I am reading thru thread after long time, lot of good discussions! 
@Sam999 I donāt believe Miamiās location in Florida would necessarily make it more difficult to match on the east coast. There may be a lower proportion of northeast matches represented on their match list, but this probably has more to do with the geographic preferences of students than the ability of Miami to match students in the northeast. On the contrary, Miamiās slightly better reputation could open up more opportunities on the east coast.
Your sonās decision is also not easy, depending on how much you weight each factor. On the one hand, NJMS is cheaper and closer to home, but on the other hand Miami has a better medical school (and the match list reflects this). Either choice would be very reasonable. I think undergrad fit is something to consider as well.
@Sam999, what specialties is your son aiming for? 80K difference over 7 years, so a little less than 10K a year, is not that bad actually, esp. with choices that are vastly different. In terms of medical school caliber and reputation, there is absolutely no comparison between Miami-Miller vs. UMDNJ in Newark. Miami-Miller wins there. I realize other factors, like wanting to be closer to home, may be a factor, depending on how homesick a person might get, which is sometimes hard to predict.
Attending Miami-Miller by itself, will not hinder your son being able to match into the Northeast, if you look at their match lists, although what usually comes into play is specialty. NYC tends to be popular for many reasons, including those who are just doing an internship before they head off to their residency specialty. So say, a person wishes to go for Derm, which is pretty competitive already, they canāt be as geographical restrictive or picky, and say, I only want to do Derm residency training in the NE or in NYC, as they can in other specialties in which there are a lot more spots for those fields.
@narkor - I would vote for PLME because Brown undergrad experience is considered good. I know someone who is finishing up REMs (doing extra year of research at the moment) who has been quite happy there. However, the cold eventually gets to them.
@Roentgen How much of school do you still have?
@texaspg, actually Iām done with school, residency and fellowship very recently. I did the 6 year combined BA/MD program at UMKC.
@roentgen - I thought you were applying in 2009! So what type of a doctor are you if it is not too revealing.
@dblazer and @Roentgen : thanks for your replies. We are also leaning towards Miami. We have one student we are going to talk to from UMDNJ today and than finalize tomorrow.
@Roentgen : He does not know exactly what he wants. He does have some interest in orthopedic side.
Ah, darn, missed @dblazerās post before posting mine which made some of the same points I was trying to make. Yes, @sam999, @dblazerās post pretty much encompasses the comparison that is at hand for you and your son between Rutgers UMDNJ and Miami-Miller. There really isnāt a ārightā answer in this case, as there are some āsoftā factors that go beyond just name prestige, that may be important (i.e. being close to home and family, etc.).
@Sam999, well Orthopedic Surgery is a more competitive specialty (as are the other surgical subspecialties ā ENT, Urology, Plastics, etc.) but Rutgers UMDNJ does have its own Orthopedic Surgery residency program, so thatās not really as much of an issue. Miami-Miller is a top-tier institution for Derm and is #1 for Ophtho (due to having Bascom-Palmer). And as mentioned before the undergrad comparison between Miami vs. NJIT puts Miami on top in that area as well.
@texaspg, ha ha! No, I graduated from the program in 2009. I went into Anesthesiology.
@roentgen - I am glad you are here advising. It is good to have people around who have gone through the whole process.
NU HPME used to be 6 years in 90s. I know one of those graduates who is in my neighborhood. She was mentioning that some of women during her time rushed through the program and then decided they didnāt want to be doctors at all and didnāt have enough undergrad time to think it through.
@texaspg, happy to do so. This Multiple Degree Program forum actually started back in 2004, after I had already entered the program so it definitely would have helped me immensely to have that type of guidance and advising before as to what I should be looking for in a medical school in terms of possible future career goals, rather than feeling guilty later for not going into/or feeling emotionally compelled to jump into a combined program after receiving an acceptance, solely because of the no MCAT and the time factor. As you can imagine, making decisions based on emotion or impulse, usually isnāt a good idea. I had thoroughly investigated the premed portion of the traditional pathway by that time and thought I was well informed, but evaluating med schools, as you know, is quite different, and would have been way above my pay grade at that age.
