@Butterfly16, a trick my friend taught me when it came to how she studied for course exams is to keep up with the material as it is is presented and study for familiarity and to keep the information fresh, but when it comes to about 5 days before the exam, really start hitting the books hard to really cement the information well into your short term memory, right before the exam when it’s at your fingertips for recall. That way you don’t burn out weeks before the exam, from peaking too early. For the USMLE Step 1 exam, you don’t want to “peak” too early either, which is why it isn’t a good idea to study hardcore all 10 months. You’d burn out so bad, you’d probably do worse. You’ll see that studying in medical school and doing well, isn’t necessarily about studying harder, but studying smarter.
I wish I was as smart as @Blugrn6 in terms of total time studying that he/she listed before an exam. I could never get away with that. LOL!
@bladerz1, a common thing a lot of students confuse intially when they get to Kansas City is that UMKC and KU Medical Center (KUMC) - same letters if you switch them around, are somehow connected in some way. UMKC is in Kansas City, Missouri and KUMC is in Kansas City, Kansas – yes, Kansas City is actually split into the Kansas side and the Missouri side since the city is on the border of the 2 states.
That being said, in terms of the practical, day-to-day stuff that will affect you personally as a medical student, KU is very much a separate entity from UMKC. You can of course do a visiting elective rotation with them, and maybe participate in research with them - but this is entirely up to them. They could easily say no. I honestly, don’t really know how successful UMKC students (maybe @blugrn6 can speak more to the reality on this) are in being able to do this, and I’m sure it varies a lot by the specialty. I think the best analogy is that every medical school treats their students as their own children, so to speak, in terms of giving them opportunities, so all the opportunities would go to their students (who are paying tuition to them) first. One good example were my friends who were going for Derm, where KU didn’t really mentor our students well, if at all, for Derm, which wasn’t a surprise since KU will have students of their own going for Derm. A lot of this though is dependent on the faculty themselves.
@bladerz1
The ones that are super difficult are the ones that don’t even have a residency at UMKC: radiation oncology, dermatology, plastic surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, neurological surgery, urology, and ENT. Equally difficult to attain but a little bit better since UMKC has them: ophthalmology and orthopedic surgery. I am not too familiar with anesthesiology or radiology, I thought they were hard, but this year people for some reason made it seem like it wasn’t that serious. Maybe @Roentgen can comment on that.
I know one student who researched at Stowers and he/she did it because one of our undergraduate professor was a researcher there.
I know several students who are currently doing research at KU for neuro surgery and plastics. Pretty much everyone who does neuro surg from UMKC or wants to do neuro surg does some kind of research there. There is a super well known neurosurgeon that works there and his letter go a long way to helping UMKC students land interviews and get into neurosurgery programs. In general, KU’s neuro surg dept is receptive to students working there because we don’t have a neurosurg dept here. Although Dr. Gandhi, a fairly recently hired neurosurgeon who works at our hospital, is a super approachable guy. He waited for me to finish an assessment on my patient in the morning and insisted I finish before he saw them. I was a part of the medicine team. I am just a medical student…he had like 3 surgeries scheduled that morning but was still humble enough to respect my time. If I was doing neurosurg, he would be the first person I talk to. And he is super open about that as well, he says that multiple times when he gives you lectures during your surgery rotation. Anyways, not really the point.
To reiterate what @UMKCRoosMD said, generally no ones gives a flying eff if your schools are right next to each other. Your neighbor probably spends more attention to their own kids at christmas than they do to you, even if you were orphaned (bad example, but its kinda what it feels like if you want to do some of these specialities at UMKC, you have no mentors). So it just depends on who you talk to: you will either be adopted and taken under their wing, or you’ll get a pat on the back and have to figure out an alternate route.
Research at KU is not impossible, but you have to be persistent. This reiterates the same points that were discussed earlier and is a great example of how you have to make things happen for yourself here. If you were a KU student, it would be as easy as emailing a doc and being like hey, can I be on this project with you? For you, its emailing them persistently, maybe the first one doesn’t work, then talking to an older year who did research with someone at KU and having them refer you to them, and then they find you someone. It takes times and lots of energy, and you have to be willing to do the work. Again, no one spoon feeds this to you like you would be able to get at elite med school, or even ones that have all these subspecialties, you gotta figure it out.
