UMKC 6-year BS/MD Program

Pre-Med & Medical School Multiple Degree Programs
5041

@061616 congrats on your upcoming interview! As others have said there is a lot of helpful information in this thread but you just have to spend some time to dig through. The format of the interview as i’m sure you know is Multiple Mini Interview, basically short interviews that are more geared towards scenario based (ie. what would you do? how would you handle it? etc) and also some personal based questions.

To prepare for my interview, I ended up buying a book called Multiple Mini Interview for the Mind (it’s listed somewhere in this thread) from amazon and I found that really helpful. You have to make sure you set aside enough time to practice through scenarios with family members, friends basically anyone who is willing to help out. My mom felt that it was too important to leave to chance so she ended paying for 8 practice interview sessions directly with the author of the MMI for the Mind book. That was the most beneficial part of my interview prep to be honest. I’m not saying you need to go out and pay for a consultant but just sharing my experience. Also make sure to read over some basic bioethics.

Good luck!!!

5042

@3kiddos wow … triplets! :slight_smile: Yes it’s definitely possible to get 3 of them in although it’s going to be a challenge that I’m sure you’re up for. To answer your questions, the current applications are due Nov 1 and require you to submit a general application, followed by a supplemental application and submit answers to a few essays as well as answers to a few short answer questions. Start to work on your applications around august because it takes some time to write your essay as well as gather referees. Overall, it is actually a relatively pain free process. It a great campus but no need to visit before hand. We got tours on our interview last year and everyone is super friendly.

If you have other specific questions, please let me know!

5043

Umkcpanda, thank u so much. Do you know any application template on this Umkc thread . If so please let me know.

5044

ughhhh….i got waitlisted….this is sort of a bittersweet experience, but mostly i feel sad….
this was my dream school program.
@Roentgen , @UMKCPanda
do you guys know the chances of getting an offer for the interview from being waitlisted?
How likely is it?
I’m crying while i’m typing right now……

5045

Hello friends, I’m new to CC but I’ve heard how helpful this site can be. I got accepted for an interview today (I’m a MO resident if that helps), and believe they sent e-mails out around 2:00. Good luck to everybody!

5046

what is the idea behind the “waitlist”? Why do colleges have waitlist?
and Does UMKC program have a different waitlist system?

5047

Got my email on Friday
Rejected OOS.

It hurts quite a bit but alas some things are just not meant to be.
A HUGE congrats to everyone who got the IV! I’m so proud of you all.

5048

Hello everyone, I am taking a break from Chem 212 studies, class is at 7:40 am tomorrow, yep I said 7:40 am.

I am a first year member of the Class of 2021, just started the spring semester, only 5 1/2 years to go until I get my BA/MD.

I am out-of -state, although now I am here in Missouri, That means I am one of a very small group, it is not eay to get in from a different state, so be aware of that, and know that if you are not accepted it may be due to a limit of how big your group could be.

I like Missouri and I can see myself living here and practicing med here. Residency and match is seldom talked about by my fellow classmates, we have enough to focus on with our classes to go into such distant “what ifs.” You need to focus on winning in your interview, not “what ifs.”

Ok, enough about me, I wanted to introduce myself and congrat all of you in your quest to enter the UMKC BA/MD program. I was called a fool for turning down an ivy last April when I accepted UMKC. I was told that if I got into…, then for sure I would be able to get into medical school if I went the traditional way. I was told to go to a better 7-year program. But, I REALLY LIKED UMKC. Now as I am in my second semester, I am sure that I was not foolinsh, in fact, to not have accepted UMKC’s offer would have been very foolish!!!

This is a great program, and unlike any 7-year program, when you start you are in medical school! Yes, I am serious! When I go to docent, my name badge says: “--------------- UMKC Medical Student” Not college student, but medical student!

Yes, there are negatives, but then there are negatives everywhere, just know that if you really want to be a MD then this program is for you.

