Yup, those are really the only competitive residency specialties offered at UMKC. We’re missing a lot of the others: Derm, Rad Onc; ENT, Urology, Neurosurg, Plastics, Vascular, Cardiothoracic, etc. So two of the ROAD specialties, and most of the surgical specialties/subspecialties. As @Blugrn6 mentioned, most people after being here for 6 years want to leave (and that includes in-state people too). This includes Ortho and Ophtho where students who are competitive for those fields have many other options. If you’re borderline competitive for those 2 fields, then you will have less options, overall, in terms of where you can match to, so it’s possible you may end up at UMKC. Neither of those specialties at UMKC specifically recruit only for UMKC students, as they can get many qualified applicants across the U.S. since their specialties are inherently competitive. As mentioned, most people who willingly stay at UMKC for residency usually have some type of underlying reason – wanting to be close to family, engaged/married, wanting to stay at Children’s Mercy, etc.
You are right that the exact MSPE formula is kept secret. No student will know the exact formula and you will not be told what it is if you ask. As @blugrn6 said, no point in stressing out and trying to game the system to figure out which one to put effort towards. Do your best in everything you try. Before the MSPE is submitted on your behalf by the medical school, you get to view it in its entirety for any errors, omissions, etc. In it they’ll briefly talk about your basic science performance, which is just like 1-2 sentences listing your cumulative GPA and USMLE Step 1 score. Most of your MSPE will be composed of your performance in your clinical clerkships starting with Year 3 Docent clinic, which includes your grade, your NBME shelf exam score if applicable, and any evaluation comments written about you by the attending/resident. They copy it directly from the summative comments section of your evaluation (the formative comments section is to more tell you what you should improve on without having it go into an MSPE). They also have histograms for every basic science course and clerkship took showing how many people in your class got a specific grade for a particular course/clerkship and what grade you got.
So I’ll summarize since we’ve discussed previously and you can read back further on how it’s calculated:
Latin Honors at graduation = Summa Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, Cum Laude for the Top 20% of the class as calculated here: http://med.umkc.edu/docs/coe/COE-Policy-Manual.pdf (Page 25). This is tabulated in April Year 6, about 1 month before you graduate. It’s kind of like cherry on top of the sundae then because you’re happy to have matched, graduating with your classmates and friends and family seeing your moment and moving on to residency.
Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) = Top 25% of the class (this is a national requirement) as calculated above in order to make the initial cut, then extracurricular CV stuff that doesn’t involve grades, letter of recommendation which you usually get from your Docent to turn in, in order to get elected. Oh and also no professionalism type issues and passing Step 1 on your first try. 4 people are Junior members who are elected in Spring Year 5, the rest are Senior members (for which the total number of people elected to AOA can’t exceed 1/6th of the class) who are elected in early Fall Year 6. It is possible you can get Latin Honors without getting AOA, as well as vice-versa, getting AOA without getting Latin Honors.
Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE) = This is one with the “secret” formula that takes into account a) Year 1-6 cumulative GPA (so yes, including freshman year of college), USMLE Step 1 score (not USMLE Step 2 score though), and clinical grades starting in Year 3 (these are the ones graded Honors/High Pass/Satisfactory Pass/Marginal Pass/Fail). You’re placed into 1 of several groups - I forget the names but it’s like Superior, Outstanding, Excellent, etc. which tells which segment of the class you fall in - Top 10%, the next 25%, all the way down to the last group. You can see the template here: https://www.aamc.org/download/64496/data/mspeguide.pdf
So, what I was referring to was in the overall total # of U.S. residency positions. By the time you graduate from the program, which would be in 2021, there may not be enough residency program positions for all U.S. medical school graduates. It’s a long story which you can Google, but the reason for this is because Congress has not funded any more new residency positions overall, while there are more medical schools being created with more people graduating each year. It’s already been a problem for a while in the more competitive specialties, because many medical students are going for non-primary care positions (those fields outside of IM, FM, and Pediatrics), but eventually the numbers will cross where the total number of U.S. graduates will exceed the total number of residency spots. Congress has capped the total number of residency spots, since most residencies are funded thru the Medicare program - the healthcare insurance system for those 65 and older, and currently does not have an appetite for spending more money on funding more physician residency positions, especially since many positions currently are taken up by international graduates, usually in specialties and places where most American graduates don’t want to go. I mention it because med students, in general, aren’t going for primary care, as a whole, for many reasons, one of them being debt, but also in terms of years of schooling.
