UMKC 6-year BS/MD Program

Pre-Med & Medical School Multiple Degree Programs
4341

@cccc9798, Well your attending job placement will depend a lot on many factors: your residency/fellowship placement and your performance there – i.e. hearing about private practice jobs that are recruiting, whether there is a shortage in that particular specialty area, where you want to live, make roots create a family, your wife’s preference of where to live especially if she’s sacrificed during your med school years/residency, etc. By that time, my coming from UMKC’s med school wouldn’t have an immediate impact, bc it’s too far removed. An employer instead will want to ask about my residency/fellowship and my residency director/fellowship director about how I performed then, since that’s what I am in right before getting an attending job.

Fellowship placement will depend on many factors as well – the strength/reputation of your residency, how did you perform in your residency class? Did you do any research? How strong are your letters? This is why people going for a subspecialty in Internal Medicine (GI, Cards, Heme/Onc) try to get into the best possible Internal Medicine residency they can. More reputable residencies within a specialty, have greater pull when it comes to fellowship matches within that specific specialty.

However at the “applying for residency” stage, your medical school you attended and your performance there does have an impact. It doesn’t mean you can only rely on flying on the coattails of your school if you attend a prestigious one, of course, but better schools have better and well-known faculty who can write you letters, more research opportunities for students to get involved in, which will make their residency CV much stronger. So the strength of the med school helps in that respect. This is where I think what @UMKCRoosMD said about the domino effect has a very valid basis.

4342

Did you all feel you were shafted on your residency match based on your stats? I’ve seen the match list, but how difficult is it to secure a residency on the coasts coming from umkc?

4343

@cccc9798, I don’t think I felt shafted (lol), but by the time Year 6 came around, my expectations were going to be a lot more realistic based on the medical school I was coming from. By the time you get to your last year of medical school, you know quite well from first hand experience where your med school stands in reputation with faculty, especially if you do audition electives elsewhere.

It highly varies by specialty, but I would say it is more difficult to place on East and West coasts especially at the more reputable institutions on the coasts: NYU, Stanford, MGH, BWH, UCSF, UCLA, Hopkins, etc. Doesn’t mean you can’t get on those coasts at all (see Loma Linda or Stony Brook), but it is harder at the more reputable places, and often times requires nomination to AOA (Alpha Omega Alpha) to sort of prove yourself.

4344

@PinkPrincess2014‌

No, you rarely extend over basic science courses, it happens but it that does not really occur until you get to your HSFs.
I mean Fundamentals of Medicine. If you fail one of them you have to extend a year automatically because you have to repeat it, and you can’t be in one while you are in the other one.
So if you fail fundamentals one, you can still take number two, but then the rest of your class promotes to year 2, you will be held back to year 1 because you need to retake fundamentals 1. Works the same way with all of the other ones. Does that make sense?

HSF is sort of the “right of passage” if you will. If you make it through that, after that rarely do people extend over basic science courses.
And once you pass Year 4, the real pharm, the possibility of extending over a rotation becomes very remote. Mainly because if you fail a rotation exam, you just keep going, but you have 4 months to take it again and pass it.
Caveat to that: if you fail a rotation exam, you essentially cannot get honors in that rotation, no matter how well your evals were or how much better you did on the test the second time, and that makes sense.

4345

Yes, @blugrn6, it does make sense. I’m just surprised as I would have thought at least in the first 2 years, the Science GPA requirement would trip people more to extend, or failing/withdrawing out of Biochem, or one of the HSFs, vs. the Fundamentals classes that are Pass/Fail only.

4346

I am leaning towards the biology route, in terms the baccalaureate degree, but if I wanted to do the liberal arts major what are some other options for minors besides chem?

4347

@ckokafor99‌

I did a biology major. Unlike it was for us, for you guys I think you take microbiology lab at the same time as your microbiology class. That was not the case for us, we have to go back year 4 to take micro lab and it was stupid. But they changed things!
I loved it. You are a bit off from other students, but honestly it was good to take a breather from the rest of my class of a bit. Its not that much more difficult.

I would point out a few things to you:

  1. Your genetics and microbiology semesters will be switched from everyone else and you will be taking a slightly harder versions of each one compared to your classmates who will be breezing through their courses.
  2. If you have done AP Chem and AP Physics, you are set because you get to opt out of those classes. Unfortunately AP Bio will not get you out of AP Bio 108 and 109.
  3. I don’t know what the reason was, but for some reason I had to take orgo in the summer before second year, unlike the rest of my class who took it spring campus. So during the summer all the had to do was cell bio and some easy elective, while I had to do both cell bio and orgo. For some people that was time consuming (cuz a. in the summer you have class all the time, and b. orgo does take more dedicated studying time vs other courses). Regardless I had the best summer of my life, but my friends were more free than I was. I did get jealous from time to time that they were all getting time to drink and goof off but I had to wake up early and go to orgo and study everyday.