Historically the specialities that KU has been really good at mentoring UMKC students for has been ENT and neurological surgery.
All the others are hit or miss. I know Derm students who got mentors from KU, but that was because they knew someone who knew the doctor at KU and made connections.
Children’s mercy is a whole different ball game. They are kinda sorta a thing on their own, and KU and UMKC rotate there.
So for example, KU and UMKC share the pediatric ophthalmology part of childrens mercy. CMH hires the pediatric ophthalmologists, and UMKC and KU just send residents over there for them to rotate there.
KU sends over their ENTs to do a peds ENT part of their training there.
Same with ortho and so on and so forth.
There is lots of research at Children’s mercy, but again, you gotta contact the doctors and set it up yourself. It is easier in the terms that they give same credence to UMKC and KU med students. Since no school officially “owns” CMH, its more of a first some first serve sort of a thing.
The one caveat with that is that even though it is research, its pediatric research. It does not pertain to adults and you will be asked if you are interested in pediatrics and if not why did you choose to do research in peds if that’s not one of your end goals?
Another thing is, CMH is usually involved with clinical trials and clinical research (still good research) but basic science bench research in your field of interest is more impressive and as far as I know, CMH does have a dedicated bench research laboratory that is open to students, or even residents for that matter. Not a big deal per say, any research is better than no research, but usually people who do research at CMH are ones who are thinking of doing a pediatric subspecialty or pediatrics in some way, shape, or form.
I don’t think I have mentioned this before but a lot of students who come to UMKC come here with primary care in their mind.
At least 25% of my class who came here, came with the intention of either doing pediatrics, internal medicine, or family medicine. The others who were still dabbling into what they want to do, end up doing primary care (peds, IM, gen surg, ob/gyn, or psych). 90% of my friends are doing primary care when we apply for residency this year.
50% of those want to stay general, but the other 50% want to sub specialize.
Coming from UMKC upper tier residencies that set you up well for fellowship match are moderate in terms of difficulty to attain. If you work hard and have decent board scores, your clinical experience makes you shine on away rotations you might be able to get away with not having research or having a small minor clinical project. But, if you want to do a competitive speciality, you can’t really be missing any component or you are setting yourself up for failure. Not saying that if you want to go into primary care that you can just walk into a top 10 peds hospital, but generally speaking, you can feel that there is a more air of support at UMKC for primary care fields, and it seems more encouraged than subspecialties are.
You’re correct, @blugrn6, Anesthesiology and Radiology (at least now, but this could change in the future), aren’t competitive specialties overall in terms of the match. It doesn’t mean they’re easy to get, on par with primary care residencies, but they’re not as hard as they once were in the past. Radiology actually used to be pretty competitive even when I graduated, on par with Derm, especially at top programs, but the job market for Radiology has declined hugely. You have too many graduates, not enough job openings, a lot of older attendings who were close to retiring saw a drop in their 401Ks, so they’re staying longer, especially in very popular areas that young people want to live.
More importantly, it’s almost a requirement now that diagnostic radiologists do fellowships: Interventional, Neurorads, MSK, etc. I think Radiology is still a good deal if you like imaging, but you won’t be making the $500 K salaries with purely 9 to 5 hours with no weekends, like you could once do right out of residency. That being said, I think there are many other reasons people run to Radiology (lol). Radiology greatly benefited when healthcare spending was increasing, since physicians order imaging all the time, it made sense for Radiology to make more money. Now with healthcare spending looked at under a microscope, one easy way to decrease that is not reimbursing for repeat imaging.
But yes, it is it’s own stand alone hospital, much different than Truman Medical Center which is directly connected with UMKC. If UMKC could have stopped the KU agreement, I guarantee they would have, since it’s probably one of UMKC’s best hospitals by far (I’m biased being in Peds, but it really is a great hospital in terms of resources, a clean and well decorated hospital, etc.). People of all socioeconomic backgrounds come to Children’s Mercy, unlike Truman Medical Center which has mainly an indigent patient population.