The problem is that in order to practice as a physician in the United States, you have to have completed a residency of some sort and be board certified. This is much different than fields like PA, NP, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Physical Therapy, etc. where after your school is done, residency is not a mandatory requirement to practice your craft. In those, after your schooling is done, you can immediately go and start making money.
So this is especially important to consider if the only thing that will make you happy to practice medicine is a specialty that just happens to be very competitive. Don’t be the Year 6 who will only be happy in medicine going for Radiation Oncology/Dermatology/Ortho/Neurosurg, etc., when your grades and board scores don’t support that dream. It’s a real possibility that you might need a “backup” specialty, or you run a very huge risk of just having an expensive piece of paper - your diploma, but no residency match.
So we actually don’t take the NBME for Pathology either. Only for behavioral science.
Actually funny story, well not really funny, but the path teacher two years before I was supposed to take the course gave the NBME as a final exam to the class without warning and 25 students failed the course because of it and lots more got low grades causing lots of students to extend.
UMKC did not like this news at all, and idk what the controversy was but that teacher is no longer in charge of the course and those students did not extend.
Anyways, long story short we no longer take that NBME. God knows why, when studying for Step 1 I took a peak at it and it would actually have been really good practice.
Yes you do still take a practice CBSE before you start third year.
Honestly, I didn’t really feel that that was valuable, I wish it was at the beginning of year 4. The only thing we had done at that point was HSF, we were missing micro, neuro, pharm, and path knowledge and it was basically something we all create patterns on the scantron than take it seriously for.
I mean it was so stupid, there is no way I would even be able to assess what kind of stuff they are looking for if I have never even been exposed to the material. Much less remember the style of questions asked 6 months later when I start pathology.
Even summer semester students don’t take the Kaplan Course anymore. Its not really something that is popular anymore. We all feel that we are adequately prepared to study on our own. Usually if we fail CBSE than its an indication that you either need to step up your game or consider the Kaplan course, but even in that case 50% of students who fail the CBSE is because of lack of adequate preparation (aka they didn’t study for it or studied very little and hoped it would work miracles). We all see it as a road block on our way to take Step 1 rather than a way to actually prepare for the test. I know its bad but it is what it is.
Here my view of the education in terms of step 1 preparation:
HSF: this is actually a really well taught class, I never really felt that I needed to supplement my education here
Pharm: super well taught as well, and the most recent one in your memory.
Micro: its sad that they moved away from the lecture system right after my class was done with it and moved to some weird system that I’m not sure about. But to this day I never have any issues with micro and it is consistently my highest subject in all exams I take
Neuro: this is a really poorly taught class if you don’t really pay attention to it. I actually learned the material while I was in class but this is easily one of those classes where you can just review it the night before and easily get an A. At least this was true when I took it.
Pathology: UMKC’s weakest link, and to make matters worse, this class is the foundation of all things medicine. The good news though is that students figure it out before they start and now it is a well known fact that students do pathoma with the course during the entire semester. We all get class discount codes together and everyone purchases a subscription to this and watches the videos and reads the book during the class and vigorously during their boards prep. I did that and never really had an issue with pathology during Step 1.
Biochem: this is hard just because it is so far removed before you take the test. You learn this when the beginning of your second year and take boards the end of your fourth. That’s a whole two years after your have learned the material. And biochem is not one of those things that you’re like ok I got it, i’m good. So you have to just sit down and do it all over again. Most people do the Kaplan videos, they are actually really good. No need to buy them just get them from an older student. Also the benefit of this is questionable. Some people have a biochem heavy test, some people don’t. I had 3 biochem questions total (I mean straight up biochem, like what enzyme is deficient, or what’s the next enzyme used etc). There are more that are incorporated with other subjects (like enzyme deficiencies causing pathological manifestations) but you review those with those subjects as well so its not that big of an issue.