Other majors you can do, but the support is lacking vs. biology and BLA so you have to figure things out for yourself.

Chem and psych are the other ones that I know of that are easy to fit in with BA/MD. I know that because two of my best friends did those.

Someone tried doing physics but it became a nightmare so they switched to chem later.

@PinkPrincess2014‌

That’s essentially why people fail over fundamentals. Its pass fail so you study less. You are not trying to make any “grade” per say and it does not factor into your GPA or later into your ability to get into AOA or anything.
It is graded on a Honors, high pass, sat pass, etc basis but no one really cares what you get as long as you pass.

4348

@Blugrn6, it looks like now for the Bio degree, they took out LS-MCRB 313 and 313 WL from Year 2 Fall as a requirement altogether and students now take Genetics and Micro along with everyone else in their med school class: http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2014-2015/SOM_BA_MD_Bio_2014_2015.pdf. Much different than when you entered: http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2010-2011/UMKC_Major_map_basic_MD_info_with_BA_Bio.pdf

I think that really sucks bc during your time, you could go through first year as a Bio major, and still have a lot of the premed requirements that a normal first year freshman would have done, completed + plus a few more sciences. So if you dropped then, you’d be on schedule if not ahead.

Are you allowed to decide your schedule – i.e like taking things earlier, for example Sociology 211 in Year 1 rather than Year 2, or taking Cell Bio in Fall Year 1, as long as you’re below the total cap of hours per semester, or are they pretty rigid or which semester you can take which undergrad science course?

4349

@PinkPrincess2014‌

Cell bio they are pretty rigid about because as I recall that cell bio class if specially for med students.

As for the other courses, as long as you justify and quality to take then early then they have no problem with it. So plan away, but don’t get to attached to your plan. UMKC usually finds some reason to uproot your schedule.
Not saying it in a bad way but just saying, don’t get too attached to a dream schedule that you create in your mind

4350

@Blugrn6, so for Bio 202: Cell Biology, they require you to take it in the summer with your med school class, even though it’s the same undergraduate science course taught every semester at UMKC?

I would think as long as you do well in the course, whether you decide to take a required undergraduate course early or on time, that’s all that matters. Or do I have to justify each class I take earlier than what is in the schedule?

4351

@Blugrn6, oh and do they allow you take undergrad courses in other semesters like in year 3/4, like if it was offered online or something, or are you only allowed to enroll in undergrad courses in only specific semesters – all of Year 1, Year 2 Summer, Fall, and one semester Year 4?

4352

@PinkPrincess2014‌

So even though it is the same course, it is only specifically for UMKC BA/MD students in the summer, so you are only allowed to take it during the summer.

You don’t have to justify each change in detail. I’m sure if you had room in your schedule and met the requirements for taking Sociology early they don’t find reasons for you to not take it. Its just that there are little rules here and there are we don’t know about that are not published anywhere that sometimes hinder you. So its was more of a just don’t get your hopes up sort of thing. They are not super difficult about it if you quality to take something early.
Just like later on, if you are a year 4 and are done with all of your needed rotations and have already taken step 1, you can start year 5 rotations early and get a jump start, the school doesn’t stop you from doing that even though you are not a year 5 until June 1st. You can still start taking core rotations as early as March or April (granted you have finished year 4 requirements).

And no, you are not allowed to take undergrad courses unless you are on undergrad campus.
Besides your max enrollment hours requirement is usually taken up by all of your medical courses that you are taking for credit.

4353

@PinkPrincess2014,

If what @blugrn6 says is true, I think the unpublished rule about only being allowed to take Cell Bio 202 in Year 2 summer is gigantically stupid, assuming it is still being implemented. The course isn’t taught any differently in the summer even though most people in the course are BA/MD students - everyone else is enjoying their summer vacation by the pool. It’s the same class, the same textbook, same thing covered, as it is every semester. It’s an undergraduate science course run by the UMKC School of Biological Sciences (SBS), not the medical school. I would find out definitively whether it is still possible to take it during a 16 week semester. Needless to say, it’s much easier to learn and process a science course if you have 16 weeks to learn the material, rather than 8 weeks. The only reason it’s taught by SBS faculty in the summer is because of the School of Medicine. The course directors, themselves, think it’s a stupid idea to teach the entire course in 8 weeks. If you like science, you’ll like the information in that course, but taking it with Organic Chemistry + Organic Chemistry Lab, makes that summer semester hell (only to be rivaled by Pharmacology done in 2 months or by HSF IV with a cumulative final).