To those of you who got interview notices, congrats. Now relax, you will probably get accepted if you got this far. You need to believe in yourself to do well here, so relax, look at yourself in the mirror and say, “Darn, I did well, I am good, really good.”

If you have any specific Qs or such, I will try to assist. However, in docent we are doing an aging project that we have already been told will take our weekly time, including spring break, so my free time is a bit limited. Still I will try to help in any way that I can.

Fist, to answer any who ask is this a good program? My answer is that, it is what you put into it, if you want to be a MD, if your gut burns with a fire that you need to learn how to help the injured and sick, then this is a great program! But, if you are lazy or seeking just a pay check in the future, you will find that you made a mistake to come here, this program requires your dedication!

Good luck to all of you, Now I need to get back to cubic lattice units.

5049

@ss0296, sorry I didn’t reply sooner, I was sick for a little bit, but feeling much better now.

Feel free to PM me, I am more than happy to give you some perspective as a non in-state student.

First, realize that about 1% of all U.S. medical students are of the Bachelor/MD variety. That means 99% of medical students do not enter these type of programs right after high school, and a very good reason why most allopathic medical schools don’t even offer these type of programs (or at least have very few total slots for them). As both @blugrn6 and I have mentioned and emphasized before, this is very much an ALTERNATIVE route, not THE route to get into medical school.

I’ll be honest, when I applied and interviewed, I was already set on doing the traditional route: knowing already when I was going to take each of the premed requirements, when I’d be taking the MCAT, etc. blah, blah. Getting into the BA/MD program for me was more an afterthought, as financially, I would be much worse off. A lot of what you learn during the traditional route is helpful to you later in medical school – different study strategies, test-taking skills, time management, coping skills, etc. which will be helpful to you not only in med school, but also in residency and beyond. I also think I would have gotten much better shadowing opportunities as a college student (vs. being in high school) to know what medicine was really like and not what I imagined it to be, so it wouldn’t be such a shock later, not to mention an actual, real college experience — the absence of this is one of the biggest complaints of people who go thru the 6 year program.

I honestly think this school being a “dream” school/program for people is always for the wrong reasons and almost always due to hype. I know that’s very hard to see & understand at your age, but I will tell you this based on my and my BA/MD class’ experience. The people in my class who saw the UMKC 6 year program as their “dream” school and as the solution to all their problems to live happily ever after, by the time they graduated, tended to be the most disappointed and/or jaded in terms of what they thought that UMKC’s medical school could do for them, when it came time to apply for residency. The reason is because for residency applications, no one really cares if you went through a rigorous 6 year combined program. It doesn’t give you any leg up or bonus points at all in the process, quite honestly, and if anything can be perceived as a negative.

Would I have been bummed out if I didn’t get in? Sure, for like a moment. But then I would have easily gotten over it, as for me both financially (and I believe this is the case for both regional and out-of-state applicants), in terms of location, and undergrad/med school reputation – I was not better off. I think that is one thing I wish I had known before going into this program - that it wasn’t the cure-all solution. Premed/College is not the hardest part of this process by far, even though tons of College Confidential high school students (wrongly) perceive it to be. There are very real and serious trade-offs made by going through this program, that I did not appreciate, which if I had known in advance, I would have turned it down (as there are people who do turn it down).

There was someone 2 years ago, who mentioned on this thread that he got off the waitlist (he was the son of a UMKC Med alum, by the way, so just goes to show that you’re not necessarily a shoe-in just because of that) - I believe he applied at the Early Notification Deadline initially, was waitlisted, then got off the waitlist, and he interviewed and got in the program, so hold on for a bit more to see if there is any movement. A waitlist is usually done, if anyone cancels going to the interview, as well as at the acceptance stage, if anyone ends up turning down UMKC for a better combined program.

5050

@OmniaMed, welcome to the thread and giving everyone your perspective w/starting out as a Year 1 in the program. Yeah, I don’t think even in my time, we ever really talked about residency and the match as Year 1s as a) we were just trying to get used to being away from home for the first time in our lives, getting used to a new city and surroundings, balancing classes and maintaining grades, etc. and b) it’s not like we had that information readily available at our disposal since our main source of info. on everything were Year 2s, who didn’t know anyways. Enjoy the honeymoon period while it lasts! Looking back, Year 1 was the best time ever to take advantage of having fun times.