Pediatric Derm, Pediatric Ophtho, Pediatric ENT, Pediatric Rads, Pediatric PM&R, Pediatric Surgery (which all are fellowships done only after having completed residency in Derm, Ophtho, ENT, Rads, PM&R, and General Surgery respectively). So a lot of the residencies that UMKC doesn’t have, but KU does have – Derm, ENT, PM&R do their limited pediatric months there, as well those who finished residency somewhere else and ended up at Children’s Mercy for fellowship.
As @blugrn6 said, if you do any research with someone at CMH, at residency interviews you will naturally be asked if working with children is your eventual interest. Probably not a good idea to say on an interview that you only did research there in that area because you couldn’t find anything else in that specialty. I didn’t know as @blugrn6, that they had a dedicated bench research laboratory for students and residents, but basic science research takes a long time to publish (like years), which is why it is most impressive, so it’s usually not a viable option for most medical students, unlike clinical research. But as @blugrn6 said, having research at all is better than none, especially if you publish, which is always good to have on your CV.
Is there a reason that UMKC hasn’t changed their basic science curriculum to an organ-system based curriculum (vs. the traditional discipline-based system it has now of separate classes: Biochemistry, Microbiology, Pathology, etc.), like nearly every other medical school? I’ve noticed many other med schools have it this way (Mizzou, SLU), and at many other schools they are even able to shorten the length of basic sciences to 1 1/2 years, rather than 2 years.
I’ve noticed in other schools also, that many of the medical schools the first 2 years are on a Pass or Fail only basis (not even a tiered Honors/High Pass/Satisfactory Pass/Marginal Pass/Fail which is like A/B/C/D/F) – Mizzou & Wash U are like this in the first year; St. Louis University is like this for all 2 years.
Have students discussed with the UMKC medical school about moving to an integrated organ-system based curriculum or changing the grading system so it’s less stressful than the letter-graded system they have now?
@bladerz1
I see what you are saying but for practical purposes it can’t work that way.
The whole structure function series is a part of your undergraduate degree (that's the reason UMKC is able to shorten your curriculum for undergrad and still help you make the required credits). So HSF needs to be graded, undergrad courses are never pass/fail.
If HSF is graded and the rest of basic science curriculum is not that would make no sense and would make the school look inconsistent and disorganized.
Since HSF is part of undergrad degree, you can't mix it with medical school classes. That would be a scheduling disaster. And once HSF is over you're left with micro, neuro, path, and pharm.
Neuro is its own thing.
I feel like it would be no use if the rest were clumped together. I suppose it would be nice to have pharm and phys together but our pharm teachers go over physiology again with us with every lecture. It's not on the test but they do review it so that the drug makes more sense.
We haven't gone through it the other way. I guess HSF was systems based and we liked it, but its not the same as having it all together so we don't really know any different. We do complain sometimes that other med schools are pass fail but there are med schools that are pass/fail/honors. For example Rush: greater than 90 is honors, and then pass/fail. So if you were at rush barely missed honors, you would wish that they had high pass so that you were clumped in the "pass" category. It's all a relative thing. I personally don't mind having the grades because if we just had to "pass", knowing myself, I would probably never study because all I would have to do is pass.
Once you are done with HSF, you start year 3 and with that starts the clinics. Because everyone has a different clinic day, Monday to Friday, the time block from 8-12 everyday is essentially left unscheduled so no studebts would miss class while in clinic. This leaves you with a really small window to schedule systems based classes if UMKC were to clump everything after HSF together. But again it makes no sense to do that.
Part of the problem @bladerz1, is that like @blugrn6 said, many of the medical school requirements fulfill requirements for the undergraduate degree. I believe the entire HSF series is one of those requirements. If you’re a BA/MD student, you’re not allowed to graduate with only your MD without getting your BA also. Because HSF counts towards the undergrad degree, @blugrn6 is correct, the university won’t allow undergraduate requirements to be pass/fail. They have had pass/fail classes before – Pathology and Pharmacology (You could get Honors if you wanted to, but nearly everyone didn’t shoot for Honors by then) but those classes weren’t undergraduate requirements either. I also think the school wants to be able to make clear cut promotion decisions and it’s a lot easier to do that with separate courses (i.e. not passing Biochemistry I so you can’t move on to HSF).
