So I don’t think its like a “black mark” but usually people who extend do it because they failed a class or are taking a year off for research.
The former is looked upon as something negative of course because you failed a class.
The latter is actually done to increase your changes of matching a competitive speciality, a competitive program, or both.
Obviously extending by failing a class is not ideal.
Voluntarily extending is not as negatively perceived, again it depends on how you use it.
Research - excellent
Mission trips - probably not a bad idea
Vacation/chilling - not so much.
So if you extend for a year, again be prepared to answer why you choose to do so when it comes time to apply to residencies and also what you gained from that.
As I have told on this forum time and time again, please do not come into the program already with the mindset to take a year off for research.
Here are the problems with that plan
You will finish everything in 7 years, if you took the traditional route you will finish in 8. In terms of tuition, it will probably cost you the same if not more and you didn’t really save any time. 1 year saved in retrospect is not that much when it comes to the rest of your life and career prospects
If research is a genuine interest, UMKC is not the place for you. Our strength is clinical practice not academic medicine. This is not a big secret, in fact the school itself preaches to prospective applications that clinical expertise is what we excel in, and that’s true.
If you want to take a year off to do research, you not have to go away from UMKC for a year, still pay tuition here, and at the same time find some place that will take you. Vs. going to a big name medical school you can just do research along the side with your actual course work because you have easy access to lots of projects
Setting up a year off for research is a nightmare. The schools fights with you a lot, you can’t take away rotations after you come back (which is stupid because the whole point of taking a year off to do research is to get into a competitive specialty). Who in the world is going to take a year off to do research and then not be able to do away rotations (another important thing, especially for specialities that UMKC doesn’t have a rotation for: Derm, plastics, Nsurg, rad/onc).
So, no its not looked up negatively if you take a year off for research purposes. But again, I have to warm you, please think twice about coming here.
The people who take a year off are the ones who accidentally fell in love with a specialty and didn’t have time to build their application. All the ones that I know that took a year off to do research did not plan on it when they first entered UMKC.
I would also like to point of that the fact that the people who fell in love late with a speciality and had to take a year off for research would not happen if they were at a big name school.
First off, at a big name school they would have a rotation in their desired speciality.
Second, they would get excellent letters from big names in their fields because they tend to practice in bigger academic centers
Third, they would probably have a decent number of publications without taking a year off despite having a late decision because they have access to top notch research
Four, they are not fighting against a stigma that UMKC has. UMKC is not well known.
I’ll give you an example of what I mean by number 4.
I know an ophtho resident who graduated from UAB who decided to do ophtho two months before the application was due. They did their home rotation, got the required letters, got on a couple of fast clinical projects, and boom they are now a resident a well respected ophtho program.
There is NO WAY you can pull this off at UMKC. It is impossible to decide on ophtho or any other competitive specialities that late into the school year and successfully match. Again the reason why you would take a year off if you decided on it that late. At other schools, its common for people to decide on something late and still match. For us, it requires careful thought, you gotta plan your activities and extracurriculars in the field if possible, work hard and hope you get AOA and Gold Humanism, do stellar on Step 1, do the song and dance at away rotations to get letters from well known faculty. Its a lot harder and you have to put in more effort. All of that effort, just to be “on par” with someone from another school who hasn’t done half the work you have but just has easy access to resources.
Again I’m just saying this to point out to you why coming to the program already thinking of taking a year off to get into a competitive speciality is not the best decision.
Is there a particular reason you are asking about the voluntary extension. I assumed you meant for research and that’s why I went on my long rant about this haha
The reason I asked about voluntary extension is because with the high dropout rate, and probably extension rate, in the program, I didn’t know whether you knew students that just voluntarily decided to extend in the program and make it 7 years to either slow down the fast pace and get a breather, or because the credit hour loads they were taking on were just too much to handle. Or is it almost always not a choice - due to academics?
As you might guess, it would probably be better to extend voluntarily without having failed something first, rather than being forced to do it from failing. But I didn’t know that if you do it voluntarily, rather than as academic punishment, whether that was somehow still noted and sent to residencies that you extended. Or does it matter when you extend? Like if you did it voluntarily/involuntarily in the first 2 years, then it wouldn’t be noted to residencies at all, vs. if you did it in the last 4 years then it is noted, because then you’re officially in med school. I’m guessing those people who go to traditional med schools - only their med school stuff is sent to residencies, not their college transcripts, etc.
UMKC now even has a program where you can automatically make it 7 years called the Guaranteed Admissions Baccalaureate/M.D. Program http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/opportunities/. I don’t know if this is a relatively new thing offered by the med school or if this existed when you started the program.
Also, is what you said correct, that if you take a leave of absence from med school to do a year of research somewhere else, you still have to pay UMKC tuition that entire year???
I’ll let @blugrn6 address the voluntary extension to 7 year thing in terms of academic consequences reported to residencies. In terms of actual pace though, realize that the only thing you can “extend” is the undergraduate portion - so that you can slow down the pace of it. In the last 4 years, the pace will stay relatively the same, it won’t be slowed down in terms of the number of credit hours you are taking. So for example, you can’t “slow down” Year 5 when you’re hopping from one rotation to the next.
Now if you need a mental break, and the pace is exhausting and killing you, you can probably do that, and take a leave of absence of some sort then, but realize when you come back the pace will just pick right back up where you left off, even though you have now have a built up reserve, from getting some good R&R and time off. Not to mention, when you enter internship/residency, the pace will become even more frenetic.
