BA/MDers who left due to attrition) who are now allowed to be from outside of Missouri. These demographic changes alone will change match lists a lot, due to a larger segment of the class being outside of the state of Missouri and paying higher tuition, so the incentive in terms of specialties medical students will try to aim for will change. For example, you might have more people who are willing to take a year off to do research in their field somewhere else to try to match when they come back for their last year.
That being said, I don’t think objectively overall, on average, the proportions have hugely changed when it comes to a greater percentage of the class matching into the more competitive specialties from UMKC. If you look at the numbers, most of the class still tends to match for an initial primary care-type residency (Internal Med, Pediatrics, and Family Med), although with IM and Peds, that person can, and probably will, choose to subspecialize and not do primary care. At UMKC, you just won’t see large numbers of the class matching into fields like Derm, Ophtho, Rad Onc, ENT, etc. for several reasons. Even in the less competitive specialties (on average) that we do get students matching into, the institutions tend to range from strong middle-tier to low-tier, and with more success in the Midwest – there will always be notable exceptions of course (which can usually be correlated with factors like getting into AOA, knocking the socks off faculty during an audition rotation, etc.)
UMKC really only has 2 competitive specialties on site in terms of departments and residency programs – Ophthalmology and Orthopedic Surgery. That’s it. So, if you’re considering or aiming more for a specialty like Dermatology, Integrated Plastic Surgery, Radiation Oncology, Neurosurgery, ENT, or Urology, for example, coming out of UMKC, you’ll have a harder time, even with the best of grades and board scores, since UMKC, itself, doesn’t have residency departmental faculty in those fields to guide you, to mentor you, and to network with during your 6 years.
You’re much more dependent on players outside of the system – doing 1 month audition rotations, or like maybe going to KU Med (which is NOT affiliated with UMKC) faculty for guidance, where you will still be considered to be a visiting student, as they have their own home med students on site interested in their specialties. Does it mean it is downright impossible to match in the above fields coming from UMKC? Obviously not, if you look at the match lists. But your journey will be that much harder when it comes to finding actual opportunities to increase your chances in matching into those fields, whether that is getting involved in specialty-specific research to try to get a publication, taking part in shadowing opportunities, or specialty-specific extracurricular activities.
I hope that answers your great question, let me know if I haven’t or there is a point of confusion.