Some of the things that make the program “special” in terms of being a 6 year program also hinder it. For example, with bringing in kids so young and with little background in the undergraduate sciences, it is very difficult to teach them all the basic science subjects by organ systems, even though that would be the best in terms of learning and applying the information. I can’t imagine teaching Pathology to a 19 year old at the same time they’re learning Histology, Physiology and Pharmacology, for example. Realize this 19 year old hasn’t gone through premed, doesn’t have a Bachelor’s, hasn’t taken upper level science courses at the undergraduate level. The program already skips so many foundational science courses: General Biology I and II, etc. that I think it would be an utter nightmare in terms of so many students failing out or quitting – you can ask @blugrn6, but I believe HSF alone extends so many people to begin with, because you have to be able to get through each section: HSF I --> HSF II --> HSF III to finally promote, unlike before, where courses were over the entire semester and it was several if not many course grades averaged together.
I disagree a little with @blugrn6, in terms of scheduling it could readily be done in terms of splitting the basic science curriculum mainly into organ system blocks: Cardiovascular, Pulmonary, Renal, GI, Endocrine, Neuro, etc. and have each organ system block have the Anatomy, Micro, Path, Phys, Pharm taught for each one. Some blocks would still be separate since they don’t fit into organ systems: i.e. Biochem. Other schools do it even allowing a day off within the week. When I had it, Year 2 Spring was only Biochemistry II and Medical Physiology; Year 3 Summer was Gross Anatomy, Histology, and Neuroanatomy (one of our summers from hell). Then they revamped it to where they combined Gross Anatomy, Histology, Physiology, and Biochemistry II split into organ systems to make what is HSF today and Neuroanatomy was pushed with Neuroscience, which is why Neuroscience is 9 credit hours now. I think what might throw a slight kink (as always) is the one half-day clinic day you have to do per week with your Docent team, and since basic science classes are now scheduled so that you’re no longer required to miss class for clinic (yes, believe it or not, this wasn’t always the case – you just got notes from somebody).
I think it would be nice if things were Pass/Fail but a lot of the changes, the administration doesn’t do is because they want to avidly track your progress (they love to track your progress on everything, trust me). That and they love coming up with “new” policies. That’s very hard to do when your only grade is Pass/Fail. I also genuinely think that the administration believes that BA/MD students have it “easier” in that they didn’t have to go through the premed application process. That was the justification for starting the science GPA requirement when it first came out, that students should be somehow “lucky” to be admitted without going thru premed, MCAT, keeping up a GPA, so a 3.0 (or now 2.8) science GPA requirement is not really a big deal.
Also, in terms of having only Honors/Pass/Fail grading only, on your MSPE letter the person reading it can see the grading system since they have graphs of how everyone did, so they’ll understand that most students would fall into the Pass grade.
I’m really having some difficulty accepting going into this program. It’s the only BS/MD program I got into though.
I know that I am committing early on to UMKC, so my future, in terms of receiving the MD and graduating in 6 years, is relatively assured, but that I’ve already ruled myself out for certain specialties that I might be interested in: Dermatology, Ophthalmology, ENT, etc. since UMKC is not a highly ranked, well-known, or even a highly regarded medical school. Is this a valid concern on my part? I don’t mind being proactive when it comes to looking for research, but I do mind looking all over and coming up empty handed, with no other alternative. What should I do? I am OOS.
I think your concern is very much a valid one. I’m assuming part of your concern stems from having to pay out-of-state tuition all 6 years as well --> $330K and counting, regardless of who is paying. There is no way in ****, that I would pay or have my parents pay $60 K for UMKC’s medical school, without even trying the normal route first (it’s another thing if I didn’t make it anywhere else, and UMKC was my only choice), but that is just me. Undergrad and premed are the “easy” part in terms of the entire journey from high school to graduation from medical school. It will only get harder - so really keep that in mind.