Two things I found though:
http://med.umkc.edu/docs/coe/COE-Policy-Manual.pdf - Under “Alternate Programs for Year 1 & 2” see the section titled “Alternate Non-Probation Program”, this is a voluntary extension without being put on academic probation. But while you can self-select this option, there are still certain rules you have to follow, which if you don’t you can be put on probation or dismissal. They only will give you 3 years to complete the Year 1 & 2 curriculum total, even though you’re given a maximum of 8 years to complete the entire program (so you can’t say, let me do the Year 1 & 2 curriculum in 4 years). Honestly, it makes no rational sense on their part, since you voluntarily decided to go into the program and not being forced to because of academic trouble. But as you’ll realize, not every policy will be logical.
In the MSPE, that goes to residencies, under the Academic History portion, one of the statements is: “Please explain any extensions, leave(s) of absence, gap(s), or break(s)in the student’s educational program.” So the school would have to explain it on your behalf in that letter that goes to residencies. Since the 6 year program is seen as one unit, that would include all 6 years, not just the last 4, because your cumulative GPA in the program encompasses all 6 years. This is very much different than other combined BS/MD programs in the country, in which there is a very clear separation between undergrad and med school, where after undergrad you start on a clean slate.
UMKC’s med school purposefully chooses to be unranked in the USNWR rankings (http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools/university-of-missouri-kansas-city-04058) - this is for both the research rankings list and they also have a separate primary care rankings list. It’s definitely not by accident. The school can change their mind at any time and choose to be ranked just like the rest, but they don’t want to. You can ask them yourself why this is exactly the case, but it is a valid question for people to ask. This is in contrast to all other Missouri allopathic med schools - Wash U, SLU, and Mizzou, who choose to be a part of the rankings. You can see what exactly contributes to that ranking here, which is 2 pages: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/medical-schools-methodology. You can see what unranked means quoted from that link:
So in dividing up medical schools, you can usually divide them into those in the top-tier, those in the middle-tier, and those in low (a.k.a. bottom) tier. The tier usually helps you much more than an individual ranking which can fluctuate on a year-to-year basis - i.e. there isn’t that much difference between a med school that is ranked #7 vs. a med school that is ranked #9, but there will be a huge difference between a Top 10 med school and a middle-tier med school, for example, or if you were comparing a solid middle-tier med school and a bottom-tier med school, even though certain things everyone has to do – i.e. taking class exams, taking boards, rotating thru required clinical rotations with evaluations, etc.
So each of those categories can then even be further subdivided:[ul]
[]Top-tier - Top 5 school, Top 10 school, Top 20/25 school
[li]Middle-tier - i.e. strong middle-tier, lower middle-tier, etc. (this category usually includes a lot of the strong med schools that just happen to be publicly funded by the state)[/li][]The low/bottom tier which is usually not stratified any further.[/ul]
Where each category largely differs and is much more relevant to you as a med student, is in these areas, which are eventually important and do contribute to matching into certain specialties, especially the competitive ones:[ul]
[]promotion and curriculum policies for students (basic sciences cut down to 1 or 1.5 years so you get more months of elective time, Pass/Fail only grading in the basic science years for lower stress/lower competitiveness/more teamwork, getting to choose when to take Step 1 when you want to before/after clinicals)
[]resources and opportunities available (getting involved in basic science or clinical research going on in the specialty you want, getting really involved in student organizations which get money to do certain projects, getting another terminal degree - PhD, MBA, MPH, etc., ability to rotate in the third year at very well-known and/or well-regarded hospitals who then have connections and networks to other residency programs).
[li]reputation (what some people call “prestige”) in terms of how residencies view those graduates coming from certain med schools usually based on previous experience, or because they have really well-known people in the field who can write them good letters. Schools with good reputations tend to able to recruit these bigwigs.[/ul][/li]Top tier medical schools includes places that are medicine meccas in terms of research and medical residency training - Harvard, Stanford, Hopkins, UCSF, Penn, Yale, Wash U in St. Louis, etc., but as you go further down it also includes publicly state funded med schools that have really good medical centers or good research going on: Mayo, University of Washington, UCSD, UVa, Michigan, Emory, Baylor College of Medicine, UT-Southwestern, etc.
UMKC, no doubt, would fit into the bottom/low tier category for several reasons:[ul]
[]the school doesn’t bring in a lot of external/extramural funding that doesn’t come from student tuition
[]the school’s mission and has been from the beginning is mainly to put out clinical physicians that serve the community especially in primary care areas, hence the much greater emphasis in the curriculum in primary care – Year 1 & 2 Fundamentals of Medicine, Internal Medicine outpatient clinic half-day per week in the last 4 years; 2 months of inpatient Internal Medicine every year in the last 3 years, required 2 Family Medicine rotations - one in Year 4 and one in Year 5
[]the overall research foundation/base of UMKC’s medical school is quite weak in comparison to other medical schools both in basic science research and clinical research - although there are certain narrow specialty areas in which they have increased it in, which I previously listed. You can compare this to medical schools that have a very good research foundation, both in basic science AND in clinical research and whose students in much huger numbers, tend to go for, and be very successful at, getting specialist-type residencies since they can easily participate in these endeavors.