Honestly if I had to do it over again, it is not a matter of what I studied it is how I studied that possibly could have made a difference in my score. Regurgitating the material out loud will only take you so far on the test. You also need to learn how to apply the material that you have learned, and that’s where we have an issue at UMKC. We don’t take shelf exams, so our method of thinking is basically set to: memorize the material and spill it on the exam. Not saying that is a bad philosophy. You have to start somewhere but its up to you to do enough practice and think about this stuff and how it is applied to the test.
Thanks @Roentgen and @Blugrn6, that really clears things up!
When certain rules and policies change, do those things only affect incoming Year 1s, or do they affect people who are already in the program, or does it depend on what that rule is affecting? I would think it would be pretty cruel to change things midstream on people who are already in the program, but wasn’t sure.
It depends on the rule.
Funny you mention changing things midstream.
There was actually a huge fiasco a couple years ago when curriculum decided to wake up one day and state that from now on in order to get an honors on a rotation you HAVE to get a 90 on the shelf exam. They were like that’s now other med schools do it etc so we should too.
There was a huge uprising at the med school because the fifth years that were currently doing core rotations were like excuse me, that’s not fair to those who already finished the rotation and got honors and now I have to work harder for that grade (because some shelf exams are harder than others).
It was a huge deal and curriculum got so many complaints that they decided to hold an open forum where students can fight the case.
I was a second year than so I don’t really know what the deal was, I just know that some students in our class were really angry about some HSF test so they went to complain as well.
The students must have won because that is not a rule I can tell you that.
But in general I think usually rule changes applies to students coming after you or younger years and not students currently in that class.
Curriculum changes this all the time.
Rumor has it that pathology will no longer will just in the spring semester of third year and that it will be spread out over the whole third year and micro and neuro will be split up (one in fall one in spring vs. both used to be in spring).
Who knows how long this will last but the students that were in path during this year were not affected by that change.
Now if you extended because of path, you now have it with the younger students for the whole year.
So at UMKC the 2 councils that make rules and policies are the Council on Curriculum (who decide policies about actual courses/clerkships you have to complete to get thru the program) and Council on Evaluation (who decide policies on what it takes to promote from year to year). They pretty much decide policy between themselves and are often on the same page on a lot of things.
To answer your question, I think it depends on what the specific policy change is. They have definitely, in the past, made changes in curriculum and/or promotion policy that are implemented immediately, It sucks because if you’re the class who is immediately affected (like they make a USMLE Step 1 policy change and you’re in Year 4), you don’t get much time to prepare for it or to fight it, and it horrendously sucks because you’re the guinea pigs, and can’t ask the classes above you for any help since they have no idea and narrowly escaped).
Some good examples during my time when I was there: when HSF was first created (luckily, we were the third class to have gone thru that sequence), when the CBSE was first made a requirement in order to sign up for boards (again, luckily by coincidence we were the third class to have to take it, so we could ask those who were 1 year above us, and our senior partners who were the first to have to take it). I have never seen a new policy that is made, that only affects incoming Year 1s, as they don’t want to wait that long for a policy to take effect, unless it was something to where you would have to be a Year 1 in order to fulfill that — for example, you can’t say to someone as a Year 4 you now have to have a cumulative GPA of x to promote to the next year, when for several years the rule was always you had to have a cumulative GPA of y in order to promote. Or I guess you could, but you would have a lot of people extending, which definitely causes a ruckus, so it’s not implemented like that midstream.
When it comes to actual changes in a course between different years, that can change anytime, and that is something that is often done when someone gets a “bright” idea and thinks it will work - sometimes it does, sometimes/often times it doesn’t, hopefully when they see that it failed and they’ll change it for next year’s class (not much solace when it affects you though). At some point, you’ll just stop inherently fighting the system because some people are truly convinced of their smartness and no amount of convincing will change their minds – i.e. see Docent clinic and Docent Rotation where you have book work, quizzes, midterms/final exams, CLEX journals, or whatever busywork they’re having students do now.