You have to understand and it can’t be repeated enough, that any BS/MD program is an alternative route for admission. That’s not the route >98% of students take to getting into medical school. It’s a privilege, not a right. You’re making certain compromises as a high school student by being granted a guarantee early on to go to medical school based only off of your high school class rank, your ACT/SAT scores, and the minimal CV extracurrics you’ve been able to achieve at this point. The medical school (believe it or not) is compromising in a way, by taking in a student who is relatively high achieving (at least in comparison to their high school classmates), but with no undergraduate GPA, no MCAT, etc. to see that you can handle coursework. It is a risk with limited data on both sides.
The programs that offer these type of programs tend to be lower in terms of reputation although there are notable exceptions: Baylor, Case, Pitt, UCSD, UT-Southwestern, Jefferson, Northwestern, Brown, BU (this one mainly due to proximity to opportunities at Tufts or Harvard), etc. Even then most of the class in these medical schools will be traditional graduates who have completed a bachelor degree who have proven themselves at the undergraduate level.
If it’s one lesson you’ll learn very quickly as you grow older, especially in medical school, is that you can’t get everything you want and not everything will be fair.
You want a more prestigious or higher reputation medical school or more opportunities for research to be able to go for those competitive specialties? You’ll have to apply the normal route and EARN it. Don’t let this scare you, because honestly if the premed route is what is keeping you from medicine, then you honestly won’t last. Regardless of the medical school you go to, you’ll see in terms of raw talent, intelligence, hard work, and sadly, family income (and connections), it is higher than that of undergrad.
I’ll keep my mouth closed on whether I think you should even be going for medical school at all if your goal was primary care: i.e. IM, Peds, etc. which it looks like it isn’t. Other healthcare professionals are able to specialize as well, but they have no bottleneck in their training pathway. Unlike physicians, they have no limitations in terms of number of residency spots holding them back. For medical students, every year there are only a certain number of Derm residency spots, a certain number of Ophtho residency spots, a certain number of ENT residency spots. Are you ok with the risk/possibility of not ever getting to do Derm, Ophtho, or ENT and having to choose something else? You’ll have to decide that for yourself. At the medical school level, the bar is going to be a LOT higher to match when it comes to getting into the very competitive specialties to where every part of your CV will matter — what your grades are, what your board scores are, what research you’ve done, the quality of your letters and who your letter writers were, your medical school caliber and where you are in your class, etc.
But if you look at prior UMKC match lists, you’ll see a paucity of students in the entire class who even match into fields like Derm, Ophtho, or ENT, and many times it helps to know the background story of why and how they matched into those fields or you end up reaching the wrong conclusions.
@bladerz1, also to add to what @blugrn6 has been saying and to summarize, if you really do decide to come to UMKC you will REALLY have to be proactive, resilient, and independent on every level - studying and doing well in classes, preparing for boards, getting involved in research and publishing, doing well in rotations, getting AOA, etc. You won’t be handed anything at UMKC, and you definitely won’t be prodded to get involved in certain things, like you would at other medical schools. A lot of your saving grace will be advice that tends to come from upper level students who have traveled the path before you whom you should try your best to make friends with.
The school, itself, in terms of advising, tends to be weaker for those people who are shooting for competitive residency specialties or for those specialties in which the residency just doesn’t exist at UMKC, especially the surgical specialties. It’s the same for certain school policies as well which tend to be quite ridiculous - i.e number of days you can interview in a month. There are real gaps in terms of research available at UMKC in certain specialties - that’s just the reality.
@bladerz1, I think your question is something I’ve gotten a LOT of PMs about from UMKC applicants about as to whether the reputation/prestige/caliber/rank (whatever euphemism you want to call it) matters when it comes to your medical school and the residency match - especially if you want to go into a residency that is very competitive: whether that’s due to lucrative reimbursement, having a great lifestyle outside of medicine - no call, rarely any emergencies, etc.