If it’s one thing you’ll figure out and will have to get used to at UMKC is that there are lot of official stupid rules, as well as unofficial “unsaid” rules that you won’t find in any official handbook you’re given, as to why things are set up the way they are. And it always seems like they are able to come up with new policies or make existing policy harder on students. These are rules that sometimes have no rhyme or reason but are just done that way because it’s always been done that way. It’s part of the reason so many of us were frustrated with them and were glad to finally graduate. It seems though that rules are applied differently if you’re an on-track BA/MD student vs. if you’re an extended BA/MD student (go to 7/8 years). The problem is many times you’re not given enough advance notice about these things.

Here are several examples that happened in my class:

a) I had a friend who took Summer Cell Bio, Summer Orgo Chem + Orgo Chem Lab, and had to withdraw out of Cell Bio because he wasn’t doing well academically. Even though Cell Bio was offered that upcoming fall and he had plenty of room in his schedule, he wasn’t allowed to take it along with Genetics and Biochem, even though he had come in with a lot of other credit, and he was prepared to focus hard and study for 3 sciences. There is no official rule banning taking 3 sciences in 1 semester, and it is completely do-able, especially if you have no other classes. So he ended up extending by 1 year, unnecessarily, since he wouldn’t have had credit for Cell Bio by the time the students come up for promotion that coming May.

b) I had classmates who elected to do a summer Year 4 campus (you are required as an on-track BA/MD student to enroll in an undergrad Year 4 campus semester, no exceptions, even if you’ve finished all Bachelor degree requirements) which is 2 months long vs. a full Fall/Spring campus, which is 5 months long. So with those 3 saved months you could have the chance to maybe take extra clinical electives, take some extra study months, fit in a vacation month (rather having it split with a regular campus), etc. Well, apparently some people in the administration felt that because you got those 3 extra months with no requirements, you should then have to schedule your USMLE Step 1 board exam much earlier than June, which is usually the month you took it if you had a full fall/spring campus, rather than just getting an 3 extra months to do with what you want and still take it in June with everyone else. So what they would do is force them to schedule their boards earlier, like in March, by scheduling them in a Year 5 rotation right afterwards. And you could only change it by petitioning the Council on Curriculum, which was almost always rejected.

The problem was that no one was told this tidbit beforehand and if they had known this fact, they would never have agreed to sign up for a summer campus in the first place, knowing they would have to take their boards earlier, especially since many of the Kaplan Step 1 review courses running at the time in Kansas City end in May. Maybe this has changed now, but this was one example of the unpublished rules that @blugrn6 mentioned which aren’t directly stated, because a lot of time it is a judgement call.

c) I’ve known people who have wanted to switch Year 5 rotation months with each other and weren’t allowed to do so for one reason or another even though it would have been an even switch. I mean it literally doesn’t make a hill of beans difference to the faculty in the rotation.

d) I know someone in my class who took a Year 4 Spring campus who wasn’t allowed to enroll in an out-of-town 7 week Step 1 Kaplan Live Prep course (they’re only offered in certain cities in the country), even though all of her undergrad classes were online classes. They said because she was scheduled at that time for campus, she couldn’t go somewhere else. Apparently, you can only enroll in that course if you give up one month of vacation and use up one study month.

I agree with @Blugrn6 here, don’t get too attached or inflexible in terms of getting courses in the way you want them bc the school has a bad habit of throwing a wrench in it. It will just drive you crazy and.
Some battles are worth fighting, and some aren’t.

4354

@Roentgen @blugrn6, are any of those courses: LS-ANAT 119, LS-MCRB 121, BIO 202, BIO 206, or any of the other required non-science classes (SOC 101, SOC 211, PSYCH 210) under the direction of the medical school? Maybe that’s why they have you take certain it certain semesters?

4355

@PinkPrincess2014, LS-ANAT 119 and LS-MCRB 121 are the professional sections of the same undergraduate courses, LS-ANAT 118 and LS-MCRB 112 respectively. LS-ANAT 119 is for BA/MD students only. LS-MCRB 121, I think had students in the provisional 2+4 Pharmacy program besides the BA/MD students. There is no difference in teaching.

Maybe things have wildly changed (doubt it) in 6 years but BIO 202, BIO 206, SOC 101, SOC 211, PSYCH 210 are all taught by their respective departments in the College of Arts and Sciences and School of Biological Sciences. They might be required courses for the medical school, but they’re not taught in any way by medical school faculty. So if they tell you that it’s specifically taught differently to medical students in a specific semester, that’s a lie.