If I knew then what I knew now, I would have made very different matriculation decisions (and had much less debt). So hopefully my hindsight & experience, as well as keeping up with some of the trends in medical education, can help future applicants/students/parents in terms of getting much-needed perspective (which is hard to have as a high school student holding an acceptance to these type of programs), or making side-by-side comparisons as everyone is doing this month, and hopefully making rational decisions.
I also think my view of clinical medicine as it is now and where it is headed is a lot more realistic, than sometimes the idealized version students and parents have in their heads, so I can maybe help in that regard, in terms of helping students decide where in healthcare they fit in. I honestly hope and encourage more current combined students and combined program alumni to eventually come back to College Confidential to help students who are at the same stage and making the same decisions they once were.
Yup, there used to be a joke at Northwestern that HPME stood for āHigh Potential, Mediocre Effortā or āHappy People w/ Mediocre Effortā ROTFLMAO. Iām honestly not surprised, in terms of the fallout later that you mentioned, although HPME does allow you to add on a year of undergrad if you want. The 6 year program model has fallen largely out of favor in the United States. Itās funny, because in med schools outside of the United States, the 6 year model is more the standard. Ones I know in the past that were 6 years ā BU, Northwestern, Rensselaer/Albany, Miami Miller, Michigan Inteflex when it first started (program is now defunct), NEOMED and Penn State/Jefferson (these two recently changed). All have become either 7 or 8 year programs: http://www.psu.edu/dept/enrmgmt/articulation_agreements/ThomasJefferson_Premed-MedAccelerated.pdf. The only 6 year programs left, I believe are UMKC and Howard.
@Roentgen
Did you find the lack of prestige at UMKC held you back?
@Roentgen thanks ! all good points. Agree overall Miami seems to win. We are almost set on it and sign up for it soon.
@1CRYZX, I think it was a contributor in terms of the immediate steps. Medical school reputation more than just name prestige, and I consider those two things to be different. It tends to have a domino effect, which Iāll explain in a bit. For example, Dartmouthās medical school has the Ivy League name, but is usually not considered a high-rolling medical school, the way other Ivy League named medical schools are. There are perfectly great, public state medical schools, that are much more highly regarded due to the strength and power of their academic medical center in terms of their clinical teaching faculty, their research infrastructure, the strength of their medical graduates they put out which is well-known to PDs, who are recruiting for residency.
Itās sort of a perpetuating cycle in a way. Lower tier or bottom tier med schools tend to not necessarily have home residency programs in the more competitive specialties (or have faculty that have as many connections to other programs as they donāt do much research and donāt contribute as much to the academic sphere - i.e. like writing textbooks for the field, etc.) or tend to not have a strong research infrastructure in place which can be critical when it comes to students applying to competitive specialties or even competitive programs in non-competitive specialties in the match. They have less ability for their home students to be able to capitalize on connections, networking, LORs, etc. while enrolled in medical school, since they tend to have less opportunities available immediately on site during their 4 years.
Itās not a death sentence by any means (people do things like taking a year off to do research somewhere else, for example), but as @dblazer mentioned previously, itās not at all shocking when you look at match statistics released by the NRMP (the latest being 2014) that nearly 40% of matched applicants in Derm were from one of the Top 40 U.S. medical schools with the highest NIH funding, as was also ENT, Radiation Oncology, Plastics, Neurosurgery, etc. Again, itās not an assurance, but stronger schools tend to have more of the bigwigs in certain specialties, more opportunities available to expand oneās match CV and thus at the very end, stronger matches even for the average med student from that school, both in terms of the variety of specialties matched into, as well as the institutional caliber of the programs matched into. And all that serves as a positive feedback loop to be able to easily recruit faculty, both basic science teaching faculty and clinical faculty in the future.