When a field has too many interested people applying, and not enough spots even for everyone who is qualified, it becomes competitive. You have to look beyond grades, beyond test scores (since everyone in the interviewing pool already has those things) and look at other factors. Same with when you have 140 allopathic medical schools and counting, vs. in my time when it was only 125 allopathic medical schools. It doesn’t mean, in my time, that the competitive specialties weren’t very competitive, but it does mean that an already tight filter for those specialties is becoming even tighter. So as we get closer and closer to the point where there are too many medical school graduates, and not enough residency spots, we’ll see this happen more and more. People may have to settle for specialties that aren’t their #1 choice.
Most of UMKC’s students still come from Missouri, and quite a few from rural areas (not KC not St. Louis) - many of whom want to do primary care. There is nothing in UMKC’s history or in its current status which points to it wanting to encourage students to become “super” specialists. If anything, it’s the exact opposite. Hence the legitimate frustration when it comes to getting into certain specialties. In order to create a U.S. medical school there are some specialties that are non-negotiable – Internal Medicine, OB-Gyn, Pediatrics, General Surgery, Psychiatry, Family Medicine. You don’t have to have fields or residencies in fields like Rad Onc, Ophtho, Derm, Anesthesia, or Urology, to qualify to create a medical school.
As @bluegrn6 said, if you think you’ll be interviewing at top places or top fields, just because you come from a 6 year program, and you have great grades and board scores, you will end up being very disappointed. I know, as I had people in my class who had all those things and didn’t match into their #1 specialty.
I mentioned about my 4 classmates, who I am still friends with, who all tried to match into Dermatology in Year 6, and 3 weren’t able to do so, even with 2 being AOA. The one who did match that year (and while she is a wonderful person, she quite honestly didn’t have the scores or the grades), we found out later, had an underlying connection. There was a guy who graduated 2 years above me (in 2001), who matched into Derm, who had a family connection in that field and matched. There wasn’t even an Interest Group at UMKC back then in that specialty and in many other specialties like there is now. Maybe UMKC gets more tuition money and uses it for that, not sure ask @blugrn6 about this, as it seems like they have an “interest group” for nearly everything now, or at least most of them.
I think we live in a society in which the concept of meritocracy and individualism pervades much of American life, so it’s shocking for a lot of high achieving high school students (who don’t have any life or work experience), that the world doesn’t work this way in any profession. Just being a “hard worker” isn’t enough. Just having great grades and great scores isn’t enough. Networking matters. Connections matter. Nepotism matters. I’ve seen medical students work their hardest on rotations and get a “High Pass”, and I’ve seen students slack off more and get “Honors”. As @Roentgen was saying, you’ll figure out very quickly that life isn’t fair and you won’t always get what you want.
Part of the problem of being in a BS/MD program is that you don’t have to go through the grunt work of working to get into medical school to earn that spot. With that, comes a lot of personal growth and maturity that you otherwise might not get and thus can lead to a lot of entitlement and not too much maturity - which makes you stick out like a sore thumb later.
I think many people who go into medicine, especially from families in the Asian culture, think erroneously that Medicine is somehow different from Engineering, Law, Business, etc. in that medical school is all about studying and working hard, and the world is your oyster, because there is already a set path: undergrad → medical school → residency → fellowship and then you live happily every after. Realize that this is a large part of your life: 2-4 years of undergrad + 4 years of medical school + 3-7 years of residency depending on specialty + 1-3 years of fellowship. The schools you go to in your education matter and determine which places are open to you no matter what profession you’re going into.
The current teaching hospitals for UMKC are: 1) Truman Medical Center (TMC-West) – Internal Medicine if you are on a docent team here, General Surgery 2) St. Luke’s Hospital – Internal Medicine if you are on a docent team here, General Surgery 3) Children’s Mercy Hospital – Pediatrics
**4) Truman Medical Center-Lakewood/b – Family Medicine
**5) Center for Behavioral Medicine/b – Psychiatry 6) Research Medical Center – I honestly have no idea what rotations are done here since they just recently signed an agreement in 2010, http://info.umkc.edu/news/umkc-school-of-medicine-and-research-medical-center-sign-affiliation-agreement/, maybe @blugrn6 might know.