Just do your very best no matter what and try not to let the little things get to you. There is enough inherent stress in the program as it is for a variety of reasons - not limited just to changes in rules and policy which are out of your hands. Also, don’t go out of your way to piss people off, because when there are rules that are currently ambiguous and you’re petitioning, it can mean the difference between having your petition approved vs. denied, so no matter how much you may want to outwardly lash out - don’t do it. It’s not worth it and it’s a very small circle, so you don’t want to establish a reputation as people remember.
Oh yes, @blugrn6 hit on a good point. If you extend in the program, and a major curriculum change or policy change is made, then all bets are off and you fall under the rules and changes for your new class. Extending, while definitely not the end of the world by any means - and I’ve seen some people who extended, hit it out of the ballpark when it came to matching later, it isn’t a decision you should take lightly regardless if you’re in-state or out-of-state, as it can be such a pain the butt in more ways than one.
How is that medical students in your class at UMKC during the six years don’t start out or don’t eventually evolve into becoming very cutthroat competitive with each other or don’t actively try to compete with each other for grades when it comes to classes or on rotations, if your class ranking and at least partially for AOA selection, is dependent on your cumulative GPA and your rotation grades?
@bladerz1, it’s actually quite simple really:
1 - At UMKC, you're not graded against a preset curve. No course will state, only 10% of the class is allowed A's, for example. At the beginning of the semester, you're given a syllabus which tells exactly what average you have to get in order to *at least* achieve that grade. So if in the syllabus at the beginning of the semester, the cutoff for the A = 90, and if you were to get a 90 then you're assured an A. Now by the end of the semester, those cutoffs might be lowered (meaning it helps you), so instead of 90 = A, by the end of the semester it might be 87 = A (this occurs much more on the undergraduate course level, but not as much at the medical school level - for example, Dr. Cole in HSF tightly adheres to their preset grade cutoffs with no curving no matter the distribution, same for the 2 month Year 4 Pharm course), with the one exception to this being Med Micro in Year 3 which tends to be hard for the class as a whole, even though it is (was) well taught, so it's already known that grade cutoffs will have to be brought down to help the class. But cutoffs are never raised, so you won't be told 90 = A at the beginning, and then at the end of the semester that cutoff was raised to 93 since the class did so well.
This is also why hiding old and/or previously released exams, labs, study guides, class notes from classmates that you get passed down to you by upperclassmen doesn’t work in your favor either. Again, this is because there isn’t an inherent quota on the number of people allowed to get a specific grade even with the required Science GPA. Any mistaken belief that it does, speaks more to someone’s internal insecurities than the reality. Studying in groups, testing each other, sharing resources only helps you and can really make a huge difference when classes get harder and when it comes to studying for boards when you’re responsible for a lot of information and will have some weaknesses in certain areas.
2 - you're not given an official notice by the medical school of where you fall in terms of class rank every semester. Outside of the first 2 years, where the main university will tell you if you made the Dean's List, since you're technically classified as an undergraduate student, the only times that you will know for sure are a) In Year 5, when AOA nominations go out and you're told in a letter, "Congratulations you're in the top 25% and qualify to apply for AOA", b) when you get to view your MSPE at the beginning of Year 6 and you can see which category you belong to based on that formula, and c) in April of Year 6, when you're told if you got Latin Honors or not, for graduation. By those times, it's already way too late to change anything by then. Now, by the time you've gone thru some courses, you'll have a pretty good idea based on rumor (sometimes true, sometimes false) of who is doing well, but there is nothing that is typed out to where you will know exactly where you stand. Quite honestly, at some point, most people aren't bragging about their grades even if they do spectacular just because it's a douchey thing to do and also because you will take so many exams in med school, you don't have the energy for it to be an egocentric celebration every time.
