Thanks for the details. It makes sense now.
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Thanks for the clarification. It makes sense now. Best wishes to your son and the family. Hope he gets assigned to BCM. 100K for 4 years at Baylor SOM is an amazing deal!
Your older child is also in BSMD, if I remember correctly. Why did they decide to skip after one semester at Baylor SOM? Which SOM are they attending?
She decided that the health profession wonât give her the work-life balance that she wants (professors tell old war stories of how terribly they worked the residents). She didnât want to invest eight years in school and residency and miss out on life. She hated the anatomy lab and developed a fear of âghosts.â She could not stand the sight of meat, especially darker meat. She spent all her time studying, really missed her boyfriend and hanging out with friends. She really seemed miserable. I guess not everyone is built for medicine. After eight years of preceptorships, hospital volunteering, interning with an Ob-Gyn non-profit with the hope to build a career in that discipline, she realized that medicine wasnât for her. BCM offered her a leave of absence though April this year to decide. That was very generous, but she walked out and didnât look back. She said she misses some friends and professors ,but itâs like a heavy weight got lifted off her. Apparently, she wasnât the first one that quit. Each year since 2020, thereâs always at least one. Somehow, the pandemic affects some people more than others.
Her degree didnât attract any job offers because it wasnât technical/STEM. She spoke with a career counselor and decided to go down the path of an MBA for Healthcare Management. Dusted up the GMAT book and took the exam; she got herself a full-tuition-and-fee scholarship to Baylor U for an MBA in Healthcare Management. The program is modeled after a successful program with the army. After 13 months of classroom lectures, they go on a 9-month residency with pay (with rotations through various departments). With good performance and reviews, that could be their first job. The program manager is very hands-on; he visits the field quite often to speak with partner hospitals and offer his students moral support. This program partners with healthcare systems all over TX, CA and other states, however not in Houston and the vicinity due to the TMC heavy weights. There are quite a few students going through that program during their gap year. Once admitted to a professional school in any kind of healthcare, the residency is waived and they would earn their MBA degree after the classroom portion. I think itâs better than doing the combined degree MD-MBA where you do 2 years of science, break for the MBA, then come back for 2 years of clinical. I never understood that sequence (or any sequence of combined degree programs). How do they expect a MS 2 to take a few years break for another degree and still remembers what theyâve learned and resumes with clinical after that break?
Anyway, I could see why some SOMs are switching to the early acceptance model and select incoming college juniors instead of keeping the BSMD model that is filled with HS graduating seniors. Those two years of college could help high achievers grow, become more mature in their decision to commit (or not).
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@junebug20 - Thanks for sharing your DDâs experience. I am sure this will provide useful perspective for the younger generation. Your DD is right that Medicine is not the right profession for everyone. In the beginning, it must be tough for you parents but ultimately kidsâ happiness is most important. Itâs good that she realized after her UG and went for MBA. Work-life balance is a tricky thing and very difficult to manage in any profession. Baylor U MBA in Healthcare Management seems very interesting and promising. Like you mentioned, MBA soon after UG seems better than MD-MBA combined program for sure!
My niece went to a top private high-school, a T5 college for engineering/masters and had a great job where she worked for a few years. She quit her job after her first child was born and now is a full time mom of two kids under 5 and she absolutely loves it. She says she is debt free since her parents who are doctors paid for her education, house/car, marriage. So, it is not necessary for her to work (to pay off loans, etc.)
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To each their own. I know an oncologist locally who quit back in 1980s after going through all the work of getting to US, going through residency and fellowship and working a few years because the dept head said she couldnt take time off or work part time after she had a baby. She had a physician husband and so she walked out on the spot and never worked again.
I definitely agree with you that to each his own. But this is the typical old war stories that should no longer apply in this century. Yet, med school professors still tell them with no reference to the current state of affairs. Employers (even hospitals and residency programs) are much more welcoming to the females than that. Residents, while still having to work hard and long hours, certainly donât have to work like dogs like in the âgood old days.â I have no objection to stories about the past, but they must have some points of reference: timelines, past & current laws/rules governing the professions.
Itâs nice for the professionals to have an option to quit anytime they like and stay home, but realistically, most people have to work to maintain a certain level of incomes. Iâve known a highly paid radiologist getting laid off and having to look for jobs for months. Fortunately, his wife still worked part-time as a GP, and they were able to maintain their high standard of living. Itâs best to be able to do what one loves while still having to earn a living. It makes a day go faster than having to be where you donât want to be. Thatâs all I hope for my kids whichever the path they decide to take.
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So true in many ways. Yeah, the freedom to pursue things of their genuine interests, academic and non, along with the time savings in terms of recognition of their advanced academic standing is a big attraction.
Child was initially very inclined to pursue a combined major in philosophy and psychology (requirement is at least a minor in liberal arts). But then after some exploration gravitated towards anthropology (general, not medical anthro). It was only then that I realized how fields such as that and sociology are so relevant and appealing to students going to so many post baccalaureate professions including medicine, law and business.