There were definitely fields that I didnāt get to fully explore more in detail that I had an initial interest in, just because there was no home program available at our school to springboard off of (i.e. ENT, Rad Onc, etc.), never mind research, although Iāve heard that has improved since Iāve left, but definitely not a 180 degree difference. It would have been different if I couldnāt see myself happy in any other field but those fields, but luckily I found one that suited me - although obviously not having those other options available on site was a natural contributor. In terms of residency interviews, I guess Iāll never know which ones I didnāt get because of reputation/name since the match process is an automated process in terms of application processing. Even worse when youāre paying out-of-state tuition. So it turns out in the end, the 6 year, no MCAT factor I latched onto wasnāt as important in terms of the endpoint, and definitely not important to residency faculty, like I thought it would have. This is why I tell students applying now in the UMKC thread to take out the 6 year factor and the MCAT factor (when there are so many other standardized exams youāll take in this pathway), when it comes to deciding whether or not to do the program. The compromises for each combined program can vary and itās important for students to know initially what they are.
@Roentgen
Thank you for your detailed response!
But I want to ask you to the bottomline personal question (if you donāt mind answering).
Do you regret your decision to do this program and yes you missed out on certain things that a ābetterā medical school gives but in the grand scheme of things are you satisfied with where your career went? And post residency and fellowship how do you feel your career is affected by going the route you did? I am intrigued to know as you have been through the entire process.
@1CRYZX, in looking back, I think I really did miss out ā both in terms of a fully-immersed, typical college social experience and breadth of undergraduate educational experience, as well as being offered some of the things that a stronger medical school tends to have and is able to readily offer to its med students. I think in many ways, in my particular 6 year program, we all had to grow up and mature even faster than what most of us would have normally liked or been comfortable with. Iām sure there are many of us who would have made different career decisions as well (both in healthcare and outside), but our 6 year program, just based on how it is structured, doesnāt lend itself to that type of exploration and makes it a little hard to backtrack without having to redo credit hours/semesters.
Knowing all that I know now, I definitely would not have done the program (esp. at the level of tuition I was paying as an out-of-stater). I would have done the traditional route with no regrets through my public state flagship undergrad (and until I got my acceptance to the combined program on April 1, I was actually fully prepared and ready to do so). I realized later that I had really overexaggerated the difficulty of the traditional track in my head to where that somehow I felt it would be impossible for me to do med school thru the traditional route, even though 98-99% of med students do just that. Itās just plain silly, but thatās how people in high school (no matter how academically smart) think - very black and white in terms of their futures. I really canāt emphasize @texaspgās post enough:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19586464/#Comment_19586464.
I think going for 6 years long, with no summers off has an impact on even the best of students in terms of motivation, morale, and burnout (in which med school, residency, etc. already have issues with burnout). I didnāt think the program lended itself to allowing BA/MD students to be as well-rounded as I would have liked (vs. just being studying machines) and thatās something I valued, esp. as being a physician is more than just being able to regurgitate scientific facts, and draws on many different abilities. I also thought the clinical experience and exposure in our particular program (thru the Docent system, which you can read about more in the UMKC thread), was largely overblown in importance in verbal explanations and brochures to potential applicants, in terms of how it contributes to how our graduates perform in residency (residency training is such a very steep learning curve to begin with, where people catch up relatively quickly anyways), so itās not like we were hundred of miles ahead when residency started, esp. as I didnāt end up going into Internal Medicine anyways, which is what most of our Docent experience is. All of this together just to save 2 years and not taking the MCATs wasnāt worth it, in that respect.
Our school was created in a time in which clinical exposure during the first 2 years of a traditional medical school was virtually unheard of in the 1960s/1970s. Thatās really not the case anymore, in which all allopathic U.S. medical schools incorporate some type of clinical experience or exposure in the first 2 years, not just sitting in an auditorium learning basic sciences and taking exams.