4356

@Roentgen, @UMKCRoosMD‌, @blugrn6

Do you think UMKC as a medical school is worth it if you’re paying out-of-state tuition (assuming I have no hope of ever qualifying for in-state tuition)? @bluegrn6, since you’re in the program currently, are the people who are out-of-state in your class happy to have done the program? Or do they wish they had done medical school at their public institution? Do most of the out-of-state people in your class feel somewhat pressured to go for competitive/lucrative specialties because of the amount of tuition they’re paying? Or do any of them feel that UMKC held them back in some way (I guess that really depends what specialty they are going for)?

4357

@PinkPrincess2014‌

I was just thinking about this. I saw I think in the thread somewhere above that the total tuition for OOS is 360K at the end of your school, and that doesn’t include rent and other stuff like that? If I was an OOS student right now paying that much to come here is not worth it to me.
If you think about it, if you got into the the program as an OOS student (which is the most competitive applicant pool) then chances are you are smart enough to get through undergrad with lots of scholarships and get into a decent state med school with instate tuition, that you would still get out of 8 years with not that much debt.

Here is the simple math (cuz I don’t do complication math):

  • If you got into a decent undergrad school, after scholarships and your parents helping you out, lets say you still have to take out 10K in loans each year, that’s 40K total for undergrad.
  • Lets say you go to a decent top tier state med school or even private, have to pay 35K each year, in full from loans, that’s 140K.

You total is 180K in debt! That’s HALF of what you are paying for UMKC. HALF!!! Think about it seriously before you come here.

The decision for me was a little bit easier. I’m regional and plus my parents paid for the first year and a half of school, or something like that. So I’m gonna walk away with 190K ish in debt, which, I mean could have been cheaper had I gone to a state school but I was ok with that coming into the program.

A lot of the OOS students and even a lot of the regional students that I know come from rich families and their parents are paying for their education in full. AKA when they walk outta here, they debt is going to be ZERO. Or their parents subsidized enough of it that they will walk out of substantially low amounts of debt. God I wish that was me, but honestly paying back 190K isn’t the worst thing in the world, my situation could be worse.

I’m going through a lot of them in my mind and thinking of what they want to pursue, and I don’t know a single OOS student who is doing a competitive speciality. I know a couple peds, lots of gen surg, internal medicine, ob/gyn. Yea most of the students who are doing competitive specialities are from missouri or regional students. So I guess the burden of your tuition doesn’t really impact it that much, because most of the in state students I know that are doing competitive specialties are also rich and have their parents pay for their education as well. Not saying everyone who comes here is independently wealthy, but a lot of them are. I didn’t realize this before I came here, it didn’t cross my young mind at that time. But then as you go through the program and the debt piles up, you start to mature, and talk with each other about how broke you’ll be as a resident, a lot of your friends will be like: “yea i’m really not that worried, not gonna have to pay loans back, mom and dad got me covered” and you feel sort of sad that while they will start their life debt free, you have to pay back and mountain of debt that’s under your name. Again, not a big deal for most in state and regional students who are paying in full, but 360K without interest added to it is A LOT OF MONEY, just think about that.

FYI I’m not discouraging OOS from accepting UMKC, I’m just saying, if you are relatively smart, why pay more for something that you can get for less elsewhere.
Lots of OOS and regional students who come here have their education paid for, they don’t care about the money aspect. That’s why they don’t complain about it.

DIsclaimer: this is just the students that I know. If there is someone out here on the thread that is an OOS student and you don’t have your parents paying for your education, I did not mean to generalize. I was just offering an observation that I’ve seen a lot. And I am also not trying to belittle or disrespect students whose parents paid for their education. I am just stating that the decision to come here becomes a lot easier if you don’t have to worry about the money aspect.

4358

@PinkPrincess2014,

Honestly, I don’t think UMKC’s medical school is worth the OOS tuition currently being charged now – $60,443 for this year. As an OOS BA/MD student at UMKC, you will get nearly no financial aid in terms of grants and scholarships (money you don’t have to pay back) whether in the undergrad portion or the last 4 years. I entered the program as a Year 1 when tuition for Years 1-2 was $45,035 per year (it was one figure for both years) and Years 3-6 was $50,297, and even I thought that was expensive. I can’t even imagine $60 K a year - without the reputation to accompany it.