One of the students same batch but different HS as childâs, opted for a major in Sociology at a local Ivy. Initially the idea was to target medicine, but is now into management consultancy with McKenzie. Another older example was this person who did double major in chemistry and philosophy at JHU and is now a cardio vascular surgeon.
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I actually know the anatomy professor at Baylor(unless there are more). I know he is not a doctor but a PhD. Must have been other subject teachers who told war stories?
I think itâs a lecture hall type of class. Probably just one professor. BTW, the smell of the anatomy haunted my entire family. Even with gloves on, that awful smell permeated my daughter skin and remained with her even after a long shower. We had heard a trick about coffee ground before and shared with her to try to get rid of the smell. It worked. She and her friends saved coffee ground from their family morning coffee and rubbed it on their hands after each anatomy lab. Something in the coffee neutralizes the smell of the formaldehyde juice.
My daughter started in Covid and they didnt do any in person anatomy classes as far as I know. Baylor does these extensively and they are one of the few schools or may be the only one that still met during covid for anatomy classes while everyone else was very much virtual for 2020-2021 year.
The only time they went online for a week for all classes was right after their retreat and some people came down with COVID. Due to HIPAA, they didnât disclose who had what. Rather, they quarantined the whole class.
Whatâs indicative of genius, GPA?
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Do BSMD kids really get time to do all the things they want to explore or lot of them are in a hurry to finish BS in 3 years?
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No, getting above 90th percentile is not easy as claimed above and proved wrong. Itâs percentile not percentage like grades. Some students are good standardized test takers and while others or not. I know kids with 3.9x GPA from T20 schools struggled to get above 516.
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I think it depends on the program.
For example, at NU-HPME, the number of credits needed was reduced to 36 (from 48) to align with the 3-year undergrad timeline. Kids had the freedom to explore what they wanted, and NU was also open to letting kids take a gap year to do whatever they wanted (and retain their medical school seats).
At PMM or NJMS feeder schools, you can use your AP/IB credits to meet the course requirements and graduate early/ explore other options.
At UMKC, however, it would be very difficult to do anything beyond trying to complete the undergrad.
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My son has a friend at Nova BD-DO. She works near full-time as a research assistant, studies hard, took the MCAT (got 90 percentile) and is applying out to MD-PhD. I always thought that the average MCAT for MD-PhD applicants would be in the 520s, but when I looked it up, I found that itâs 515.
I donât know why some programs increase the MCAT and undergrad GPA requirements over time (Rice & Baylor didnât use to have an MCAT requirements until a few years ago) while other programs decrease those requirements (EMSAP used to have 510ish MCAT and 3.7-3.8 undergrad GPA, but now itâs 506 MCAT and 3.5-3.6 GPA). Everything may seem arbitrary, but Iâm sure there must be some reasons for those changes.
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I think there are two trends going on -
- One is to make it âmore inclusiveâ - this results in relaxing standards
- Another is to make the standards more aligned to the incoming matriculating class, increasing requirements.
BS/MD programs should allow students to explore and take risks. Having âdraconianâ requirements like WashU used to have defeated the purpose of students trying different things because they are just focused on their GPA.
Another point - while averages do give some perspective, please look at distributions if they share. For most Asian students, if they get the average score, most likely, they are not going to get into that program.
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I wonder if the Draconian policies at WashU was causing the retention rate for the program to be lower than expected. If either the undergrad or the med school sees that they donât have anything to gain from the partnership, they could see a reason to nix it. Example 1, did WashU drop its own BSMD because it didnât matriculate at 100% rate? Example 2, did Rice and Baylor mutually agree to cut the tie because Rice students apply out more often (Rice sees not much benefit but only a pain to screen thousands of applications) and Baylor could free up those six seats to another EAP program to promote diversity?
The other day, I asked my son if he regrets not to apply to Pitt GAP? He said that even if he got in and could keep up with Pittâs 3.75 GPA requirement, he would miss out on seeing the first competitive standardize test in an MD career. He saw that as a disadvantage for him in med school. I thought that was certainly a different point of view from most. This point of view is certainly different from his own point of view as a senior in HS.
MD-PhD is more focused on research but most programs are quite selective. One has to meet the MD standards to get in but in a lot of cases, since it is a fully funded program (zero cost to student for 8 years) and PhD is funding it, they get first dibs in terms of whether they want to admit the applicant. In many cases, the students get told that they are being rejected and asked to try to their application for MD only. If the goal is MD PhD, students usually refuse.
I do not know the exact reason why certain programs were scrapped except for NU.
NU-HPME was scrapped because it attracted too many Asian students and not enough African American or Hispanic-American students. And it was a decision taken in haste without consultation with the Alumni or the program director.
WashU had nearly 50% attrition of the 4 students they took in their BS/MD program and not to mention the lousy word-of-mouth they were getting for their requirements.
Rice is interesting. They got their first African American president - Reginald DesRoches.
Not sure what role he played in scrapping this program.
Rice got 1500 to 2500 applicants for its BS/MD program - it definitely put it on the map for students outside of Texas/South-Central US region.
The promotion of diversity has become huge after the BLM movement and any program can be scrapped or added giving diversity as the reason. But is that the real reason?
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