3 - by the time you get to clinical rotations, you'll see that a lot of your final grade (Honors, High Pass, etc.) will hinge on so much more than how well you do on exams filling in multiple choice bubbles. On rotations, you're graded on your patient presentation skills (are you organized and people know what you're talking about or are you all over the place where people are more confused before you even started), your ability to look up things and directly apply them to your patient, your ability to help out your tired intern/resident actively when a lot of things are going on at once (vs. being passive and just effectively shadowing which is a straight ticket to just a Satisfactory Pass), helping out your team as a whole without your hand being held on everything, your ability to work in a group and get along with other students and residents (even the pissy ones) and allied health personnel of the healthcare team. Trying to actively compete against or actively sabotage someone in this area will at a minimum not end up helping you at all, or at the other end of the stick, easily backfire against you and have you, figuratively speaking, thrown under the bus in terms of your clinical evaluations which is a major component of your grade in order to pass the rotation.
I’m not saying there aren’t any students who act the way you described in terms of being cutthroat or actively competitive in classes and on rotations, which makes everyone miserable (the term used frequently to describe this is being a “gunner”: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gunner) but those type of characteristics don’t tend to lend themselves as easily to success and/or being at the top of the medical school class as you might think.
Part of the reason for that is that medical school education tests a different set of skills and abilities, and not just test-taking skills although that is a major component also. Those type of people who behave in the way you describe are usually easily found out, gain a negative reputation, are quickly ostracized by classmates and their docent team - no one is friends with them, no one wants to help them or cut them some slack, etc. and thus it can be a very lonely experience overall for them and they don’t necessarily even do well - if anything, they’ll probably do worse. So just with the way the incentives are built into the system, it tends to work against that mentality.
@Roentgen, you had mentioned having old exams to practice with when it comes to studying for class exams. How do you get them?
I don’t know how it exactly works now, with this relatively new “Peer Mentor” thing, but when I started in the BA/MD program, you had a Year 2 student you were linked to. Usually what happened was in the Spring, after the final list of who accepted has come out, the current Year 1s signed up for an incoming BA/MD student that had accepted - the list only had like a name and the city the person was coming from, so you also knew if they were in-state or out-of-state. I don’t think there was a specific name for this , it was just done, and it was of course, completely voluntary, but everyone wanted to participate as they all had a Year 2 when they started as well.
That Year 2 then helps you in the fall with anything - maybe physically help you move into the dorms since students and parents are moving a lot of stuff from home, gives you any old class notes from courses, textbooks, any old previously released exams, labs from Year 1 Anatomy, Gen Chem, Orgo Chem, from not only their year, but were passed down to them from their Year 2. So you can imagine if this was done over several years on end, and it was just kept passing down, you’d have a lot of old exams at your disposal.
There were some professors who would put their old exams in Miller Nichols Library for student access and you could photocopy them as well.
Also, often times the sororities and fraternities on campus (usually the ones that have a lot of medical students as members), would also keep in their files - notes and handouts from lectures, previously released old exams, etc. which all their members would contribute to. The cool ones would share their frat/sorority resources with the rest of us, and we’d of course do the same in return with anything we came upon. Don’t know if this still happens though and it’s probably dependent on the person.
In undergraduate science courses at UMKC, you almost always you get to keep your exam, and when grades are posted you get to see the posted answer key with the right answers to see what you got wrong so you can learn from them. Undergrad professors always make new exams every year, so it’s never an issue when it comes to having old exams. By the time you get to the medical school courses though, actual old exams are pretty hard to come by since the medical school basic science faculty usually do not allow you to keep them. The only exception for this was Biochemistry, but he recently retired, so most likely, it’s no longer the case.
Short answer: just ask the older years.
You will in some way, shape, or form through clubs, going out and partying, etc make some older year friends outside of your peer mentors.
Ask any of them and you will get anything you want.
Old notes, lecture recordings, exams that we have saved, word docs of things people think were topics covered on the exam, etc.
It pays to make friends in the program and not burn bridges. Believe it or not some people do that right away.
If we all get an old exam that someone kept from the previous years the night before the test guess who would not be included in the email…
Not saying it happens a lot because you usually have friends, but I have seen people isolate themselves to a point where they don’t have any and miss out on stuff.
And don’t be that annoying person who just makes friends to get stuff. Like actually be their friend.
And don’t feel too pressured to meet older years, it just happens overtime. Even if you don’t know that many your own friend group with have a social butterfly will get stuff for you don’t worry.