[]not many bigwig physicians, physician-scientists, or full-time researchers who are attracted and more likely to work in places that support their work[/ul]
Now someone here previously stated that they don’t care about research, and asked so why does it matter, because when they become a physician, they don’t want to do research or become a full-time research scientist. Most graduating physician residents, in general, will not become full-time researchers, when they become board-certified attendings. Most of them also will not be working in academic medical centers connected to a medical school.
From the vantage point of a medical student, the purpose of having research at their medical school, whether it is in basic science or clinical research, is different. Specialties that tend to be more competitive, need another way to further differentiate and stratify candidates. When all applicants to their specialty have the best grades, stellar board scores, are at the top of their respective class, what’s left? Well another one of those important factors is research, especially in the student’s specialty of interest, which shows your commitment not only to the field, but in also contributing and furthering the knowledge in that field.
Even if you’re going for something like GI, Cardiology, or Heme/Onc, which are competitive subspecialties in Internal Medicine, research and publishing are one of the parts of your application that you have to have in order to realistically compete for those limited number of fellowship slots. It’s sort of “paying your dues” so to speak, to get the competitive specialty you want, even though you may do no research later at all on when you’re an attending.
Oops, sorry, I missed one of your questions regarding the undergraduate education compared to other universities. First off, in terms of undergraduate degree requirements, you take very few in total, and many of the medical school basic science courses in Years 1 & 2 - Biochem, HSF I - IV, etc. count directly towards the undergraduate degree.
I would say in terms of quality of the undergraduate science courses on the Volker campus, I would say about average at best. It’s not anything that will knock your socks off, and it’s not really taught at the level of say undergraduate science students at UCLA, Berkeley, or very top/Ivy League private universities.
If you’re looking for a well-rounded, comprehensive college education, you’re really not going to get that at UMKC, or at least definitely not thru the 6 year program. A lot of undergraduate courses are purposefully cut out for the purpose of only the med school, because it’s tracked specifically for the purpose of getting the MD, so sometimes a solid and strong foundation is not laid down through undergraduate courses before attempting the harder, more detailed medical school level science courses, which can be a real problem for BA/MD students, and has been a perennial complaint by undergraduate science faculty on the main campus. Just something to keep in mind as you’re progressing thru the curriculum.
Have you guys ever known the UMKC medical school to make things easier on BA/MD students or at least not make things worse when students bring up their concerns? If so, what policies have been relaxed or made easier? It seems like the curriculum and pace of the 6 year BA/MD program is stressful, if not more stressful, than doing a 7/8 year BS/MD or a normal traditional 4 + 4, and might be even more stressful if you’re trying to get into a non-primary care, competitive specialty. At the end, do residencies even care if you’ve finished in 6 years? I’m just having a hard time understanding if the program is indeed so stressful, why not just increase it to 7-8 years or at least put in a summer break if you come in with enough credit?
Also, do the Internal Medicine docents you work with in clinics and Docent Rotation in the last 4 years of the program have a say in school policies or is it someone else? From this thread, I know there is a Science GPA you have to have (at least since 2000 - so 10 graduating BA/MD classes so far have had this requirement), having to get a certain score on a standardized exam to be allowed to take Step 1 (I talked with family friends at other medical schools and I don’t know anyone who had to jump thru this hoop just to sign up), anything else? I was told that UMKC BA/MD students do perform much better on Step 2 because of the clinical experience, but I don’t know how truthful this actually is.
UMKC never tailors policy to student concerns.
Idk even know what I would do if that was true.
The only student led change that I was aware of was when they combined our surgery months from both months at either St. Lukes or at Truman to one month at each. Which in my opinion is disastrous. Which was all done because of some belly aching by the older years and to be honest its the worst change ever.
You don’t get enough time with the attendings, you don’t get to know them well at all if you want do a surgical speciality and need a letter from your surgery rotation. Just when you get to used to one hospital and system you have to move to the next one. Its just a cluster.
Usually policy changes are not well received by students.
You’re right, residencies don’t care if you finished med school in 6 years. At most you will get a: “huh interesting” from a program director if that. It is mostly seen as a negative. A program director himself told me that when he sees UMKC 6 year med on the application he questions whether the applicant has had enough life experience outside of medicine. He thinks that it is a sign that you don’t have outside interests and are not mature enough for the stresses or residency. Idk if that gives you an perspective.
Why does UMKC does it in a 6 year process? Because they have students who are highly motivated to do medicine and are willing to pay for that 2 year time advantage? In the end no one is going to care if you finished undergrad in 5 years and took your sweet time to get to medical school. Its all the same information that you have to know in the end.
Why don’t we extend it to 7-8 years? Well than what’s the point of having the six year program? The whole appeal and premise is that for those who are ready we have a special track for you to get it done fast and be done with your education.
Yes passing CBSE is only a UMKC requirement. No one other school has a score set to take Step 1 exam. To be honest, as annoying as that policy is I feel as though it is a necessary evil because it does scare people into studying better for the real test. But in some cases it is detrimental to the student. It really just depends on the individual student.
UMKC also has a new policy, effective this year, that they have Step 2 CK policy. At the end of your fifth year they use your rotation grades from fifth year (IM, Surgery, Peds, and Ob/Gyn) and put it in their own “Step 2 CK readiness formula” to determine how likely you are to fail Step 2 CK. If your number is low enough than you’re good. If you are more than 50% likely to fail than you have to take the CCSE (the CBSE version of Step 2 CK) and pass that before you are allowed to take the test.
All students generally do better on Step 2 CK nationwide because the material is more fresh in your mind and you generally know how to study for test by now because you’ve taken step 2 and all the shelf exams.