As a comparison to other medical schools that currently have BS/MD programs – Brown is $52,196, Northwestern is $52,436, Boston University $54,678, Jefferson $52,994 — much higher ranked medical schools. Since UMKC now allows MD-only students to be OOS as well, many of the OOS MD-only candidates really had no choice, since UMKC is the only medical school that accepted them, but in all honesty, it’s possible that they weren’t strong candidates to begin with. – i.e. low MCAT scores or low cumulative GPAs.

If you go here: https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/index.cfm, you can actually sequentially re-order the chart by School Name (alphabetically), Resident tuition, or Non-Resident tuition, by clicking on the column heading. For the longest time, UMKC was the second highest OOS tuition in the country (#2 only to Colorado), not to mention more expensive than every single private US allopathic medical school.

Here are the reasons someone who is OOS would go:

  1. you’re certifiably insane
  2. you think there is no possible way you could get into any of the 141 U.S. allopathic medical schools – which in all honesty, speaks more to your work ethic and/or self-esteem than anything else. If you’re scared of competition of getting into medical school, actual medical school competition for residency will make that seem like a breeze.
  3. as @blugrn6 mentioned, you’re born into a very wealthy family – trust fund baby, 1 or 2 physician parent family, to where the financial risk for you is very minimal to non-existent.
  4. there is some baseline level of following the family plan, family pressure, etc.

Especially now coming through UMKC, you have many very well-to-do, affluent, sometimes well-connected kids from the richest zip codes who have never worked a real job in their life, have had nearly everything handed to them on a platter, and many of them become doctors because it’s part of the family plan, family pressure, etc. This applies to both in-staters and out-of-staters by the way.

Debt is very much real – you won’t be able to make payments until after residency or fellowship completion, during which your initial student loan debt will continue to accrue interest. I would say it’s even worse now, since you will have interest accruing during medical school bc Stafford loans for post-college students is no longer subsidized (meaning the government pays for all the interest while you’re enrolled in medical school): http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/paying/articles/2012/03/13/grad-students-to-lose-federal-loan-subsidy. These are loans you will be paying back for decades.

So if you’re OOS, and are not born in an affluent family where you have no financial risk, and are unsure, I would be very, very careful.

4359

@Blugrn6

YOU ARE DIRECTLY ON POINT!!!

I am oss, and I used to think UMKC was the greatest accelerated program. I went to the summer 2014 activity, and they had me sold. and to practice in only 6 years, wow! Plus no MCAT. And start with patient contact within the first few weeks of year one! WHO COULD ASK FOR ANYTHING MORE?

Then I found all the problems and UMKC’s image became covered in warts. I was in disbelief that I had never known the problems before.

Bottom line, I have learned - and if anyone thinks I am wrong, shout at me please - I have learned UMKC is held in poor reputation by residency programs, even internal med programs, that UMKC Step 1 scores are low, and that UMKC is probably the lowest MD school in the country.

Nevertheless, I am still drawn to UMKC, but that is probably because how wonderful I once thought it was. I can afford the oss tuition because of the money I earned from Medtronic, but it does seem silly to pay so much for the lowest MD school in the country. That is why I am still pondering.

Any other oss pondering?

4360

@bluegrn6, I guarantee though that all the people who are going for IM and Gen Surgery in your class, will become subspecialists. In Pediatrics, only certain subspecialties put you ahead financially to do a fellowship, OB-Gyn is OB-Gyn, although lifestyle might come into play here – i.e. doing a Gyn Onc or REI fellowship, for example.

@PinkPrincess2014, I think whether you end up going for a competitive, lucrative specialty or not will depend a lot on your stats: where you are ranked in your class, your board scores, AOA, research, etc. and that goes beyond OOS and IS, although someone who is Regional/OOS, and has some financial skin in the game, has a little more incentive to do well academically. Now that UMKC has an actual Career Advising Office, I’m sure they’re actively discussing with students about which specialties are realistically open to them, since the the number of US med school graduates is approaching the number of available residency positions, and it would look really bad on UMKC if many people went unmatched, just because students weren’t aware of their competitiveness for those competitive specialties.

Just because you are in-state doesn’t mean you were more likely to just go for primary care residencies either (see those who are from affluent areas of and around St. Louis – Chesterfield, Ladue, etc.), because everyone wants to capitalize as much as they can on the CV that they have. But in-state tuition does put you at a much lower risk financially.

I would also be very careful about looking at salaries currently. By the time you practice medicine, fee-for-service reimbursement will be largely gone. So certain specialties that are very lucrative now, will be quite different by the time you graduate. The only thing that will likely stay the same overall is lifestyle, but even this can fluctuate — see Radiology that used to be a 8 to 5 specialty making $400-$500 k vs. now (being on call, much less job availability, Teleradiology, etc.).