UMKC 6-year BS/MD Program

Pre-Med & Medical School Multiple Degree Programs
3721

@IMGDad, maybe I’m misinterpreting your meaning, but the “power of having a family member/s in the particular specialty and who know/s the inner circle to be able to tilt the balance.” contributes even further to my point that things are not black-and-white, and that it’s silly to think that the only key to residency success is only “about hard work and uniqueness and how to be different from others.” Medical students at baseline are hard workers and will work to distinguish themselves on paper.

PursuitToExcel’s goal is to match into Neurosurgery, his/her father is a GI doctor, so it’s possible, but not likely that his/her father has extensive connections within the Neurosurgery residency world. UMKC does nor have a Neurosurgery dept. not a Neurosurgery residency program. I would understand your point if say he/she was pursuing Internal Medicine with the intent to pursue a fellowship in GI, however, even those connections are limited unless he continues to work at an academic residency program.

If a parent is a faculty member at an academic residency program in that specialty, he/she could definitely get his/her son or daughter a match at that position, even if that son/daughter doesn’t meet the score cutoff, doesn’t have a high enough class rank, etc. Nepotism and family connections are prevalent in all fields, not just medicine.

My point is that if you compare 2 students: one coming from UMKC and one coming from a higher caliber school (not even a Top 10-20 school), and they have the same application coming in, (or maybe the higher caliber school student has a lower class rank, or lower board scores – within reason), then the higher caliber school student will more likely get the nod, on average.

By signing up for UMKC, you’re already committing yourself to a lower-caliber school as an 18 year old. The type of scrutiny, as to the caliber of your medical school by residency programs, will only increase, with all these new, unestablished medical schools popping up.

3722

Sorry, the above should say, “UMKC does not have a Neurosurgery dept. nor a Neurosurgery residency program.”

3723

@Roentgen, will someone stick to the specialty choice they make at the age of 18, even before they have had the chance to be exposed to that particular specialty or other specialty? Most likely not. I started off wanting to be a dermatologist (actually after my clinical in dermatology and I could have got in if I had chosen to do so), then to OBGyn (because I was particularly good at it), and eventually ended up choosing Heme/Onc after seeing how exciting it is.I have also seen many people going through changes in their specialty of choice as they go through their clinicals. So I would not be so fixated in the fact that @PursuitToExcel chooses neurosurgery as the specialty he hopes to go into. His point about “hard work and uniqueness and how to be different from others” is NOT wrong. He is a smart kid, and comes from a medical family that would give him the guidance above what non-medical parents would be able to give. Therefore, I am sure he is fully aware that if the need for string pulling is called for, he wants to be the load worthy of being pulled. So, with “hard work and uniqueness and how to be different from others”, he is doing himself the favor of setting up the conditions that make him worthy of such help.

3724

@IMGDad, choosing a specialty and the competition for certain specialties in the United States is very different than that in India/UK. @PursuitToExcel is very driven (or overly driven based on his/her username) and is likely going to be pursuing a competitive specialty, based upon his/her statement of wanting to pursue research early on. @PursuitToExcel is not likely going to be pursuing something non-competitive like Family Medicine or Pediatrics, esp. coming from out-of-state and his/her parents paying out-of-state tuition. Whether that specialty is Neurosurgery or not, is quite irrelevant. I would say the exact same thing if he/she was pursuing Dermatology.

For most students (even physicians’ kids) career and application guidance is mainly given by medical school faculty as they know the current trends with respect to what’s needed to match. In the U.S. residency match process, having physician parents doesn’t really help you unless 1) they’re in academic medicine and/or 2) you’re going for their specific specialty in which they’d know people w/in that specialty.

My response was bc PursuitToExcel said, “And no, I will not need luck. Life isn’t about luck. Everything is about hard work and uniqueness and how to be different from others.” That is absolutely ridiculous bc no matter how hard working or “unique” one is, a little bit of luck and serendipity plays into the match process, esp. with things out of your control, like your medical school.

3725

@Roentgen, just for your reference. Choosing a specialty to go into is actually a lot more difficult in the United Kingdom than it is in this country. That is why nearly 70% of my classmates are general practitioners. In the UK, not any Tom, Dick or Harry can go into even Internal Medicine training! In my med school in Scotland, only 4 places were available a year for internal medicine and for for general surgery training, in a large teaching hospital of more than 1000 beds and a major medical school.

3726

@IMGDAD‌, Yes, but that is bc the reimbursement models in the United States vs. the UK are very different. The UK for example has the NHS. The United States doesn’t have a nationalized healthcare system (yet). The salary discrepancy between primary care vs. specialties in the UK is not as pronounced as it is here in the U.S. This indirectly contributes to the competitiveness of specialties in the U.S. esp. with the debt burden carried by med students here. In the United States, Internal Medicine is nowhere as competitive as it was generations ago.