Those people who don’t do well are the ones who blew it off and didn’t study for it. Just because Step 2CK is an easier test doesn’t mean you don’t have to study for it. Its still a BOARD exam. You have to study just as hard as Step 1. That’s the biggest mistake people make, they think they are done with Step 1 and they have finished the biggest hurdle of their life. My friends, welcome to medicine. Step 1 is just the beginning of life long board exams that you will take, and they are not going to get any easier than the one before.
@MedNerd260, I’ll speak as to my time during UMKC, I might be accidently repeating some stuff already mentioned previously by @blugrn6.
I don’t know if you’re applying this year or are already accepted to the program, but you can see the most current promotion rules here: http://med.umkc.edu/docs/coe/COE-Policy-Manual.pdf. There is no official curriculum handbook, but you can see their website here: http://med.umkc.edu/curriculum/. A lot of curriculum stuff is not decided by a specific policy necessarily – i.e. which months you’re taking certain Year 4 rotations, Year 5/6 rotation order, etc. That’s something you sign up for with your ETC (your advisor).
In my time, I don’t know of any policies in place that were either relaxed or made easier for students, even with legitimate concerns from students. It was always a tightening of an existing policy due to a real or perceived loophole in that policy, or an additional harder rule imposed. Student concern about curriculum or promotion policy is usually not of concern to them in drafting up new policies.
I think the school realizes the BA/MD program can be stressful, but I think they also feel that you knew what you signed up for or you wouldn’t do it (although, in all honesty, most 18 year olds, even the highest achieving, don’t know 100% what they are realistically getting into before starting this program). It’s probably the only program in which you don’t do only undergrad and then join a class of traditional students, like it is at every other BS/MD type program. It’s why during my (and other classmates’) interviews for this program, all of my interviewers asked me why I was choosing a combined 6 year program over the traditional route to go to med school. Remember, doing a BS/MD is just an alternate route.
To answer your question off the bat, residencies do not care if you graduated in 6 years. While it’s maybe something for you to brag about (if so, get a life, lol) or for your proud parents to brag about their child (my parents who aren’t physicians - love 'em both - still do to old friends who ask about me and what I do in terms of career), residency programs do not care if you finished your undergraduate and medical school in 6 years. There is no shock and awe in terms of residency advantage. If anything, it could possibly be perceived as negative. The usual questions or concerns by faculty at other places re: the 6 year aspect, are usually in terms of overall maturity and being well-rounded (has all this person been doing from high school to now is studying and being in med school mode).
I do think in a way that the 6 year combined program can be more stressful due to no summers off for 6 years and due to the relatively rigid structure of the curriculum itself to fit in requirements for the BA and the MD. It’s easier for 4 year medical schools to change their grading scales (Pass/Fail in the first 2 years) and basic science curriculum around to make things easier (i.e. learning things by each organ system rather than as separate science subjects) because there is no bachelor’s degree to worry about. I think also the major transitions in the program from Year 1 to Year 6 can end up being a lot bumpier than expected, because there are many undergraduate classes that we just don’t take and don’t have time to fit in. You jump right into the tough sciences in Year 2. The transition to Year 5 rotations can also be bumpy for students but due to different reasons.
The 7/8 year BS/MD programs (All the ones I know tend to give you your summers off during the undergrad and the first summer after the first year of med school) also tend to separate out the undergrad degree from the MD degree. In some of the 7/8 year programs and in a traditional 4 + 4 route, you can choose any undergrad major you want that the university offers, along with healthcare and non-healthcare backup careers (Engineering, Law, Business, Education, etc.) in case you change your mind.
If one of your main reasons for entering UMKC’s BA/MD program is because you’re too scared of the traditional premed route or the MCATs, you’re making a mistake. Contrary to what many people think, the hardest part of the entire journey is not just getting into medical school. The problems of premed will seem very small in comparison to those in medical school, but unlike others, you’ll experience it for 6 years rather than just 4.
If there is any possibility that you want to go for a specialty that is very competitive or isn’t offered as a home residency at UMKC, you will have a more difficult time matching compared to medical students coming from top-tier and middle-tier schools that have those resources and opportunities available to them (i.e. very well-funded student organizations, good basic science/clinical/translational research in those specialties, highly reputable affiliated hospitals to rotate at). Even for non-competitive specialties, going to a top-tier/middle-tier school will take you much farther in terms of the type of program you get interviews and match into than a low-tier medical school.
I think a lot of it is tradition – the medical school when it was built, started out on the basis of being a 6 year combined program in total, in a time when medicine was always 4 years of college + 4 years of medical school, although overall curriculum makeup of the program and requirements have changed and will continue to change. Many alumni from the UMKC program are 6-year BA/MDers themselves, as very few traditional students were taken, although that has changed very recently.
I also think a major part of it is that the 6 year aspect is a very good “selling” point to high school students and to their parents. Most stellar high school students interested in medical school wouldn’t go to UMKC on their own for 4 years, without the 6 year program in place. It’s a great moneymaker for the university even at the undergrad level (hence why you pay for all semesters in 6 years even if you have enough credit to skip a summer), and they are able to get high achieving high school graduates. Realize also many BA/MD students have parents who are physicians who have gone to med school in other countries where college and med school are traditionally combined in 6 years anyways, right from high school. On its face, it makes a lot of sense to an incoming student and his/her parents, when you look superficially at 6 years, no MCAT, no premed requirements, etc. to do the program. But as a student concerned about matching into your desired specialty, you have to look a little deeper, and the answer can be a lot more nuanced, depending on what your goal is.