In the grand scheme of things, am I happy with my career? Yes, but more due to the many other personal factors and choices contributing to my life now: being finished with training (regardless of where or what specialty you end up training in, it is always a finite period of time), now working in private practice (which may or may not exist in large numbers in the fully implemented post-Obamacare regulatory era based on what Iāve read, but crossing my fingers), being married to my wife, having my new baby boy to play with (he loves when Iām typing on my iPad like Iām doing now, because of the interactive baby games on it - half the time heās on my lap as Iām typing on CC), etc. Itās really difficult to slice and compartmentalize your happiness if that makes sense. You either are happy or you arenāt and it tends to be more of a holistic feeling with many contributors mixed together whose amount of importance of each is very psychological. What I will say is, at least for me, becoming a physician didnāt end up being that panacea to nirvana that I think I initially thought it would be, and I think that many high school BA/MD applicants think it is and hold on to, and in may wanys, the combined route wasnāt āeasierā as I initially thought.
I realize a lot of students who apply to these type of combined programs are very Type A, and want some type of magical crystal ball or 8-ball to somehow see how things turn out, depending on each track you take and see which one ends up the best. During my internship (since I was 2 years younger to everyone else), after we all got to know each other, where we were from, where we went to school, etc., I asked my colleagues (many of us were only doing internship there, so we were heading off to other places and fields after 1 year ā Anesthesia, Derm, Rad Onc, Ophtho, Neurology, Rads, PM&R), after all they had been through w/4 years of college, MCATs, applying to med school, going to 4 years of med school, whether any of them, if they had a chance, would have done some type of assured combined Bachelor/MD program, much less a 6 year program, after high school, and not even one of them said, yes. All of them said the experiences they went thru and life experience and personal growth they gained doing the traditional route, were very important (even solidified their resolve that becoming a physician was for them) and they wouldnāt trade that experience for the world. I thought that was very telling in many ways, based on how a high school senior would have answered.
Thatās not saying all combined Bachelor/MD programs are bad (clearly theyāre not), Iām just saying itās important to truly evaluate individual combined programs based on their individual merits and potential compromises, and not based on emotion, an impulse, or a fear.
(Clearly brevity is not my strong suit =)) , but your questions, I think, required more of a detailed explanation to get the full picture)
@Roentgen I am afraid in this rate, you will burn out shortly in responding to readerās post in this forum. But at the same I am happy to know that your son will pick it up in no beat and will answer all our questions by next year!
@GoldenRock, HA HA HA HA!!! ROTFLMAO!!! My son likes seeing all the avatar icons on CC and hitting the screen. Oh and drooling on the iPad. Heās good at that. lol. But, Iām pretty good so far. @1CRYZX asked some really great, insightful questions that I think are very beneficial to all HS students and their parents who are considering Bachelor/MD programs together, especially the accelerated ones and are wanting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak.
I think the worst part of the entire Bachelor/MD process has to be that as a HS student, you donāt really know what ?s you need to be asking and what aspects of the med school to look at, that might be helpful to know. I definitely sure didnāt and I very much tried (this was before College Confidential and before there was a lot of information out there on these type of programs). I think in many ways it can be worse on parents, since you want to help your child to your utmost capability, but you just donāt know how, since you donāt have those initial puzzle pieces, esp. if youāre not in medicine or not a physician (my parents were not).
And I came from a time (which wasnāt too long ago), when the general adage you always heard was, which you might even still hear, āYou should try to get into any U.S. allopathic med school, it doesnāt matter which one to get your MD.ā That may be kind of true as a more general, overarching rule, since a lot of med education is standardized at baseline and all 4th year med students are entered into one computerized match process, but itās actually a little more complicated than that, once youāve made it past the āundergrad partā.
Hopefully I can make the āmed school partā after that, a little easier to maneuver thru and understand for students and parents. But Iām always more than happy to pass on what I eventually ended up learning or gained thru on-the-job experience, to families who are making side-by-side comparisons now, who donāt necessarily have all the pieces right in front of them. Itās been pretty gratifying to do so thus far. Must be a natural dopamine high. :-bd
@Roentgen Interesting that you were only 2 years younger when you started residency compared to your peers. These days the average starting age of med school students is around 24-25 which means they would more likely be 4 years older. I have seen Dās would be classmate profiles at some med schools and found people on the list who graduated college 12-15 years ago.