If Dermatology paid like IM or FM, it would be nowhere near as competitive as it is now. For medical students in the U.S., specialty choice is highly dictated by a combination of lifestyle, prospective salary, and subject interest.

3727

Ahhh where is that study I just saw over the weekend? It said 27% of med students choose their specialty based on income and 73% choose based on their interest in the specialty. Not sure how the study was done but from the application numbers, I am thinking many try derm, plastic surgery or whatever but have a true interest in something else. If derm didn’t get paid so much I doubt it would be so popular. I think looking at people’s skin is gross - all stretchy - yuck.

3728

I have seen enough doctors to come to the conclusion that most of those who choice of specialty based on compensation rather than on interest end up being unhappy doctors!

3729

@midhelper, a big factor that also plays heavily into specialty choice is lifestyle, which increases by the time medical students enter their last year before applying for residency. This is why specialties that have a more “controlled” lifestyle are very popular.

3730

Follow the ROAD (rads, ophthalm, anesth, derm) to money/lifestyle

3731

Anesthesiology is definitely no longer a “ROAD to happiness”/“controlled lifestyle” specialty due to changing practice models. You also have to deal with encroachment by CRNAs. It’s definitely not considered competitive anymore, as there are a huge number of spots. I would know, as I am in Anesthesiology. That being said, I enjoy what I do, and would have absolutely hated many of the other choices, not bc of the subject matter, but bc of the reality of clinical practice. I was quite lucky.

<a href=“http://med.umkc.edu/sa/match-day-2014/”>http://med.umkc.edu/sa/match-day-2014/&lt;/a&gt;

Radiology: 3
Optho: 2
Derm: 1

That’s pretty bad odds, if you’re going for a more controlled lifestyle, competitive specialty, and expect to get that coming from UMKC.

3732

The reliance on compensation and lifestyle to dictate the choice of specialty to go into may be a reflection of the age of the individuals and also the culture of the society in which the individual lives in. Unlike the materialistic and consumary world of this country and the 4+4 programs that graduates older medical students, the choice of specialty to go into, at least when I was a medical student many years ago, depended largely on interest and whether one was academically competitive enough for the rigor and intensity of the specialty. The compensation was never in the equation (even though there was still definite discrepancy in the earning power between a specialist and a general practitioner and also the opportunity to do private practice as a specialist in addition to the NHS position the specialist holds). I like to think that this could also be a reflection that medical students are generally a lot younger in the UK and so at a young age, one’s thinking is more likely to be straightforward, pure, and at times altrustic. Since graduating physicians from UMKC are generally younger, I would have thought that the thinking of most would also be as straightforward and pure and maybe altrustic, when compared to the older graduates from 4+4 programs.

I do not think that one can draw much conclusion on the quality of the graduates or medical schools just based on the low numbers of students getting into highly competitive specialties such as Radiology etc. What if many of the students at UMKC are just not interested in these specialties and so the number who apply to the specialties are proportionally lower than those in the other medical schools? One should also never ignore the fact that one’s choice of specialty to go into if very often influenced by how much one enjoys or is put off by that particular specialty during clinical rotation. One needs to know how many students applied for those specialties, i.e. the success rates for each of the specialties, when compared to the success rates in the other medical schools in analysis that also control for factors such as ECs, GPAs, Step scores, etc etc.

3733

As a whole, millenial medical students, now are very different than medical students a generation ago. A generation ago, the top medical students were going into Internal Medicine and General Surgery. A generation ago, students had the luxury of choosing the specialty they had interest in bc ALL specialties paid well. Surgery and Surgical subspecialties paid more, but that was very much expected due to the increased number of years in residency. Also tuition was MUCH MUCH less than it is now.

Fast forward to now, where students are paying debt in the six figures for medical school, reimbursements for medical services are dropping, and where students value time with family and their hobbies and interests. They very much value work-life balance, even at the price of a lower salary. These factors all affect specialty choice and this is well established in the literature. The top medical students are now going towards more lifestyle-oriented specialties. Internal Medicine and General Surgery, are now much easier to get.

This has nothing to do with age. UMKC students are no more insulated from lifestyle concerns than the 4+4 student, esp. with the level of debt they bring in. As far as “Since graduating physicians from UMKC are generally younger, I would have thought that the thinking of most would also be as straightforward and pure and maybe altrustic,” that is definitely not true. If anything the 4+4 students were more altruistic, not to mention more mature, as they had fully gotten to explore their interests in college and thus were entering medicine for the right reasons. Many of them had real full-time jobs, before switching to medicine. If anything, by taking someone younger at an early age into medicine, you’re more likely to get someone who is entitled, as they fully bypassed the first filter to get into medical school.

Students who are internally driven enough to do a Bachelor/MD program after high school are more likely to try to pursue a specialty, not less.