So any changes or additions that are made are done with the 6 year time frame remaining intact, and that is not likely to ever change. The only other 6 year program left is NEOMED. The other combined programs that still exist have all converted to 7/8 year programs.
When it comes to curriculum and student promotion policy, both the Council on Curriculum and Council on Evaluation have their own separate committees that decide those things, respectively. Contrary to what some students think initially, the docents as a whole (all the Internal Medicine doctors whose student team you join as a Year 3), don’t have a huge effect when it comes to overall promotion policy or curriculum changes for students. Now docents have their own Docent Council which may affect how certain courses/clerkships are carried out – the Clinical Skills course, Docent Rotation, Docent clinic, but even those have become relatively harder as well, in terms of student requirements – required reading from a textbook, presentation, quizzes, midterm, final exam, NBME shelf exam, etc. or whatever new idea they might come up with.
You are correct, UMKC is the only one to have this hoop to jump thru, before you’re allowed to sit for USMLE Step 1. Other schools use the CBSE more as a student self-assessment tool a few months before your schedule your test date, so you can see what score you are hitting, which you then use to calibrate your studying and going through practice questions.
One particular change that will affect you as mentioned, seems to be the new USMLE Step 2 policy: http://med.umkc.edu/curriculum/licensing/#S2requirements. So maybe very recently there has been a problem in terms of UMKC students completing Step 2 in a timely manner or an acute increase in failure rate. Usually Step 2 hasn’t been a problem for students in the past at all, but maybe that has changed, meriting a major change in policy, as usually that’s when changes like these occur.
There are others I forget at the moment that were instituted during my time, like requiring a B- on a previously failed or previously withdrawn course regardless of your GPA, but honestly, after a while, with so many changes being made, I tended to just ignore it and do the best I could for several reasons - 1) it would just increase the level of added stress with no benefit to me, and 2) even if they did something, for example, like increase the science GPA up to 3.1, how is that relevant or helpful to me for that Cell Biology exam next week in which I have to cover 3 chapters? It doesn’t. So sometimes taking care of things in the present, at least with grades, tends to solve future problems that can arise.
I also heard that too while in the program, but that’s not really quite the entire story. As mentioned by @blugrn6, in all medical schools on average, med students tend to do better on Step 2, than Step 1 for several reasons:[ul]
[]By the time you’ve started third year of med school (Year 5) rotations, you’ve had good practice in answering standardized test questions with Step 1 just having being completed.
[]The information tested on Step 2 is much more relevant and applicable clinically day-to-day since you rotate thru required core specialties working up real patients: Internal Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics, OB-Gyn, Psychiatry, and a rural Family Medicine rotation (although not Neurology, which is a core in other places)
[li]You take a NBME subject (shelf) exam for nearly every clerkship, which are written by the same people who write the Step 2 exam. So by the end of that clerkship year, you’re much more prepared and ready for Step 2.[/ul][/li]I pasted a link earlier from 2013 which showed the average USMLE Step 2 CK score for UMKC was 229 at that time: http://med.umkc.edu/docs/sa/announcements/2013/InTheKnow_07-22-13.pdf. The thing is the national average for USMLE Step 2 in those years, 2012 and 2013, was 237 and 238 respectively, so the UMKC average that year, was almost 10 points below the national average. Take that for what you will.
So yes, in terms of hours of clinical patient exposure, there is more of it just based on the way the curriculum is structured with Docent Rotation x 3 and Docent Clinic for 4 years, but I wouldn’t say it necessarily translates into better Step 2 scores. Realize also most residency programs don’t expect medical students to have taken Step 2 early in the last year before giving interviews, because you turn in your application in the early fall.
As @blugrn6 mentioned, in becoming a physician you’ll take exams of many kinds - course exams, the CBSE, USMLE board exams, NBME clinical shelf exams, In-training exams every year during residency, your specific specialty certification exam after residency and another specialty certification exam if you decide to do fellowship, and then at every 10 year interval till you retire from the profession, you take a closed-book re-certification exam, and do what is called maintenance of certification (MOC) activities during that the 10 year time period. So good standardized test-taking ability is one of many skills you will need to be successful as a physician, although not the only skill.
So traditionally, medical schools used to teach basic sciences as separate courses, just like courses that are separated in undergrad: Anatomy, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Pathology, Physiology, Pharmacology, etc. They were all separate courses with separate grades and at the end of 2 years, you took Step 1, before entering the clinical wards in third year.
The problem with this type of system is 3 fold:[ul]
[]In real-life medicine, you have all these things interacting at the same time – i.e. physiology, pathology, anatomy, pharmacology, etc. It’s not just a “biochemistry” problem or a “physiology” problem. You’re monitoring, managing, and treating a disease process, so it’s a lot of things going on at once. They interact or mesh together.
[]Unless you have documented photographic memory, it’s impossible to just memorize everything separately. It’s much easier to remember when you understand how everything fits together – i.e. what organs are being affected by pathology, how physiology is altered by pathology, how you use certain drugs (pharmacology) to treat that altered physiology, what that pathology looks like under the microscope and how cells have altered (Histology), etc.