At our school (i’m assuming you’re going to UMKC), its a giant family. We help each other out and things are always handed down from one class to another.
Ditto to what @blugrn6 said about the people who make friends (both within the class and outside of the class) just to get resources - old exams, class notes, student-made study guides, etc. and then conveniently disappear from contact until right before the next exam. People aren’t stupid - they know what you’re doing or pick up on it quickly, and you’ll get easily labeled (right or wrong) behind your back as a user, and as @blugrn6 said, when an old exam pops up, which is almost always seems to be like the day or 2 before the exam for some reason, you’ll be left out of the loop.
You definitely don’t have to start introducing yourself as a Year 1 to older students on purpose (you’ll look desperate at best), as you’ll get to know many of them by attending social events, things like MSAC and AMA, as well as when you promote to the Hill at the start of Year 3 and meet people on your new Docent team and get paired with a senior partner.
I wanted to add and expand on what @SparklyStarFish asked and what @Blugrn6 said right here, as I think this is really important, as it would have made life so much easier for me.
I ended up taking the Kaplan course as well, but I did the IPP program diagnostic test beforehand (or as @Roentgen mentioned, now called Jolley’s Test Prep). There were several people in my class I knew who took IPP’s courses for boards prep, but if it’s something I also wish I had done earlier is like what @blugrn6 mentioned, learning how to apply the information as you learn things in class to real USMLE-type questions. The people who worked at IPP/Jolley’s Test Prep really knew the weaknesses in UMKC’s curriculum and understood students’ predicament. A lot of the coaching I got from IPP was how to approach the exam and how to approach applying information to USMLE test questions since I was so used to the way they were tested in class and not at all prepared for how the real USMLE exam tested things. As @blugrn6 mentioned, a lot of the studying is memory dump where you memorize and then spill it on the exam. UMKC still writes a lot of their test questions as memorization type questions - which while relatively easy in terms of brute force studying and makes you feel great about the good grade, it isn’t the way licensing boards questions are written anymore. It kind of makes sense, because real patients aren’t memorization type problems (first order), it’s much more “thinking” and “application” type problems - usually of the 2nd or 3rd order.
You definitely don’t want to figure this out when you start prepping for boards as a Year 4 - because then you have to relearn things in a different way when you thought you had solidified that information previously. You want to know this way in advance, but the problem is as a Year 1-3 student you don’t know what to exactly do about it, so you just end up grabbing the best review resource at the time - so when I took Path we read BRS Path or Goljan Path since we had a shelf at the end. Since the Path course was actually graded Pass/Fail at the time (as was Pharm), and the NBME Path shelf only had to be passed in order to pass the course (getting above a certain percentile that was itself already scaled), we all went to a hot tub party the night before since we all knew we were going to pass, but I digress.
My point is if you only go based off your grades in med school classes and the types of questions your UMKC med school professors write on exams, you’ll end up getting a very false sense of security in terms of how that information is tested on the boards. And as @blugrn6 mentioned, UMKC students don’t take any NBME subject (shelf) exams for basic sciences, except for Behavioral Science. The only other time is the NBME’s CBSE that students now take, which at the beginning of Year 3 is useless then (it would be much more useful at the end of Year 3 where it would be a good motivator in terms of telling you exactly where you stand at that moment after finishing everything but Pharm and Behavioral)
There used to be this in-house made exam called the QPE (Quarterly Profile Exam), which you took (a.k.a. wasted) every 4 months on a Saturday starting from Year 1 all the way till the end of Year 6. As a Year 1, you pretty much filled in bubbles but as you progressed thru the curriculum, your knowledge and in theory your score on the QPE would greatly improve: http://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Abstract/1990/08000/The_quarterly_profile_examination_.5.aspx. https://web.archive.org/web/20030921145308/http://www.umkc.edu/medicine/curriculum/policy/step1_readiness.htm
The positives:
There was incentive to keep the material at least semi-fresh in your head as you progressed thru the curriculum, since you took it every 4 months, and like the CBSE now, you had to achieve a certain score on it in Year 4 in order to sit for the real Step 1 exam.