5051

Are there any free summers in this program?

For example, if you get the Health Professions Scholarship Program for the Army, it is recommended to go to the officer basic course during one of the summers. If it is not possible, then it’s done after graduation from medical school which pushes back the start of the PGY-1 year back by about 2 months. It’s not an ideal situation, but doable.

5052

@ChicagoSportsFn, there aren’t any “free” summers per se, where you are not officially enrolled in school and don’t have to pay tuition. I know some of my friends who did the HPSP route (for the last 4 years of the program), depending on the specific branch they were in, some had school orders to where it was essentially"skipped" or if it is required that you do it, it can also be fit in during the summer semester (June-July) and those months can count as either out-of-town electives, or you can use your 1 annual vacation month towards that. The earliest you could do officer training would be that Year 4 summer (so right after Year 3 spring semester) once everyone kind of spreads off into their own specific rotations. But it definitely can be fit into the UMKC curriculum with no problem, to where you wouldn’t have to push your PGY-1 internship year later (which at most places you can’t do, since all internships/residencies, even in the military, officially start on July 1). You would just let your ETC in the UMKC program know that you have a military scholarship that requires you to fulfill this obligation and they’ll make it work in your curriculum.

5053

@ChicagoSportsFn, There is no summer “off” although we do get a few weeks off before the summer session and after the summer session. Your only summers “off” are the initial summer after high school, although some start that summer in order to get biology classes. And at the end of your 6th year you get that summer off - you are "kickedd out in May of that year, lol.

This summer, I get one week shorter of “vacation time,” all first year students take 1 week of hospital exposure, we have been told already to plan on a full day, from 9 am to 5 pm!

But before you throw up your arms and yell “Sheesh,” remember you are putting 8 years of eduication into 6 years, so the concept of summer vacation is gone.

The military is an incredible option, a number of UMKC MD grads who went into the military visit the campus. Generals! Amazing, the are all generals. In the military if you have a MD degree you start at a high rank and if you put in your time you end up General -----------, MD. Not a bad way to go, so keep your options open for the military. Sorry, I am not taking that route, so I have no pointers on how to go that way.

Thanks Roentgen for your kind words.

And to all of you interviewing - I was in your place just 12 months ago! I know what you are feeling, I remember going to the Student Union on interview morning, the room was filled with everyone wearing suits and the air so full of nervousness that you could feel the tension and upset stomachs… Yes, I do know what you are feeling, and I know what you will be experiencing, plus your nerves as you wait for yuor decision! Do not worry, relax, it really is easy from here, the hard part was that application and the essays!

I am here to help if you have any questions, I was there 12 months ago and I know what you face with very clear and accurate memory.

5054

@Roentgen you mentioned that you would not have gone through this program if you had known the trade-offs. What were these trade-offs?

@OmniaMed what are the negatives of this program?

5055

@trebor611 the negatives? I can find negatives in any program, but seriously there are few real negtives if you are seeking to be an MD!

No I am not wearing blinders or rose colored glasses, I am serious, if your goal is to heal people, if you want to become an MD, then UMKC BA/MD program is GREAT!

It is so easy to trash a place that is the subject of a thread, and I am sure you know the typical negatives. Yes, one may not get a top residency from UMKC if you are just an average student, but so what, you are not average and if you work hard you may get a top residency! Yes, there is little opportunity for research here compared to Harvard Medical School. but, the profs will work with you, and if you put in the effort you can do research! Just do not expect it to be handed to you. Yes, most grads of UMKC are not make $500K a year, they are GPs. But, our graduates are healing the sick, they are making people feel better, and even saving lives! As a MD you will have standing in any community, respect and a good income - so if you graduate from UMKC you may not be a super doctor at Sloan making 7 figures, but you will still have a 6 figure income and able to practice medicine. Who knows, perhaps you can make it to Sloan! And the price, we hear how expensive UMKC is all the time. Yes, I am out of state, and my dad is disabled, we are poor and I know that UMKC is expensive. But look at most law schools, they are expensive too! Look at the U of IL school of Medicine, it will make your toes twitch as you calculate your debt. No time to play, yes that is a negative - it sucks we have spring break but the pfof say we need to continue our 6=week project interviewing elderly patients at Truman Med Center over spring break. So that is a negative to some, but then I am happy to have the chance to be with a patient instead of relaxing on a beach somewhere. So yes, another negative, but is it really negative?