[li]Step 1 now tends to test basic science in an integrated fashion, rather than as separate discrete subjects - so you’ll have questions that can require you to have knowledge in 2 different areas - i.e. Pathology and Physiology and put it together in order to get the question right.[/ul][/li]Most medical schools now have switched to a completely integrated organ system approach. So what happens is the school year is mainly divided into organ system blocks where you go thru each organ system of the body, one at a time, before moving on to the next organ system - Cardiovascular, Pulmonary, Gastrointestinal, Renal, etc. and you learn the Gross Anatomy of that organ system, the Histology of it, how it works physiologically, what drugs (pharmacology) are used to alter that physiology, diseases that affect that organ system (Pathology), what infectious processes affect those organs in that system (Microbiology), etc. Then you move on to the next organ system and do the same process over again. It’s much easier to then make connections in your brain about the things you’re learning about the human body, since your body works thru interacting organ systems all the time.
Now UMKC has kind of done this, but really only half-way, where Anatomy and Physiology are taught as discrete organ systems in Human Structure Function I-IV, but then you go right back to separation in Year 3 with Micro and Neuro in the Fall and then Path I and II in the Spring and then in Year 4 you take Pharm. So it’s almost pointless to do it integrated just for 2 subjects, Anatomy and Physiology, and then just go back to the traditional way again.
Another thing that was stupid was how much time was given to certain courses. For example, Biochemistry, which isn’t that important day-to-day clinically or even a big portion of Step 1, is a semester long taught course in Year 2 - so about 16 weeks from August to December. But Pharmacology, which is a much much more important course to being a physician, for obvious reasons, and not just for Step 1, is only given 8 weeks long to learn it - either June-July or Oct-Nov. So stupid things like that in the curriculum don’t really make any sense. If you’re going to integrate things, it needs to be done completely, not just half-way.
The problem is, as @blugrn6 mentioned previously, is that the undergraduate university decides what courses count towards their undergraduate degree, and it’s so much harder to do that when you don’t have separate subject-based courses the way the undergrad campus does: http://catalog.umkc.edu/colleges-schools/biological-sciences/#courseinventory.
Same for why UMKC can’t make certain Year 1 & 2 basic science classes that count towards the undergraduate degree Pass/Fail, even if they wanted to, because once again, the undergraduate university requires that any courses that go towards their undergraduate degree be letter graded.
So it sucks that in many ways, UMKC is stuck in terms of how they can try to switch things around or totally revamp the basic sciences curriculum because in order to graduate from the combined program, you have to graduate with the undergraduate and the MD degree.
I know you said that as of now, undergraduate science course lectures at UMKC are all Tegrity video recorded for students. I’m assuming they video record all lectures for all of them: Functional Anatomy I, Human Biology III (Microbiology), General Chem I/II, Organic Chem, Cell Biology, and Genetics, but you said medical school lectures starting with Biochem, going forward, are not recorded by the school for students, even though they can if they want to.
Have med students complained or tried to get this aspect changed to match other medical schools? If so, what has been the response? I ask because in talking with friends who currently attend other BS/MD programs and traditional 4 year medical schools, they really loved the recorded lecture availability in the first 2 years (all lectures are video recorded, easily accessible from home, and attendance to lecture is optional, except for those involving real patient care stuff) and they felt that their quality of life in medical school at least during those years, was really great, to be able to watch and speed up and/or slow down lectures to get down all the information on their own time.
I know @blugrn6 will answer your question regarding recording of lectures, but just to let you know, in terms of studying for UMKC undergraduate courses, or at least the very few undergrad courses that you do take at UMKC, the professors rely very heavily on the required textbook - like almost completely. Their didactic lectures tend to outline & explain and pretty much go thru the textbook chapters, maybe adding in a few explanatory tidbits here and there. They might also throw in a few questions on information that comes from lecture that aren’t in the book, just to see if you came. You’ll figure out quickly how your professors test once you over study for the first test and then can change your studying up or down, accordingly.
Some people in our class who are much more fully independent learners tended to really hate this type of teaching because they could achieve the same thing by just reading the chapter completely on their own at home and memorize everything. I personally didn’t mind. I’m not an uber genius, so for me, hearing it and taking notes in class, filling in any gaps from a recording (someone either recorded the lecture and shared, or we were big enough nerds to bring our own tape recorder), made reading the textbook chapter later that day/night easier to absorb and recall.
As you get to medical school courses like HSF I-IV, it gets harder and harder to thoroughly read the textbook and go thru the notes, because the textbook chapters are much much longer and professors often test much more from their personalized lecture notes or powerpoints. This is where recording lectures were really pivotal as you got test questions by writing down something said very quickly or in passing, that most of the class may not have gotten and wasn’t in the textbook. I would recommend if you can for each course, at the beginning, to get from someone in the year above you, the previous year’s lecture handouts with that person’s notes (usually they are in PDF or Powerpoint format) and recordings from the class above you that has saved them (if they were the type to record lectures and be on top of things) which will make things so much easier for you to stay ahead, rather than being behind, or at best, just caught up, since you have to wait for the next lecture to happen in real-time before studying it.
Unfortunately, unlike other medical schools, UMKC’s basic science professors don’t give you or have you buy a set of pre-printed syllabus package of notes or modules the way many other med schools do. The one exception is Year 4 Pharmacology in which you buy a color coded syllabus package of lecture handouts made by the PharmD faculty.
No the courses you take for Biology degree, including all of the electives you take do not count towards your science GPA. They give your overall GPA a boost, or bring it down depending on how much you like biology haha.