None of these hospitals are even close to being highly top-ranked ranked hospitals or academic medical center meccas in which you have tons of interesting research going on. It is not at all surprising that UMKC puts most of their graduates in primary care type residencies - IM, Pediatrics, Family Medicine. So whatever you decide, don’t go into this with rose-colored glasses (http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/rose-coloured+glasses). Be sure you know what you’re getting into. The truth is that if you want to get into a competitive specialty or you want to do a non-competitive specialty at a really great institution – everything matters and that also includes the school you’re coming from.
Just to reiterate what was said above: it is extremely important for you to understand that going to a 6 year program does not give you any advantage whatsoever, especially at UMKC. Maybe USCD or USC would be considered prestigious but not a lot of the other ones.
Rather it is more of a negative aspect of you application in ways. I mean not literally but people see six year program and they think: 1) way too young and probably immature and 2) don’t know the school, that must mean its not very good. You will not land top tier interviews or even top tier programs in non-competitive specialities when coming from UMKC unless you are the grace of God, and even then UCLA will probably risk not accepting you.
Don’t come here with those aspirations. UMKC has a: “its not the best but it will get the job done” sort of a philosophy. Its up to you to decide if you want to spend $360k on that education.
The people who regret coming here the most are the ones who regret not exploring their options. Yea they loved medicine, but what if you take an architecture course in college and that’s the best thing you’ve ever done. My best friend (from high school) who was dead set on medicine and super upset that he didn’t get into a BA/MD program, changed his major seven times and is now studying architecture.
Others are the ones who fall in love with radiation oncology and realize that they will never match into here coming from here, yes it does happen, but those students are on another level, and end up settling for something else. If you love two different things, that’s not a big deal but if your heart is dead set on a competitive speciality you are end up compromising because of your circumstances you will regret that for the rest of your life. Just think about it. Two extra years of school and doing what you love vs. saving two years and then being stuck with a speciality you hate.
To answer the questions that were brought up:
Research medical center is solely used for Year 1/2 docent, if you never have docent there, you will never see that hospital.
Lakewood - that's just for family medicine
St Lukes - again Year 1/2 docent (if you get that), all doros (if you are placed on Purple team), and one month of surgery (that's for everyone), that's it.
Childrens - two months of peds
TMC west - everything happens here
As for the interest group stuff:
you basically just create one if there isn’t one there to put it on your CV that you created one. Most of them have like bi-yearly meetings and for the most part don’t really do anything except like post match panels and an occasional lecture here and there.
My class alone is responsible for the creation of: gasteroenterology interest group, skin cancer awareness group, ENT interest group, and neurology interest group.
I think @blugrn6 describes it pretty darn accurately for those deciding this month (17 more days!) whether or not to accept by May 1st, and for future applicants to this program.
UMKC’s 6 year BA/MD program – gets the job done. That’s about all you can expect. You will have the minimum credential it takes to qualify for applying (actually matching is a whole another issue depending on specialty) to an allopathic residency – the MD degree (and a BA degree, although its pretty useless by that point). If you’re lucky, hardworking, maintain your focus and endurance, you will have this credential in 6 years, 2 years less than your traditional counterparts. Whether that 2 years saved was “worth” it, will depend on what you’re actually wanting to achieve.
The 6 year thing has stayed because of “tradition” because the school was created in the 1970s when most medical schools followed the 4+4 model, there really weren’t that many medical schools around, when most medical schools took traditional students only, and to where most of your ability to get in was based on GPA and MCAT. The residency application process was also much different back then, as well as less competitive overall. The founder of the medical school purposefully wanted something different and a different way of selecting future doctors.
Any other caveats, like later deciding you want to match into a competitive specialty (coming from a school like UMKC - AOA will almost always be a prerequisite here vs. if you went to Northwestern’s med school through HPME where AOA is not a requirement) or wanting a top program in any specialty for that matter (competitive or not competitive), etc. and the 6 year BA/MD program won’t give you any tangible advantage and can sometimes be perceived as a negative by residencies – mainly due to concerns about maturity, but also in terms of knowing the right people in academic medicine who can make a difference in terms of fighting for you somewhere else, being involved in really impressive research and getting published, etc.