What I am trying to show you, is that the negatives depend upon what your goals are, it is that simple. For me to tell you what I see as negative is based on my goals and may not apply to you! For example, if you want to teach medicine some day, then coming to UMKC would be a big disadvantage. If you want to just slip by with little effort and get a top tier residency, then UMKC would probably be a disadvantage to that goal. But, if you are like me, if you want to be a MD more than anything, if you want to start learning medicine during your first month in college, then you can do no better than UMKC. In fundi (medical fundamentals) you will learn on the first day so many new ways to question and learn. It is very hard for me to find real negatives, but then I will practice family medicine, that is what I want,

5056

@trebor611, so since you asked here are some of the real trade-offs/negatives of the UMKC combined BA/MD program. You can find them also in this thread but you might have to search a bit. Just to be clear from the beginning, I don’t think all of these will apply to every single student in the class, as we all come into the program with very different expectations in general, very different life and educational experiences, different future career specialty goals, etc. You can also look at @Blugrn6’s posts: i.e. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18367420#Comment_18367420, who I think gives a valid, real assessment of the program.

Overall[ol]
[li]No summers off from Year 1 to Year 6 - You will always be officially consecutively enrolled in coursework of some kind through out the 6 years (or longer if you were to extend in the program) and paying at the higher School of Medicine rate (vs. the undergraduate rate) per credit hour, no matter how much incoming credit you are coming in with. That’s essentially how the 8 years is whittled down to 6. It isn’t magic. The 2 ways they do it are: a) running year around and b) taking out certain normally required prerequisites, which can be good or bad educationally depending on the student’s incoming foundation. Now, I already knew this going in, with respect to the year around aspect, but actually experiencing it firsthand is very different and eye-opening. There’s a reason the extension and attrition rate is so high for this program (but not necessarily readily advertised to applicants), and I think one huge contributor to this is the huge burn out factor.[/li]
The best way my friends and I have described it is that it is like being placed in a blender that never stops once you press start. You can speed it up or slow it down at certain times (depending on what part of the curriculum you’re in currently) but you don’t get to press stop and recharge your batteries, unless you take an official leave of absence, which then delays your eventual graduation date from the program.
[]Financially, in terms of student debt, you don’t come out way ahead at the end if you’re a regional or out-of-state student, compared to your particular public medical school in your home state, and you will receive almost little to no scholarship support overall from the university, even in the first 2 years. I haven’t done the calculations for in-state students, but even now at 176K of debt just from tuition alone, that’s still more than the U.S. average debt that med students are now graduating with which you can see here: https://www.aamc.org/download/447254/data/debtfactcard.pdf. If you go here: https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/ you can see that for the longest time UMKC used to be one of the highest in tuition both for in-state and out-of-state students (click on the “Resident” and “NonResident” columns to order schools by cost): http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2006/02/27/story6.html?page=1. I think that changed somewhat with the introduction of the “Regional” category which allowed the school to bring in more tuition money overall and at least mitigate some of the annual increases in tuition. The university as a whole, is very dependent on student tuition revenue from the medical school, so a lot of our tuition dollars go to the overall university and not directly to benefit the medical school. Especially now with nearly 40% of the class being from outside Missouri, it’s not at all surprising that a lot more of the UMKC Med student body is very highly affluent, than what it used to be when it was only in-state and out-of-state at a ratio of 90%/10%.
[]You don’t get a true traditional college experience. Whether high schoolers realize it or not, college is not just an academic marathon of studying and finishing courses in a degree plan to hop to the next step. It’s a time where you’re on your own for the very first time, where you’re learning to be responsible for all of those things your parents used to take care of for you, on top of just going to school and doing HW. You can take classes that you can actually enjoy as well outside of the required curriculum but that are of interest to you to be a well-rounded person. The 6 year program, essentially shafts that undergraduate part of the curriculum. So, it’s not surprising, when certain deficiencies manifest later (i.e. in our average board scores over several years compared to other similar peer medical schools). As you can imagine, the pace and structure of the curriculum also doesn’t leave a lot of time for real maturity and personal growth, which IMHO, is the reason I believe the school often doesn’t respond as well to even valid complaints from the student body on how to improve, vs. if the entire student body were traditional med students.