Remember, when you apply to residency they don’t see your “Science GPA”, there is no such thing at other schools. All they see if your cumulative GPA. So don’t get so caught up in keeping a 4.0 science GPA that you hurt your overall GPA. Lucky or unlucky for us, depending on how you see it, your undergrad courses do factor into your med school GPA.
Yes starting biochem, nothing will be recorded. And no we have not complained about this. Mainly because of two reasons:
Someone always recorded the lectures anyways
You pretty much get all the missing stuff from your friends here and there during lecture breaks or go ask the professor themselves.
Honestly, even if it was recorded here is the problem I see at UMKC. And I am in no way excluded from this. Because we are so young, most people who don’t come to class quickly realize that they are not going to get this stuff done if they are left alone.
I legitimately know of only two people who did not attend class and have been very successful academically. And I am saying people who did not come to class for a long time and stuck with it because their system worked. As the classes progressed and the recording stopped they just got the recordings from the two or three people that always recorded the lecture. What if their tape didn’t work? I guess you were outta luck for that day than. Anyways, so that’s 2% of my class. Of the other 98%, I can tell you at least 60% have probably tried to skip class for at least one unit or semester and ended up right back in class because that method does not work for everyone.
So would it have been nice to have the lectures recorded so I can go back to it and reference it whenever I want? Absolutely. Why would I say no to that. But again that’s a luxury, not a necessity.
Was it a big inconvinence in my life? Not really
Do I feel like I wish I had the opportunity to just have optional attendance and learn stuff my own pace? No. I think me and my friends might be baised in this matter because we are huge procrastinators. I mean, really bad. So going to class was like the one thing that kept me at least on track because I used to start studying for the test only a few days in advance. So had I not attended class and passively absorbed some information I think I would have definitely failed out of medical school.
The other thing is, call me old fashioned, but there is really no substitute for going to class and actively listening and paying attention live. I don’t care how high def the med school recorded the tegrity lectures in, its just not the same. Besides I never understood this need to have everything recorded and to learn it at home. Again, I’m old fashioned that way. This is not really geared towards your specifically but just to students in general: you’re paying for those lectures! Go to class, pay attention, ask questions!! I mean this is what you came to med school for. Admit it or not, all of us are some sort of nerds that love the way medicine works. How boring is it to sit there in your PJs and go to med school online? There is a reason why there are no online medical schools.
To make a long rant short: here is the bottom line.
Yes it would be nice to have those lectures. No we don’t fight it because most of us realize that we like to go to class because it gives us structure. The minority that actually learn in a self paced environment don’t fight for it because they have alternate ways of getting the recorded lectures.
@Blugrn6, thanks!!! I was just looking at the major maps for this year (http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/index.cfm?academic_year=2015-2016) and deciding between the Biology degree and the Liberal Arts degree, since the Biology BA degree now doesn’t have as many transfer credit requirements as it used to. It used to be you had to have come in with Gen Chem I/Chem II w/Labs, Gen Physics I, Calculus or Stats, and English I, in order to be allowed to do the Biology BA. Now the only transfer requirement is coming in with either Gen Bio I w/Lab (which has to be taken at UMKC) or Gen Chem I w/Lab.
So I thought at least for Biology students, since you do have to take some more sciences, you’d be given more slack with General Bio I w/Lab, Biology 498WI - Critical Analysis of Biological Issues, that those courses would count towards the Science GPA in terms of promotion, since they are also science classes. But like you said, if those specific courses only go towards the cumulative GPA only, then I’d probably be better off just taking liberal arts undergrad classes that are easier.
The other reason I would advise you against biology degree, and for that matter anyone is because the courses you have to take fourth year and less flexible in terms of when they are available. So some of them are not available in the summer and if you have to take that, than guess what you have effectively removed your own self from taking summer campus.
I loved being a bio major. Honestly, it was better for me to take ecology and biosythesis, I would have died of boredom in criminal justice. But I regretted that decision for every second when I was forced to take fall campus and my step 1 study schedule was all jacked up.
So avoid biology, take BLA courses (they are also easier to get an A in) and plan our your schedule so you get the best Year 4 study months. (way too early to do that, but the first step in starting the process is choosing to be a BLA major).
@sparklystarfish, I know you asked @blugrn6, but just to give you some more info as I’m also in agreement with @blugrn6 as well, which is different from the advice I’ve given in the past. In the past, I recommended to people that if they weren’t sure if they were going to stay in the program, but still wanted the option to go back and do the traditional premed route w/o lost time, to do the Biology BA degree during Year 1.
As you probably already seen, they have made the Biology BA degree much easier than in the past. Now if you look, you’ll see that in Year 1 they are essentially the same, except for General Biology I + Lab. Biology BA/MD students now take all the undergrad sciences - Year 1 Anatomy (119, 119L), Year 1 Microbio (121, 121L), Genetics (206), and Cell Biology (202) with everyone else in the BA/MD program in the same semester (It used to be that Biology BA/MD students took a 300 level Microbio course with 300 level lab instead during Fall Year 2). If you also look you can see that you no longer have to take General Biology II + Lab, you no longer have to take a Biology 300/400 upper level Bio elective, etc.
I thought it was because the School of Biological Sciences was trying to collaborate with the School of Medicine on certain endeavors (i.e. research, etc.) and thus was making it easier specifically for their students, but I think the real reason behind this is because the new General Education requirements have a lot more hours involved: http://www.umkc.edu/core/, with this Anchor I, II, III & Discourse I, II, III stuff. Since BA/MD students can only take undergrad classes certain semesters, adding these General Ed requirements would cramp up the schedule so much, even further than it already is.