Don’t rely on UMKC to be able to carry you through in the above scenarios - especially if you think all you have to do is put your mind to it and work hard. At this level, everyone puts their mind to it and works hard.
Top programs, either due to name-brand (UCSF, University of Chicago, Northwestern, Stanford, MGH, Brigham & Women’s, Vanderbilt, Hopkins, Duke, etc. etc.) or those that are really competitive due to location as well (i.e. UCLA, several big name programs in NYC: NYU, Mt. Sinai, Cornell, Columbia, etc.) will go with tried and true known entities as a general rule, who tend to be people from highly ranked medical schools.
I forgot on my list above: 1) Truman Medical Center (TMC-West) – your OB-Gyn rotation is also done here. I don’t believe students rotate at St. Luke’s Hospital for their OB-Gyn required rotation (would be nice since it’s the nicer, a.k.a. “richer” hospital).
@Roentgen, why do you say this? Why would it be that applying for a competitive specialty from UMKC would almost always require getting into AOA, while at Northwestern (if someone did their HPME program) it would not?
Simple really. Northwestern is a more selective medical school to gain acceptance to. Their matriculating stats alone – GPA and MCAT are much higher overall, so you’re going to have, on average, a higher achieving and more intelligent/smarter, maybe even more neurotic (lol) class coming from that medical school. It’s so much harder to set yourself apart in that highly accomplished student body – a “small fish in a big pool” so to speak.
Since each AOA medical school chapter is only allowed to induct 1/6th of the entire class, at a place like Northwestern, you’re going to miss out on a lot of smart people who likely would have been inducted into AOA, if they had gone to their public medical school in their home state that might be lower ranked. Residency directors understand this nuance, so someone who is not AOA at Northwestern will be given more latitude in terms of academic performance, that a UMKC student would not be given.
At UMKC, since the overall stats of the people coming in is lower (even with MD only students if you look at their average GPA and MCATs), it would be theoretically easier (it isn’t really like this in reality but faculty will think what they want to think) to set yourself apart in a lower stats group, and so AOA is the “seal of approval” that sort of “proves” that. I probably should have used a better example (instead of Northwestern) of a public state school which is higher ranked (UCSF, UMichigan, UCLA, University of Texas Southwestern, etc.). Same rule applies.
If you go to this year’s match list: http://med.umkc.edu/sa/match-day-2015/. You’ll see that 2 people matched into Otolaryngology (ENT) and 2 people matched into Ophthalmology. All 4 of them were AOA.
Now AOA isn’t a non-negotiable requirement, but if you don’t have AOA, you’ll have to make up for it in other ways – are you still ranked somewhat at the top of your class, did you have a lot of research in that particular specialty? Those type of things. AOA is sort of the cherry on top of the entire sundae, but it’s not the entire dessert to match – if it was, you wouldn’t have to fly out to interview.
Just as an aside:
It’s really weird the way they calculate it at UMKC, but there have been times where students may be at the top of the class (Summa Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, and Cum Laude) but not get inducted into AOA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpJ7hGKExk4. You can see last year’s UMKC med school graduation where you’ll notice that there were students who were either Summa/Magna/Cum Laude, but didn’t get into AOA – you can tell those who got AOA, because they got the long green cords to wear at graduation.
Hello everybody! I’m a current junior from Arkansas who will become a senior next year. I am planning on applying to UMKC 6 year med program. I read most of the pages on this thread and was wondering if anybody knew how many applications there were for the regional states? A specific number towards Arkansas would be great! And does UMKC have to accept a certain amount of students from local and regional states each year?
@raggyy, this might answer your questions: http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/faqs/, as to how many applications total, but I don’t believe they have it split into how many applications come from each: in-state, regional, out-of-state. They do have in there how many students they accept from in-state, regional, and out-of-state every year.
Thank you @PinkPrincess2014 ! so would it be safe to assume that more than grades, extracurricular activities like volunteering at a clinic, hospital, or publishing research in a journal would increase the chance of getting an interview?