deleted
- Combined program: how different the student body is at UMKC compared to other schools I was considering.
Medicine: I’m only a med student; I know very little about the field of medicine yet. If you’re an undergrad and want to get a better perspective: work in a lab, work in a hospital, take lots of different classes peripherally related to medicine, shadow lots of doctors and ask them what they love/hate about their job, whether they’d do medicine again, why or why not, whether they’d do their specialty again, why or why not, and, most importantly, whether they’d encourage their kids go into medicine. - I think I liked what other 18 year olds liked about medicine. It sounded cool to say “I shadowed a surgeon today!” and so impressive to tell people “I’m going to medical school!” with the response “At 18? How?”. I liked getting As in science and getting high test scores. I have physician relatives and I think naively that I saw that as one of the only ways to direct, guaranteed success, respect, responsibility, and happiness.
- Not having the typical college experience and all the negative things that come with that.
- Administration? Who?
- Some classes are fun, some aren’t. You won’t know until you’re in the program for a bit. If you’re the type of person who’s nervous about it, it’s a risk that I wouldn’t advise taking.
You mentioned the wellness program. Some people use it, some don’t. Props to the person in charge of it. They’re doing the best they can. In reality, the changes that need to be made are much bigger than a wellness program. The undergrad campus needs to expand Greek life, get a football team, massively increase on-campus student body size, have big concerts/events on campus, etc., to improve student engagement. The medical school needs to transition to a 7 year program, thus allowing for some time off, a real bachelor’s degree, more electives, time for research, study abroad, etc. Also, 6 year program class sizes need to be much larger for many reasons. With the larger class sizes they need to use the tuition to completely renovate the med school.
Hope this helped.
@cakapripi, sorry with #4 - by administration I meant mainly the support staff – ETCs, Assistant Deans, Office of Student Affairs, Career Advising Office, the Councils (Curriculum & Evaluation) who make curriculum and promotion policy, etc. I don’t know how far deep you are in terms of year, as usually you have more contact with the above by then, but was asking for the edification of our parent and student audience as to how you thought the BA/MD student body felt in terms of whether they feel like they are supported by the school (vs. classes feel like they are working against them). I ask, since it was one of the questions asked at the Q&A interview days this year by parents.
With your #1 - I guess I was asking in what way(s) the student body at UMKC (I’m assuming you’re referring to the BA/MD subset) was different from other schools or combined programs you were considering.
Thank you for all your answers. #2 is a very common feeling, esp. in the BA/MD population here I think, and is easy to get wrapped up in and not see the forest for the trees, since all of you in the class, esp. in most of the first 2 years are coming from high school. I also have to give a lot of credit and kudos to the person running the Wellness program, but like you said I think many of the changes that they need to make or should make (referring to the BA/MD program here) that would make BA/MD students’ lives better, are things that are much bigger than her and may not be in her power to change.
@Roentgen
I know what you meant by #4. I was being sarcastic in my answer to indicate that we have little to no contact with any administrators besides our ETCs to schedule classes.
I wasn’t considering any other combined programs. I think they’re a very bad idea. I was talking about the obvious difference between a normal large undergraduate college and UMKC: a small commuter school that many people confuse with KU when they hear the name (until last month, if you googled “UMKC School of Medicine,” “KU School of Medicine” was the recommended search result…).
“edification of our parent and student audience” … haha you just blew your cover as a UMKC SOM employee
For #4 – I didn’t mean actual face-to-face contact, necessarily. For example, most students will never ever meet face-to-face, with those on the Councils, however, they are very much affected by their policies that come out of there and those policies and policy changes do indeed affect the overall morale of the student body which can then affect their performance. So in that way, the administration does have an effect on students.
I’m sorry you feel that I’m a “UMKC SOM employee”, just because I used the word “edification” or the word “audience”. If so, I am probably the worst employee ever as I am hardly some type of shill for them. I myself have said previously that I would not have done the program, if I had the chance to do things all over again. The truth is we have quite a few parents, as well as students, here, who do want to know more about the inner workings of the school and the environment of the program that they will be sending their child to, which isn’t directly stated in brochures and websites, and you have a vantage point into that. They’ve also asked great questions here, and their concerns are also just as valid. Anyways, it was very much a sincere question, with no malicious intent. Best of luck to you.
@Roentgen My bad then. Sorry for assuming.