On top of that, UMKC as a university, is still very much a commuter type campus vs. your usual public state flagship universities (which are usually higher ranked) in which there is a lot more variety of stuff to do, which is a good respite from studying all the time 24/7.

Even when it comes to the actual coursework in the BA/MD curriculum, it’s not a smooth, slowly graduated increase in difficulty. You enter as a freshman taking undergraduate level Anatomy and General Chemistry and by the next fall as a sophomore you’re already taking medical school level Biochemistry in the fall and then medical school level Anatomy, Physiology, etc. in the spring. It can be difficult for even those who were very academically prepared coming from high school. That’s the downside when you skip out on certain requirements and upper level undergraduate courses which help you to get acclimated to more difficult courses later on. The curriculum is very much geared towards getting the MD, so it’s difficult to backtrack the further you’re in, without repeating coursework, even at the end of Year 2: http://www.sptimes.com/2004/12/05/Worldandnation/Six_year_medical_stud.shtml. Much different than say other Bachelor/MD programs where the undergrad and medical school curriculums are very much separate.
[li]You’re limited to very few select college majors from Year 1 and only BA degrees, not BS degrees. At least in my time, you could do Liberal Arts, Biology, Chemistry, Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, Communication Studies, etc. Now you’re only allowed to do Liberal Arts, Biology, or Chemistry, at least within the framework of the 6 year program. But if you’re thinking of doing a more marketable degree like Engineering (Biomedical or otherwise) or Business, etc. you’re pretty much out of luck.[/li]
Many courses that you take at UMKC don’t transfer readily to other universities when it comes to fulfilling credit hours for undergraduate degree plans, if you were to end up leaving the BA/MD program and UMKC, esp. many of the MED and BMS labeled courses. Even our Organic Chem course we take does not fulfill premed, pre-dent, pre-pharm requirements.
[*]Kansas City isn’t like your typical major city – LA, NYC, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Philly, etc. It’s not even like St. Louis on the other side of the state. I mean it’s much better now in 2016, than when I entered back in 2003, when it comes to things to do in the city, but especially if you’re from outside Missouri, it can be quite a culture shock in many ways.[/ol]

5057

@trebor611,

Medical school[ol]
[]UMKC is not a very highly regarded or even considered to be a middle tier medical school/program. You can see the full discussion here as this was asked previously by someone else: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18591728#Comment_18591728. This can make it difficult to not only match into top-tier institutions, in general, but even in strong middle-tier institutions in relatively non-competitive specialties.
[]In terms of the curriculum, the school heavily emphasizes primary care specialties, especially Internal Medicine (IM) in Years 3-6. This starts from the beginning with the Year 1 & 2 Docent experience – which isn’t really “medical school” per se, but tends to be mischaracterized to applicants as such, the Family Medicine rotation, Rural Preceptorship rotation, and Years 3-6 inpatient Docent Rotations & weekly outpatient Docent clinic – all of which are required. Thus it can be difficult for UMKC students to be able to break out and try to match into certain specialties that are not available or offered at UMKC, not only because we don’t have residencies in those fields, but because we don’t have the opportunities available for that exposure or clinical research in those areas: Derm, Radiation Oncology, PM&R, most if not all of the surgical subspecialties (ENT, Urology, Vascular, Plastics, Neurosurgery to name a few). Outside of our Pediatrics residency at Children’s Mercy Hospital which is pretty good, the rest of our residencies where we do our Year 5 required clerkships (MS-3 in the traditional pathway), aren’t that well-known.