Compare this to Mizzou:
<a href=“http://medicine.missouri.edu/students/2014-match-list.html”>http://medicine.missouri.edu/students/2014-match-list.html&lt;/a&gt;

Where you have 3 Match to Derm, 2 to Ophtho, 6 to Radiology, 2 to Urology, 2 to ENT, etc.

As Johnny H said, “The feedback that I’ve gotten from my successful classmates has been that, despite their great Step 1 and Step 2 scores/AOA/research/etc… the fact that UMKC is not a ‘known’ institution nationally, is a major hindrance.” This is true both in getting interviews and in eventually matching, as UMKC is missing many of the residencies in competitive specialties. So if your goal is for example, to pursue Dermatology, you’re very much at a disadvantage because UMKC does not have a home dermatology program.in which you can network with.

3734

Thank God that my kids thinking is still rather straightforward and follows their interest. My daughter, a freshman in a very expensive 7-year BA/MD program (not UMKC) wants to go into pediatric cardiothoracic surgery (probably a lot of Medicaid patients) and my son wants to go into Heme/Onc (even though reimbursement for chemotherapy has gone down and many Oncologists in private practice are going bankrupt.

3735

@IMGDad, yes, it must be very nice to have physician parents who can pay medical school tuition bills for their offspring without having to take loans which they would have to pay back on their own. Once 7 years pass, it will be interesting to see if she is still willing to pursue cardiothoracic surgery, with the many, many years of residency training.

3736

That takes me back to what I said previously about “The reliance on compensation and lifestyle to dictate the choice of specialty to go into may be a reflection of … and also the culture of the society in which the individual lives in”. You do not have to come from a physician family to be in that position. You just need to have come from an Asian family that values education. My parents were not physicians and they paid for all of my education and my siblings’ education overseas, so as to allow us to choose whichever professions we are interested in.

3737

OK now I am feeling guilty because my kids will be in debt up to their ears unless we win the lottery.

3738

@Midhelper‌, and now you know why a) certain specialties are popular and b) why lifestyle is so important to millenial medical students.

3739

@Roentgen‌, all I have to say is, you could be right or you could very well be wrong. I often question where I actually stack up against the rest of the brilliant students across the country. Growing up in a small town and always being at the top of things can definitely skew someone’s perspective. However, I have taken the extra initiative to talk to many others in the medical profession who are recent grads as well and it seems as though I am not all “naive” after all. I am fortunate enough to know many many UMKC alumni who I have gotten the opportunity to talk to and many of them are in the most competitive of specialties. It all comes down to what people decide to do with their time. For instance, rather than joining some cultural club at UMKC, I would prefer to join an extra medical club that could yield me more medical opportunities and experience. Or instead of waiting until my 4th year to start cramming for boards, begin extensive studying early on so that knowledge has a higher chance of being retained when I review it my 4th year. Yes, I know its hard to believe that I am 18 and I have this all figured out, but I do have a plan and things have gone the way I have planned so far. I will be doing research this summer on TBI’s and hope to use that as a stepping stone to pursue even more opportunities. The average number of publications/abstracts/presentations for a matched neurosurgeon was 8 so I am trying to obtain that goal. By looking at all of these things early on, I can avoid mistakes that other students have made along the process by already having a tentative plan figured out before hand. Reading the residency match statistics now definitely helps planning things for the next 6 years and what exactly I need to put my time into. I have already read all of the UMKC basic medical sciences course descriptions and figured out what subjects they are weakest at covering for the USMLE. For instance, biostatistics/epidemiology/public health (the interdisciplinary category) seems to be something they’re lacking. I plan to have read and studied at least two review books for each board subject before the 3-4 month period before boards. Also, I will make sure to do extensive questions and read explanations because that really helps. Then I will spend those last couple months using high-yield material as well as taking a professional board course to consolidate things. I know that the focus of my first 3-4 years needs to be that Step 1 because that is a huge portion of the residency application. Most of the other things are all secondary but its that first cut that is required. If I am able to somehow bang out a 250+ by some miracle, then I will most likely match where I want to if I do the other things as well (research, EC’s, etc). I am very passionate about being a successful doctor and I am willing to sacrifice a lot of “fun” years of my life to get where I want to get. Not for some end goal of being “successful” and “rich”. Or getting “respect” from the community. I want to do it because I want to make a difference in a field that I have a strong interest in. Many people make the mistake of going into the wrong field for the wrong reasons and then they are unhappy for the rest of their lives. I will not make that mistake.

3740

@PursuitToExcel, you have the right attitude and that, in my book, is half the battle won. No one can say whether or not you would eventually get into Neurosurgery but you can always say to yourself you give your all. Through your planning and strategizing and especially if the road is one that is bumpy, you will learn a lot about life. Remember, sometimes the journey is a lot more interesting and life-influencing than the destination.