As mentioned by @blugrn6 though, you want to be able to take a summer campus. After Path, everyone was very exhausted after taking 20 graded hours, so you can imagine then having to go into 2 month Pharm right after, in the summer. If you see below you can see how the Year 4 campus has changed.
BIOL 300/400 Upper Level Bio Elective - 3 credit hours
Biology Synthesis Requirement ‐ BIOL 498 WI, LS 490 WI, LS 499, or LS 497 - 3 credit hours
BA General Education Requirement ‐ Constitution Requirement - 3 credit hours
BA General Education Requirement – Art, Art History, Conservatory, or Theatre - 3 credit hours
Anchor III: Community & Civic Engagement - 3 credit hours
DISC 300: Community & Civic Engagement (Speech and Writing) - 3 credit hours
Missouri Constitution course - Focus C - 3 credit hours
Focus A: Arts and Humanities Click for options - 3 credit hours
STAT 235: Elementary Statistics or MATH 210: Calculus I - 3 credit hours
BIOLOGY 498WI: Critical Analysis of Biological Issues - 3 credit hours
18 credit hours
So before, you could easily whittle down the original 12 hours required in Year 4 campus for the BA degree to 6 hours, by just taking the 6 hours of General Ed requirements earlier, in Years 1-2. But now with the new degree plan, it will be much, much harder to whittle down the original EIGHTEEN hours in Year 4 campus for the BA degree to 6 hours, by taking TWELVE hours earlier, in Years 1-2. Remember, you’re now capped in the total number of hours you’re allowed to enroll in each semester, which includes your Pass/Fail courses. Taking 18 hours of classes in a Year 4 campus is no joke and is the last thing you will want to do when you’re supposed to be studying for boards in the Fall/Spring. The BLA (Liberal Arts) degree is much easier to maneuver, get A’s in undergrad classes, and still get that summer campus w/o having to worry if your classes are available a certain semester. Residencies also don’t really care what your undergraduate major is, so in this case, as it is now, as @blugrn6 mentioned, I would go with the easier degree.
Thank you, @blugrn6 and @Roentgen, I really wanted to do the Biology degree as I tend to like Biology, but probably won’t since there really is no advantage at all - no Science GPA help and as you said residencies don’t care, etc. Since you ended up having to take a Fall Semester campus and so had to take Pharmacology in June/July of Year 4, did you think there was any advantage to doing it at all vs. your classmates, since you took it right after Pathology? Like maybe it was easier to put it together with Pathology that you just recently learned since you just had the class, or maybe you could start studying much earlier for Step 1 or take the exam earlier, even though you still have to take Behavioral Science?
So I think your question was directed at @blugrn6 as I actually took a Summer campus in Year 4. I was really exhausted after Pathology – it’s divided into Path I which is one grade for 8 credit hours (and a lot of it is just an unnecessary retread from Genetics) and Path II which is one grade for 12 credit hours, but you don’t get the easier tests in Path I to help your grade in Path II since they are separated in terms of grades.
I think the advantages and disadvantages of having Pharmacology are:
June-July[ul]
[]comes right after learning and being in Pathology (could be a + or -, depending on your viewpoint)
[]higher chances of being very burned-out right after Path and then having to go straight into Pharm
[]very helpful to have Pharmacology knowledge before entering Docent Rotation (Internal Medicine) as a Year 4, to understand treatment plans for your patients. Although this isn’t necessarily specific to having Pharm in June-July, just in having Pharm before you take Docent Rotation. Also might be helpful to have had Pharmacology before taking Behavioral Science since the shelf exam in that course tends to really emphasize psychiatric drugs and their side effects, again not necessarily specific to having Pharm in June-July
[]Ability at the end of July to slowly start reviewing and integrating information for boards, since the only basic science subject left is Behavioral Science which you can pretty much study in isolation. So you have a much longer time to put things together in your head, than your classmates, before having to take your CBSE to qualify to take boards, and possibly even take the exam earlier.[/ul]
October-November[ul]
[]refreshed energy level right before starting, although might be a little harder to get back into the groove of studying, #firstworldproblems
[]any boards studying from June to September might not be as helpful since you don’t get to review and integrate Pharmacology with other subjects - Biochemistry, Microbiology, Pathology, Physiology, Behavioral Science; as Pharm is a large part of the boards and one of the “3 P’s”: Physiology, Pathology, Pharmacology
[li]You pretty much can’t take the CBSE in November or December[/ul][/li]According to current policy (http://med.umkc.edu/curriculum/licensing/#criteria), you can only take Step 1 after you have completed Pharmacology, Behavioral, AND 1 clinical rotation - either Docent Rotation or Family Med (the theoretical rationale being so that you can see things clinically, since many of the questions on Step 1 are in a clinical vignette format, but in reality, it’s not even really that helpful or necessary - realize most traditional students don’t take clinical rotations before taking Step 1).
So I took a summer campus June-July (I lightly went thru review books in Biochem, Anatomy, Physiology since it had been a long time since Year 2 since I had taken those subjects), then had Docent Rotation August-September, then had Pharmacology October-November, Behavioral Science in December, January Family Medicine, an easy elective in February, used my vacation and study month for an out-of-town Kaplan course in March-April, and then used another study month May to take my boards that month, and then started my Year 5 rotations with Docent Rotation in June-July.