@Roentgen Can any of the science courses be taken at a OOS community college and then be accepted as transfer credit to bypass the corresponding science courses?
@2022md, yes, the same courses in which you can get AP credit for, as well as credit for General Biology I & II (since UMKC does not accept the AP Bio exam to get General Biology I & II credit). You can take those at an OOS community college and bring them in thru transfer and receive credit. Just make sure that you check it out with your ETC that your particular community college course will be accepted, and get confirmation of that thru email if you can. You can also click on that Transferology link that I pasted above in this thread from UMKC’s webpage, so that you select the correct course at the community college you’ll be going to.
As far as I know, courses like LS-ANAT 119 + 119 Lab, LS-MCRB 121 + 121 Lab, BIO 202, BIO 206, CHEM 320 + Lab all have to be taken in-house at UMKC as that will go towards that required 2.8 Science GPA.
You had said before to talk with alumni from UMKC Med, but I personally don’t know anyone. How do I contact them using the posted match lists, to get their take? I have the previous questions you posted, but I wanted my son to be able to do this to get their views also.
Also, how does the UMKC medical school administration treat their BA/MD students as they go thru the program? Do they understand the type of different stresses that kids are going thru by selecting this type of program? I’m just wondering since you said nearly everyone at UMKC is a 6 year student, whether it’s somehow better than going to a combined program where not everyone is a combined student. Since students don’t take the MCAT, do students have a better chance to build up their CV for 6 years, than just 4 years?
@Roentgen @2022md It’s been a while since @Roentgen has been here and many policies have changed. For example, UMKC does not accept general biology credit from anywhere. It states on the major map, under “transfer credit notes” that General Biology 1 must be taken at UMKC. You cannot take it at another school and transfer the credit.
http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2015-2016/SOM_BA_MD_Bio_2015_2016.pdf
Hey guys for those of you accepted, the Class of 2022 has started a Group Me where you could chat with other people who’ve gotten in. If you’d like to be a part of this please feel free to PM me. We have about 14% of the class on there 
Yes, @umkc1111 @2022md, sorry, I was misreading the specific Biology major map for BA/MD students, my bad. Normally, General Biology I & II does transfer to UMKC if you go on Pathway and then see course equivalencies from other institutions to bring credit in: [Pathway Course Equivalency](BIG-IP logout page), it just so happens that a specific exception is made for BA/MD students to only allow General Biology I from UMKC (according to the major map, we longer take General Biology I and II), so you’d have to take it this summer only at UMKC if you wanted credit for it. Apologize for that mistake on my part.
You definitely don’t have to know any medical school alumni. So if you look at the match lists, for those that are university-type programs, they are named accordingly, for example, St. Louis University, Washington University in St. Louis, Indiana University, Medical College of Wisconsin, etc. So if it has the word “University” or “College” in it, chances are it’s a university based residency program. Those places tend to have publicly accessible campus faculty/staff, and student directories that are easily found on their websites, if not after using the search function. Since residents when they start are officially part of that institution, they also get a faculty/staff university email and thus are part of the directory.
This same thing above applies to attendings (doctors who are finished with residency/fellowship, are board-certified, and practicing) at a university/academic medical center institution, you can easily type in the name and get the email as well. Many academic medical centers/hospitals list their physicians with their specialty, and their prior educational background/medical school that they graduated from. As mentioned before, politely introduce yourself, tell who you are, tell them you’re trying to find out more information on the program and that you noticed that they graduated from the program, and would like to get their perspective on different aspects of the program, whenever it is convenient for them: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19349052#Comment_19349052.
I would send emails to as many different people as you can, especially to those who matched into a specialty that you are heavily considering, as you will have no idea who will be getting back to you and when (if they even do so at all). Residency work hours can be very rigorous, 80+ hours per week, so don’t get impatient if they don’t respond back immediately. Most UMKC alums, after having graduated, will be nice and more than happy to give you as much information as needed, to those who are trying to make an informed decision about going this particular track, as they were in the same position your son is now, when they were in school.
@NervousDad01, to answer the rest of your questions:
So I think if you talk with a variety of students and alums, you’ll get VERY different viewpoints as to how he/she felt BA/MD students were treated by the medical school administration. Talking to a Year 1/2 about how they feel they are being treated and supported (or not), will be different than when you talk with a Year 5/6 as to how they are treated and supported (or not). Mostly that is because the issues and problems that come up at Year 1/2 are very different than those that come up at Year 5/6, and every year in between. Students in this BA/MD program go thru a lot of experiences together and year-round: undergrad classes, labs, basic science classes, rotations, clerkships, boards, the residency match, etc. so they will very much remember all the times that administration had their backs, when they didn’t, or when they dropped the ball on things that they shouldn’t have. I’ve also noticed that newly created rules and policies (i.e. making things harder than they already are) will also very much impact that perception, as well as morale.