I was someone who thought upon entering the program that I would 100% be entering a field like IM and then doing a subspecialty fellowship, but by the time Year 4 hit, I clearly changed my mind and had no intention of going for IM and felt like I was wasting a lot of the curriculum when I could very easily have gotten more elective time towards figuring out what specialty to go for or that would be helpful towards my own specialty goals. After a certain point, I don’t think doing more inpatient Internal Medicine every year makes you a better clinician. I had friends who went into Pediatrics and absolutely hated the school’s overemphasis on IM. So if you’re someone new and starting out and are very open to any specialty, it can be very frustrating later on in the program, when you want to go for certain fields and you have difficulty finding certain opportunities at UMKC to be able to build up your CV to reach those goals.
[]Our USMLE Step score averages over several years aren’t that great overall in comparison to stats from similar peer medical schools and in comparison to the national average-- this has been discussed thoroughly in this thread previously. There are many contributors to this.
[]UMKC’s medical school doesn’t have a huge research infrastructure (clinical or basic science) in comparison to similar peer medical schools which helps med students in the match when it comes to getting certain highly competitive/coveted specialties in their senior year.[/ol]

5058

@Roentgen Very well put, and written like a scholarly article. These exit, and everyone needs to think these points over. Although, I must add that I really like Kansas City and in general Missouri.

@Roentgen Everyone considering UUMKC BA/MD should read your words and then think about all you said, this is an important step in one’s life.

Prospective UMKCers, ss you read this, remember negatives exist in all schools, and that what is negative depends upon your goals - so as Roentgen pointed out, know your goals before you decide what really is a negative.

5059

@OmniaMed, Thank you! I do think Kansas City, as a place to live for 6 years, has improved from when I was there (KC weather patterns aside, which I never really ever fully got used to quite honestly), but again it depends from what city/town you’re coming from. It’s all relative. As you mentioned, negatives will exist at any school, any program, etc. The key is to find out what exactly those negatives are beforehand, and see if any of those things are non-starters or would make that person miserable thus impacting his/her academic performance. Six years is a long time in terms of personal growth and maturity.

What no one should do in considering this combined program is feel guilted or pressured into matriculating due to some irrational fear of never making it into medical school in the traditional pathway, or feeling like somehow this is their only chance ever to be able to get into medical school, or because UMKC was their only combined degree acceptance, etc. All the more reason that I think College Confidential is great so that applicants can understand the truth and facts as well as get context from current students as well as alumni, rather than just relying on words on the UMKC Med website, admissions brochures/handouts, etc.

5060

I have a question for any current students. I applied for the early deadline and was at first put on the wait list. I got an email this week saying that I received an interview. Since I was wait listed at first does that put me at a disadvantage? I was a second choice to begin with so it would make sense. Is it common for people who were wait listed to be accepted?

Also, I was wondering if it would be helpful to shadow before my interview date? I haven’t been able to before because of my age (the hospitals around me say you have to be 18). Or if I still can’t would like a sit down interview with a doctor be beneficial at all? What are some things to be careful of doing or saying at the interview?

Lastly, I’ve been reading through the forum and it seems like a big disadvantage to the program is that it’s not considered “prestigious” but that it depends on your goals if that’s a problem for you. Right now I’m looking into doing surgery maybe pediatric or even something like anesthesiology. I don’t really care what state I get residency in. So would I be at a disadvantage?

I’m super nervous for the interview but I’ve been using youtube for advice, I’ll be practicing with my principle who does interviews with SLU, and I plan on buying a book this weekend to study for the mmi. Thanks to anyone who replies! My interview is March 1st. :slight_smile: