[Part 2 of 2]
- Please see my previous posts in asking questions about this program:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19349052/#Comment_19349052
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19349069#Comment_19349069
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19349070/#Comment_19349070
Besides the official Peer Mentors they have now, who I believe are current Year 1s (so they’ll be Year 2s in the fall), you can also get in contact with current UMKC Med students by messaging them through Facebook. Several suggestions – identify yourself - stating who you are, where you’re from, and that you’ve gotten an acceptance to the BA/MD program, but are still weighing all your options or wanting to know more about the program and would like their very honest and candid opinions, and would like to discuss the program with them more in depth, if that’s ok. You can either discuss thru Facebook, by email, or by phone. Phone is probably best since you’ll probably have quite a few questions. Just FYI, at this point, the best people to talk with are Year 5s (Class of 2017) and Year 6s (Class of 2016, who just recently matched), who have gone thru most, if not all of the program – they have a vantage point of being close to or at the top of the mountain, and see the program in its entirety. They’ve gone thru the basic science coursework, they’ve jumped thru the required hoops to take Step 1, they’ve gone thru the required Year 5 clerkships at UMKC’s affiliated hospitals, they’ve experienced Continuity Clinic and DoRo, they’ve done audition rotations at other institutions w/traditional students (Year 6), they’ve gone on residency interviews Year 6), they’ve taken Step 2 CK and CS (Year 6) under the new readiness policy, they know the resources and opportunities that are available and not available at the school in terms of board preparation, matching into certain specialties, research, they can tell you how helpful their faculty mentors were if they were going for a specific specialty that you might be interested in, they can tell you the positives and negatives of this route and any observations they had while going thru the program, whether they’d do the route again, etc.
If you are from California, find a current student from California. If you’re from Florida, find someone from Florida. If you’re from Illinois or Oklahoma, find someone from those states, as those people will understand even more where you’re coming from in terms of evaluating this program from that perspective.
One word of advice – word your questions properly, to get the right answers. Don’t ask students questions like “Are you happy?” Guess what, 9 times out of 10, you walk up to anyone and ask them if they’re happy, they’re going to say, yes!!! It’s a natural response. Most people aren’t going to come out and say, “No, I’m completely miserable right now.” Your questions need to be specific. For example, don’t ask – How did you feel about your boards? (a vague question that could be interpreted a myriad of ways, in which the answers won’t be useful to you). Ask instead, “How good of a job did you feel your courses prepared you for your boards?” or “How long do you think you needed after classes were over to study for boards?” or “What resources did the school offer to you when you were preparing for boards?” Another example: Don’t ask, “How are clinical rotations?”, ask, “What exactly do you do as a student on your Year 5 clinical rotations [or DoRo, or Continuity Clinic, or Year 1 & 2 Docent, whatever you wish to insert here]?” One more example: Don’t ask, “How is student life?”, ask “How involved are BA/MD students on campus and in what organizations?”
You can also do the same with UMKC Med alumni as I detail how to do that in the above links, although these people should be graduated alumni from the last decade and a half. So don’t be asking people who graduated in the 1970s/1980s as the combined program has changed tremendously since then.
Ask as many students/alumni as you can. The more viewpoints you get from different people, the more informed of a decision you can make. It will take some work to be this proactive, but it’s worth it.
And of course, at the end, thank the person for taking the time out of their day to go thru the intricacies of the program with you and answer your questions, to help in your decision-making process.
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You can, of course, ask questions to the Admissions Office, that has staff on hand to answer any and all of your questions, or at least connect you with someone in which you can get the answer you seek. Remember, again, you’ve already gotten the acceptance in hand, so don’t be afraid to ask the questions that are important and will be important to you later. They’re very understanding that this is an important decision for you and your family to be making and that you need all of the facts at your disposal to make a truly informed decision.
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And, of course, you can always continue to ask your questions here.