In terms of understanding the different type of stress BA/MD students are going thru, with this particular type of program, at least in my time, no, I don’t think as a whole, they actually inherently understood the stresses and legitimate frustrations that BA/MD students can have. You have to understand that they themselves haven’t actually gone thru the program, and even with many of the Year 3-6 docents these days, very few of them have actually gone thru and experienced the UMKC 6 year BA/MD program, much less gone thru the BA/MD program in recent years. So I think that contributes a lot to not being able to see things the way that students see them, thus leaving the problem potentially unresolved. I can tell you that during my time, by the end of the 6 years, we very much felt that the administration had not been on our side or had dropped the ball when it came to specific issues or legitimate complaints (and FYI, it wasn’t only our class either), and were reactive rather than proactive. Hopefully this aspect of things has changed, with some administrators gone, or no longer in the same positions, but that’s something you will definitely have to ask people who are currently enrolled. In reading some of their links, they’ve taken some steps to try to address the retention issue: http://www.umkc.edu/provost/student-retention/retreat/som.ppt, although this was back in 2009, so I don’t know what outcomes have changed in terms of retention for changes they have put in place since then.
That being said, one thing I have noticed now, is the school has started incorporating and emphasizing wellness a lot more than when I was there: http://med.umkc.edu/sa/wellness/. This is probably coming thru a trend at the national level, which has been covered by the national media: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/a-medical-school-more-like-hogwarts/, but it’s good that they’ve finally picked this up, especially for our students coming straight from high school. They’ve also installed a Career Advising Office, that started in 2010: http://med.umkc.edu/sa/residency_match/, since one of our huge weaknesses that was pointed out to them was the school’s role in helping students with specialty selection (vs. just having people figure it out willy-nilly on their own with no real direction). You will have to talk with current students as to how actually useful those resources are as they apparently also have activities categorized by year: http://med.umkc.edu/docs/sa/4_Career_Advising_Activities_by_Year_Level_of_Students.pdf.
So I think one thing a lot of students & their parents are confused about or maybe seem to erroneously believe is that somehow the 6 year program which is undertaken is different in terms of the later steps you will have to take and that it gives you some type of edge (maybe some type of psychological edge or a tangible edge) over the 7/8 year combined Bachelor/MD student or the traditional 4+4 student, whether that’s youth compared to your traditional counterpart (seriously major LOLs on this one) or later at the residency application stage, etc.
That’s just so not the case. The future steps will be the same for everyone, it’s just that in this program you reach those steps sooner (in what is an already fast-paced rigorous process of med school), without as huge of an undergraduate coursework background or an initial educational filter (MCATs, AMCAS, etc.) that traditional students have. So for example, we all prepare for the USMLE exam during our Year 4 (Our counterparts are finishing their senior year of college), when our last real standardized exam we took was the ACT/SAT in high school. I think that’s part of the reason why we have a USMLE Step 1 readiness policy at UMKC to begin with, unlike at most other medical schools.
In theory, you would think that somehow you’d have an advantage of getting 6 years to build up your CV for residency starting from Year 1, but in practice that’s usually not the case. I’m sure there are definitely some exceptions, but they’re just that, exceptions. Part of that I think just has to do with the courseload we have, it’s much easier to participate in research in some semesters better than others. For many people, getting involved in research is a new thing for them so they have to start from scratch – although there is now a Medical Student Research Interest Group to help with that: http://med.umkc.edu/sa/student-organizations/. It’s also hard to know what specialty you want to do research in when you haven’t experienced many of those specialties yet as clinical rotations, so it’s more guesswork on your part. We’re also limited as an institution with the amount of opportunities available on site, especially in research. For example, there are quite a few specialties that UMKC just doesn’t have ongoing research in (i.e. ENT), whether in clinical research or in basic science research, so you’re much more dependent on other sources which may or may not want to take you. Also while we do get more elective months overall in the curriculum, it’s hard to do them at other places since other institutions usually require you to have finished all your third year (Year 5) clerkships, so it ends up being pretty pointless if you were considering doing an off-site elective in Year 4 (if you did a summer campus), or in the middle of Year 5, when you still have some cores left to complete
Incoming first years:
If you transfer in a course form a community college or a non UM school, it won’t count towards your GPA. You need a 2.8 sGPA to promote to the next year, and without a good GPA buffer, in difficult classes like HSF and biochem, where it is easy to get Cs, the chances of extension are higher. Just something to think about.