I guess I could’ve done more, like attempted to get on some of those councils to affect change, but I don’t at all feel as if I would’ve been listened to. That being said, those positions are decided by student held elections, so it’s a popularity contest - it has nothing to do with who would have the best ideas or be able to provide the most accurate feedback.
Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future about this deep, pit-in-my-stomach regret I have about coming here if I get into a wonderful residency program in an awesome city surrounded by funny, outgoing, sarcastic residents with whom I really connect, and have a blast at work and outside of it. It just seems like it would have to be exceptionally perfect to truly make up for the missed experiences, whether perceived or actual, that I feel I’ve lost.
I hope I answered all your questions. If I didn’t, or if you have more, feel free to ask.
What were the main reasons your classmates left? I know UMKC allows outside students into the MD part of the program (Jan matriculation) to replace those who have left the cohort.
Was it the academics? Or did they feel the same way you did so rather than sticking it out, they left?
Honestly I didn’t hangout much with anyone that left. That being said, I’ve been told by people in my class that I’m one of the few people in our class who really hangs out/parties with/goes out with a lot of non-med students in addition to people in my class.
From what I remember or from what I heard, though, it was grades. But if you think about it, people who feel like I do probably wanted to party more often - like I try to - which can negatively impact grades for some people, so it was probably a combination of both.
@cakapripi, no offense taken. The student representation on the Councils is very minimal both in number and influence, and as you said they are elected positions, which as you can imagine, can tend to be more filled by the apple polishers of the class who are doing it more for perceived CV purposes (emphasis on “perceived” since honestly, residencies don’t give a ****) and thus don’t want to rock the boat, rather than those who have really great ideas to make good, substantive changes to the BA/MD program – and as you mentioned, there are many. We never really liked it when they came up with new policies (they were almost always to clamp down or to make things harder when we were already doing our best with what we had and trying hard), as we felt many times they were being reactive, rather than proactive on situations and complaints. I do believe that many do not inherently understand what students in an accelerated, combined program such as this are going thru. All these things can greatly impact the student experience, so I didn’t know if that aspect had changed.
I do hope things get better for you though or at least to a point to where find a specialty/program that can give you the satisfaction you’re looking for.
Hey guys, 1 week + 1 day left before the May 2nd deadline. If you guys have any questions about the program please ask away. Now is the time to ask. Hopefully you guys have also gotten to talk with UMKC BA/MD upperclass(wo)men as well as former alumni as well.
If we are doing BLA do we need AP Lit credit if we have AP Lang and at least a 30 on the English part of the ACT? Also do we need AP Gov and AP macro credit if we have APUSH and AP Euro? And if we have AP Calc credit do we need AP Stats?
@swag14, if you see here: http://www.umkc.edu/registrar/transfer-credit/#anchor-2:[ul]
[]AP English Literature gives you credit for some random English Literature course elective (English 124): https://catalog.umkc.edu/course-offerings/undergraduate/english/, which can go towards the hours in the Humanities division of the BLA, since it’s under English.
[]AP English Language credit from junior year gives you credit for Discourse I, as you well know.
[]AP US History will you credit for the Missouri Constitution requirement.
[]AP European History will give you credit for the Focus A requirement as part of the Core General Ed Requirements: http://www.umkc.edu/core/.
[li]AP US Govt. (since you already have Constitution credit) and AP Macroeco will give you hours towards the Social Sciences division of the BLA.[/ul][/li]http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2015-2016/SOM_BLA_MD_2015_2016.pdf
Hope that clears things up.
Wow … this thread is getting so long !!! I feel for all the parents and applicants who have to sift through 369 pages of posts! lol Also, having gone through the process now, I’m happy to answer questions for those that were unsuccessful or for future applicants!
This thread is old enough to enter middle school/junior high. =))
@sapuos, maybe a good question to ask, since you went thru the MMI interview this year, is what resources you used to prepare for it (websites, books, DVDs, an actual MMI prep course, etc.) and how did you prepare for it at home (or at school, if that was the case). There are so many things out there, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, that it might help those applying this fall to know what they should narrow it down to, once they get to the interview stage and have a month or two to prepare for the MMI in March.
@Roentgen, I know you said that students don’t dissect cadavers but you said they see prosections, did you think that was enough to learn Anatomy for your boards and later on? I know you said it was tradition not to dissect, but learning is learning and didn’t know what you think should change to make it better. I’m hoping I’m not missing anything else that traditional students do that UMKC students don’t do.