Since it was offered every quarter, it wasn’t a problem to qualify for the Step 1 exam much earlier in Year 4 than you can now, although it looks like now they’ve changed it to where the first CBSE offering is in November, rather than January - probably for those who wanted to take the exam much earlier than May/June, and may have taken Pharm in June-July right after Path: http://med.umkc.edu/docs/students/exams/nbme_exam_schedule.pdf
The negatives:
It was an in-house made exam, and the exam questions were seriously dated to the point that they were no longer representative of the types of questions that appear on the USMLE exam, and as @Roentgen mentioned, they reuse a lot of the questions since it came out of a 13,000 item bank of questions testing basic science and your required rotations - Surgery/IM/Peds/OB-Gyn/Psych. Questions were recycled (the fraternities and sororities had these exams saved up for years since you get to keep the exam at the end). In all honesty, it was a joke the way these questions were written and all students knew this but for years nobody would do anything about it till they switched to the CBSE.
So now that you don’t have this quarterly exam anymore, there really is nothing to track your progress thru out or see what areas in basic science are giving you trouble, which instead is pushed to when you’re in Year 4 and have to take the CBSE.
So TL;DR, my solutions:
- As mentioned by @Roentgen about First Aid in terms of knowing what resources to use, I would also add to start using this book with Biochem onwards, since it’s a book you will thoroughly use during boards prep till your eyes bleed, so it’s good to be familiar with it early on.
- Go thru some type of alternative online Qbank off and on during Year 3, so that you have a better idea of how to learn concepts and how to apply info to real questions so you aren’t as freaked out when you do see and start practicing with real USMLE-type questions.
@UMKCRoosMD, thank you for the explanation as to why things are the way they are now. It looks like since they no longer have that Quarterly Profile Exam every 3 months (I think that’s what you meant, since it’s offered quarterly), it seems like the only times that you get experience with USMLE Step 1 type-questions from the UMKC curriculum itself are when you take the CBSE at the start of Year 3 (even though you haven’t finished much in terms of classes), one time for real in Year 4, and 1 shelf exam in Behavioral Science (no longer in Pathology), is this correct @blugrn6?
Also @UMKCRoosMD, what did you mean by going thru some type of alternative Qbank off and on during Year 3? Sorry, as I didn’t understand what you meant by this.
Sorry, you are correct, it was every 3 months since it’s quarterly. I was having a brain fart. That is my understanding as to the only times officially in the med school curriculum that you’re currently exposed to those types of questions - @blugrn6 will know much better. That I know of, UMKC students don’t take every basic science shelf exam available: http://www.nbme.org/Schools/Subject-Exams/Subjects/Exams.html, at least for now, only Behavioral. It would probably be very helpful to students and to faculty, quite honestly, but it would also force professors to change their teaching, not to mention those NBME exams cost the school quite a bit of money for each exam they order.
They really should move that CBSE in Year 3 to the end of Year 3, when it’s much more useful, but they’re probably afraid students will complain, because students would have to stay longer after the Pathology final, in KC to take it, and many students just want to go home for break, as half the class will have to start Pharm in the summer. Contrary to what some rude posters have said before, I don’t believe all UMKC med students, themselves, are lazy or stupid, I think they genuinely want to know where they stand, but don’t want to waste their time, and so if an exam can really help them see where they are in terms of predicting their Step 1 score to motivate them, they’d take it seriously. The CBSE questions aren’t exact USMLE questions, but they are truly as close as you’re going to get. Pretty much anything released by the NBME is the closest you’re going to get to the real thing, since they write the USMLE.
By alternative Qbank (online question bank), I meant a Qbank other than the main one you will use for board prep. So when I prepped for boards in Year 4, the only Qbank available at that time was Kaplan. I think USMLEWorld only did Step 2, and there weren’t these NBME Self-Assessment Exams available that you can take at home as there are now (http://www.nbme.org/Students/sas/sas.html). Now Kaplan QBank has pretty much fallen by the wayside as the gold standard, and most students use USMLEWorld as their main Qbank since they entered the Step 1 market. But there are other alternatives like USMLERx Qmax, USMLEConsult, and Kaplan Qbank.
Ideally, you should use any one of those alternatives as you go thru classes starting in Year 2 - but it’s just way too early to do it then when you’re just trying to keep up with classes, a Science GPA, and promote. So what I meant was during Year 3 when things are at a much more normal pace, you can go thru that alternative Qbank at your own speed and just get a good idea on how those questions are written to reflect the way the USMLE tests, so it’s not as huge of a shock as it was to me in Year 4, when you’re no longer getting just memorization questions you can get in a few seconds.
You also learn the very critical skill of being able to do test questions under timed conditions, when you have a certain amount of time (1 hour) per block (usually 45-50 questions) to complete them.
@Roentgen, with the discussion on very competitive, moderately competitive, and less competitive residency specialties, does that ever change? I mean is there a specialty that might be considered very competitive now, but ends up being less competitive later and vice versa? If so, how do you know, and what usually effects this?
Surprisingly, yes, there are specialties that do change from very competitive ↔ moderately competitive ↔ less competitive. It doesn’t really happen too often, and not as quickly as you would think, but there have been some notable examples. For example, back in 2009, when I graduated, if you had told us that Radiology would become one of the less competitive specialties we would have laughed at you, because that definitely was not the case then - it was very competitive, on par with Derm, Ophtho, and Rad Onc. If for Emergency Medicine, you had told us that it would become a more competitive specialty - I would have laughed even more, as Emergency Medicine was definitely not competitive, at least in comparison to the more well known competitive specialties. But these trends are exactly what happened.
So for Rads, what happened was healthcare reform (Obamacare) changes, in which less imaging was being ordered overall, especially on repeat imaging due to huge cuts in reimbursement. So no more repeat CT scans in the ER, repeat chest x-rays, etc. In terms of lifestyle, the 9-5 lifestyle also was/has disappeared because hospitals are demanding 24 hour coverage in terms of a final read on imaging. So how can you tell it’s definitely gotten bad? If you look at this year’s match statistics, 55 residency programs in Radiology had positions that went unmatched, meaning they had residency spots open that nobody wanted in the initial cycle. That would never have happened in my time. If you see UPenn’s med school (they’re a top tier med school) match list from this year, you’ll see ONE person in their entire class went for Radiology (http://www.med.upenn.edu/student/MatchResults2015.shtml). This is a place with a stellar top-notch Radiology program.
For Emergency Medicine, a lot of students are very much attracted to the controlled lifestyle of working a certain number of hours and shift work, although there is much more to Emergency Medicine than just that, which you should also consider. I personally don’t find it attractive in terms of the sleep cycle disruptions, the day-to-day happenings that happen in ERs, and the constant admitting and explaining yourself to other specialties as to why a patient should be admitted to their service, etc. but some people like that sort of thing.
Just as a warning, be careful about choosing a specialty solely because it happens to be a competitive specialty or not. Whatever specialty you choose, you should also inherently like it as well (or at the very least, not hate it). But choosing a specialty solely because of competitiveness and perceived prestige by the public (i.e. something like Neurosurgery or Ortho), tends to be a recipe for disaster, especially if those training programs are pretty intense during residency. By the time you get to Year 6, you should choose something that you are hopefully relatively competitive for, which you enjoy or at least will not hate doing day to day (where things can get monotonous) till you retire, and that gives you a lifestyle you’re ok with.
Realize also that certain residencies will give you the chance to do certain subspecialty fellowships, which can change things around very quickly – i.e. someone going for Gastroenterology, Cardiology, Allergy, Heme/Onc, etc. So don’t necessarily judge a specialty only by its initial residency.
Hey @Roentgen, I’m entering the program this fall, and I noticed that you put UMKC’s medical school in the low/lower tier category? Why is that? I know you said UMKC’s med school isn’t ranked in U.S. News and World Report, but what makes a medical school a high-tier or a middle-tier school?
Also, what about the undergraduate education? How does it compare to other national universities?
Also, @blugrn6, is there any academic penalty to voluntarily increasing the program to 7 years instead of 6 years? Is there any notation that goes out to residencies or is it a black mark of some kind?