The room for the summer is still available, if anyone wants to take classes here this summer, just PM me.
I highly recommend as much as possible if you can take General Chemistry I + Lab over the summer, to do so within the UM-system (Mizzou, UMKC, UMSL, or Missouri S&T), to get credit AND grade points. I realize this might not be as feasible for those who are regional or out-of-state.
@umkc1111, is correct, if you only come in with credit for General Chem (whether thru the AP exam, IB exam, or transfer from outside the UM-system), your science GPA required to promote will be more reliant on courses that are harder to do well in. You won’t get the full 10 credit hours of GPA padding that General Chem I & II + Labs provides. You guys can see here which science classes will count towards the calculation of the science GPA: http://med.umkc.edu/curriculum/info/#scienceGPA.
$650 rent per month is a really great deal, especially if you’re only a 5 minute drive from the Volker campus.
@Roentgen, when we sign up for classes at Orientation, do we have to follow the major map exactly in terms of the order of the classes – Anatomy in Fall, Microbiology in Spring, Cell Biology in summer, Genetics the year after? Do they sign our required classes up for us?
I along with many other first years (almost 2nd years!!!) HIGHLY recommend taking chem 1 over the summer! There are many benefits in doing so, the biggest being not having to double up on fairly difficult science classes (organic chemistry and cell biology) in the summer of your year 2. Get as much of a GPA buffer you can before entering. And I hope this doesn’t scare anyone, it’s just really practical and very helpful to know. Good luck on upcoming orientations and ask your peer mentors as many questions as you need. You would rather come in prepared with enough information than none. Congrats again
First, your ETC does not sign you up for classes, especially during the first 2 years where there are many undergraduate options. That’s your responsibility. They can advise you accordingly, but ultimately it is you who will sign up in Pathway for courses from Year 1 till the end of Year 6. That’s why you go to Orientation to initially learn about Pathway, looking up course schedules, etc. You can take your undergraduate course requirements in any order, but within certain limits. For example, Year 1 Anatomy 119 and Anatomy 119 lab (or now it’s 219 and 219L, I guess) are only offered once a year in the fall. Micro 121 and Micro 121 lab is only offered once a year in the spring. Both are needed to promote to Year 2 when your file comes up for review by the Evaluation Council.
Courses like Cell Bio (Bio 202) and Genetics (Bio 206), are core courses which are also taken by normal undergrads for their Biology degrees, so they’re offered nearly every semester (I believe Genetics is not offered in the summer). It’s the same exact class every semester, maybe just different professor or different time interval if taken in the summer. Chem 320 and Chem 320 Lab are only offered in spring and summer (since the only people who take these courses are BA/MD students, so it’s not worth offering it in the fall, when most BA/MD students are still in the Chem I and Chem II sequence.)
You do not have to, nor are you even expected to take your courses in the very exact order listed in the specific major map (since different students will come in with different levels of credit based on AP/IB exams they’ve taken or whether they’ve done like a dual credit type of program in high school). The only requirements are that you have to have completed the prerequisites that are listed for a course before taking it and that you have completed certain courses required by the SOM AND met specific GPA requirements by the time you are up for promotion to the next year which is usually that upcoming May - you can see those requirements by year here: http://med.umkc.edu/docs/coe/COE-Policy-Manual.pdf (see Part IV: Promotion Policies). So for example, if you read in that PDF, Chem 320 + Chem 320 Lab are required to be completed in order to promote from Year 2 to Year 3, but not from Year 1 to Year 2. You can’t enroll in it in Year 1 though, if you don’t have credit officially for Chem 211, Chem 211L, Chem 212R, Chem 212LR (just taking the AP Chem class isn’t enough). The reason we have to take it by the end of Year 2 summer, is that our specific Biochem course (BMS 9265) which is only offered once a year in the fall, has Chem 320 + 320 Lab as a prerequisite, since Biochem theoretically builds on info from Organic Chem (although in reality, quite honestly, it’s pretty negligible, or not something that can’t be easily picked up). Also (at least in my time), there was more an unofficial rule that you could only take 2 science classes a semester. That’s more for your protection, as the last thing they want is for you to burn out and irreparably harm your science GPA.
If you notice, a class like Sociology 211, there are no prerequisites for the class (Soc 101 is not a prerequisite like you might guess). So some of us took Soc 211 in Year 1 instead of Year 2. The only caveat is if the class is full in the fall, and a Year 2 still needs to get in, the ETC can look at the roster and then ask you to drop it, since they all have to take Soc 211 by their Year 2 Fall (we’re not allowed to take undergrad classes with HSF).
Cell Bio is usually taken by us in Year 2 summer and Genetics in Year 2 fall, but I’ve definitely known students who took them earlier, either taking Cell Biology in Year 1 Fall (had some level of Chem credit, they used Cell Bio as their 2nd science with Anatomy) or Genetics in Year 1 Spring (again, had some level of Chem credit, since the prereqs are like Chem 212R, Bio 108, Bio 109 – and most BA/MD students don’t ever take General Bio in the curriculum, that prerequisite is effectively useless for us, and pushed Chem 320 to the summer). Both people I knew who did this route had some type of General Chem credit coming in, since it erases one of your science classes you have to take, or they had a lot of credit coming in. So as @retweet and others (including me) have mentioned, coming in with at least a semester’s worth of General Chem credit + Lab, will make your schedule much more flexible esp. when you’re running out of steam at the end of Year 1. It will also make your summer much easier, if you only have to take 1 science that semester.
I can’t speak for how Cell Bio and Organic + Lab in the summer are taught now, but they weren’t intentionally “watered down” for the class in terms of their course content, just because they were being taught in the 8 week summer semester.
Wow, tons of great information on this thread. I’m the parent of a high school junior so definitely looking forward to learning more from everyone on here.
Thanks @retweet and @Roentgen!! I had another question: when it comes to taking a summer Year 4 campus later how many credit hours do you have to have left in order to be able to qualify for it? Is it just given to you automatically if you have that number of hours left? I’m just going thru the maps right now and seeing what I can cross off and move up earlier to where I’m not still taking something like 18 hours that semester like it is for the BLA: http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2015-2016/SOM_BLA_MD_2015_2016.pdf
Welcome to the UMKC BA/MD forum, @kkfields! Feel free to ask any questions. A lot of answers about the program can be found if you click on that little magnifying glass at the bottom of the thread on the right hand side and enter in a search term. We’re also happy to answer them as well, since this thread has been going on for a pretty long time, so I understand if people don’t want to sift thru pages of posts, although I believe they are still helpful to people. It’s great that you’re finding out this information now, while your son/daughter is a junior, before he/she applies in the fall.
@dandiyamaster,
So you can look here for that answer: http://med.umkc.edu/curriculum/info/#bachelorsReq. If you do a Fall or a Spring campus, it says that you have to enroll in at least 12 credit hours of undergraduate coursework — that’s even if you actually need less hours to complete your Bachelor’s degree. You need those 12 undergraduate hours to maintain full-time student status in those semesters (at least by the med school’s mandate for that semester). Unlike Years 1 and 2, where your MED classes like LBMS, Med Term, and Docent count towards the hours you need to be a full-time student, in Year 4 campus, your MED courses don’t count towards that total (don’t ask me why, I honestly have no idea). If you do a summer campus, that link says, you have to take a minimum of 6 undergraduate credit hours (I don’t know what the max hours you can take in Year 4 summer campus. I would guess it is 11 hours just like it is for Year 2 campus, as the link says, but I’d be guessing).
I don’t know anyone who took a Fall or Spring campus who took 18 hours in their Year 4 campus (and please don’t be one of them that does). You’ll have a lot more important things to concentrate on then (i.e. reviewing and preparing for your boards), than doing a lot of busy work from undergraduate Arts & Sciences campus classes. I do recommend having your Writing Intensive finished before your Year 4 campus, although if you do a Year 4 summer campus, it doesn’t really matter since it’s about a year before you take boards. A lot of those other hours in that link for that last semester can be CLEPed if you notice - Math 110, Focus A, Focus C, etc.
Oh, and usually you have to petition the Council on Curriculum thru your ETC to get a summer campus, so that they know beforehand which docent teams not to assign you, based on their DoRo cycle and your need for a summer Year 4 campus. That usually happens sometime in Year 2.
How do people find roommates in the first year?
@swag14, unless things have vastly changed, you’re usually automatically paired with another Year 1 BA/MD student(s) that has/have officially accepted their acceptance into the program for the fall. Is there any additional information in your student portal?
@swag14 If you find someone you want to room with, you can request them as your roommate