So I’m assuming you’re talking about Human Structure Function (HSF), not Year 1 Anatomy. As mentioned before, we don’t dissect due to tradition due to the school’s founder, who actually passed away recently: http://www.diastole.org/founders-bios/. I believe prosections was seen as some sort of compromise since it was becoming a problem in terms of Anatomy on Step 1 and complaints from the Surgery dept. on students’ anatomy knowledge they were coming in with, but the practice of not dissecting has very much still been in place. IMHO, I think it is also one contributor as to why many of our students don’t consider surgery or the surgical subspecialties later on.
I can only speak for myself personally, but I didn’t think it was enough. Part of the way you really learn anatomy and which structures are more deep or superficial, medial or lateral to other structures, as well as the thickness/thinness of structures, is thru dissection. Yes, it might take time, yes it might be a little P.I.A., but just seeing an already prosected cadaver or an book atlas picture (which is only a specific cut or view, so you’d only be memorizing how it looks in that specific cut/view, which can be easily changed to another cut/view and you’d have no idea what it is), doesn’t really let you appreciate the anatomy well. As mentioned in the thread, it looks like students now use the Visible Human Project in the course, which has been there for a while, since the late 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Human_Project, which we actually got introduced to briefly in Year 1 Anatomy Lab. You’ll have to ask current students if it really has changed anything overall in terms of learning anatomy in HSF, since they apparently now require students to buy it for the course.
In General Surgery, you will be readily pimped during the surgery in real-time (https://drottematic.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2009/11/30/pimping-in-medicine-the-delicate-art-of-making-someone-feel-small/) to answer questions from the attending on the particular anatomy involved in that surgery, that you are assumed to have learned in med school anatomy, which then contributes to your clinical evaluations at the end of the rotation.
The prosections are used to demonstrate anatomical concepts to specific clinical cases, but the problem is that they have students teach each other. The class is divided into lab groups and then go into the lab in a specific order (which changes each session) having read the cases beforehand in theory, with the first group learning from the professor(s) at the prosected cadaver, and then one person from that group stays to teach the entire case and cadaver to the next group that comes in, and the cycle continues, etc. So as you can imagine, depending on the person, it can be really great or really bad (realize we aren’t experienced anatomists, and it’s not like a cadaver looks like the pictures/colors you see in a book - where red = artery, blue = vein, yellow = nerve, etc.). The professors are walking around, but it’s more to survey things, not to necessarily teach it all over again for the next group. So as you can imagine, you can have faulty, or clearly wrong information transmitted to several groups, which kind of defeats the entire purpose of learning from prosections in the first place.
The way other medical schools have done it is with combination of lecture, dissection lab, viewing and learning anatomy thru diagnostic imaging on screens like this: https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/cela/surgical-and-anatomical-simulation-sas. That’s probably the best way to be prepared when it comes to boards as well as on the clinical wards.
@Roentgen I’m happy to share and contribute to this thread since I got so much out of it! I’ve had several people message me so I thought I would just address everything out in the open.
To begin, I’m instate and had a 3.92 unweighted GPA with a 32 ACT score.
With my stats, ACT score and being instate, I felt I had a decent shot at the program. I spent approximately, 3-4 weeks working on my essays with the help of my parents, siblings, friends, school teachers. Everyone was wonderful and reviewed my essays giving me helpful feedback on what they thought my application lacked. My teacher also suggested that I should get my application reviewed by a former UMKC SOM adcom member prior to submitting to see if there was something glaringly missing from my application. I told my parents about it and they thought it was a good idea, so we went ahead with it. We submitted my entire application (including reference letters) for review. I don’t know exactly who from UMKC reviewed it (so please don’t ask me) because in the feedback I received, everything was blurred out except for the @umkc.edu portion, but as it turns out, they felt my application had two glaring red flags, that in hindsight, I’m not sure how ALL of us missed, but I’m so glad we put my application in the hot seat and got that sorted out before submitting. I’m so thankful for my teacher, because I don’t think my application would have made the first cut otherwise.
Wasn’t worried about the Toledo exam.
Next came the MMI.
I began my interview prep in December, because I was told ahead of time I had a ~70% chance of receiving an interview at UMKC. I started out just googling MMI UMKC BA/MD to see what was out there and sure enough this thread was one of the hits! I bought two books from Amazon, MMI for the Mind and MMI Winning Strategies. I found MMI for the Mind much more realistic and comparable to what I had on my UMKC interview (minus the acting stations) as a lot of the scenarios were not too technical and medical. MMI Winning Strategies was ok, but the problem was many of the MMI scenarios in there are very technical (ie. your patient does this, you are their doctor) and in most cases, as a high schooler, I thought they were way above my head and assumed that you had some background medical knowledge. I thought the scenarios in MMI Winning Strategies were definitely not representative of the scenarios I had for my UMKC interview.
I basically spent the first two weeks of January just practicing scenarios I could find for free on the internet with family, friends, teachers. My hs teacher told me that my answers were “ok”. My mom suggested that I sign up for a practice MMI session with a company that she read had a lot of success with the UMKC BA/MD program. So I had my first practice MMI session with them even before I found out whether I would receive an interview from UMKC. It was a real confidence killer initially because I was told basically my answers lacked this, lacked that etc. Then the great news (INTERVIEW INVITE!!!) came at the end of January and I continued these interview sessions on a weekly basis all the way through until a week before my real interview, in addition to practicing with family, friends, teachers on what I had learned during these sessions on a daily basis. I also read up on the UW bioethics site which is free and in my opinion more than enough for the ethics portion of the UMKC interview.
Looking back, I definitely felt well prepared for my UMKC interview, but had my parents not enrolled me in weekly practice MMI sessions, I think I would have been under prepared in a lot of ways, because receiving help from those around me was in a lot of ways, kinda like the blind helping the blind (love you mom!).
Overall, I really enjoyed my MMI interview at UMKC and there were definitely a number of things that helped make me stand out. In terms of the MMI interviews at UMKC, they are generally very relaxed (except for 1 station!!) and felt like were more of a hybrid mix (instead of being true MMI … if you know what I mean). The stations were exactly as I had practiced in terms of content/follow up questions and in two of the stations, I even had an interviewer tell me EXCELLENT! after I gave my response (although I was told in advance that might not mean much)… lol.
Anyhow, that’s my perspective and I hope it helps! Phew … excuse my long post !!!
@sapuos How did you find a former adcom member to look at ur app? Just curious lol
Wow, really great post @sapuos! Thank you. Was the former SOM admissions member someone your school/teacher knew or something officially thru UMKC SOM that they offer as a service to initially review? I saw this in the forum and didn’t know what this was referring to: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/multiple-degree-programs/1879075-umkc-ba-md-interview-calculator.html or if what you mentioned was part of that.
Oh, and don’t worry about long posts. If it was a crime, I’d be serving a life sentence for repeated offenses. I think it also helps members a lot since things that might seem intuitive to current students, isn’t as intuitive for those looking at the program from the outside and gives great information. There’s a reason why our thread has the highest number of views in the forum, 958.2K views and counting (Party when we get to a million!)
Part of what I think practicing at home can achieve is to alleviate the nerves and maybe be able to think in a relative time crunch with the timing. The MMI is very different than what students have ever done up until this point. Parents usually aren’t able to give feedback in terms of the quality of an answer (even the ones who are physicians, since the MMI didn’t exist back then). I do think based on what I’ve seen with the MMI that I’ve read about and heard from people tell me about the MMIs, is that it seems very Kabuki theaterish, hence the need now people feel to spend even more additional money to do courses for an interview, which pains me a little. I have no doubt they actually help, I’m just remarking about a process which is already expensive to begin with, this sort of student arms race that has skyrocketed, not you specifically.
Just based on my PMs, I think in terms of acceptance/rejection/waitlist, I think the overall process has become very much holistic in the sense that each part is a specific percentage contributor to calculate the end result, even though none of us will be told what percentage each part exactly contributes. Much different from the way that it used to be where that was all evaluated, but once you got to the cut of the interview, it sort of started all over where everyone was on the same footing and the interview mainly was the thing that was used. Not saying you can do well on the other parts, and absolutely flub up your interview completely, but just saying that those other parts don’t disappear once you get to the interview, like it used to. I liked it like that just because I think students felt more at ease to be themselves, as UMKC has never been test score/GPA centric the way the more competitive programs are.
These are the factors that contribute, based on the handouts given on the day of the interview, seen in the thread.
ACT/SAT Score
Unweighted High School GPA
Rigor of High School Curriculum
Essay/Personal Statement
High School Activities
Healthcare Experience
Reference Forms
Interview