So for some reason, of all the things I thought I could have been asked to add to the Google Doc, I’m getting quite a few questions/messages about adding a “Relationships in Medical School” section to the Google Doc with advice, common observations/pitfalls, and how well relationships last in the 6 year program, for those who are starting in the Fall. I feel like Dr. Drew on Loveline, lol. I’ll add that section after this weekend and post here when it’s updated.
So this week, like I said before, I’m going to go thru each section of the UMKC BA/MD app process. I think it will be helpful in several ways:[ol]
[]freshmen/sophomores who are beginning to learn, in general, about what combined Bachelor/MD programs are, what things they should be planning ahead for, starting some basic EC involvement (while mainly focusing on maintaining grades in school and prepping well for college entrance standardized exams). A good start is looking at Chapter 11 “Undergraduate/MD Programs” in The Official Guide to Medical School Admissions (also called the MSAR) released by the AAMC every year: http://members.aamc.org/eweb/upload/Official_Guide_Preview_2016.pdf. You can also just as easily look at previous MSARs in your local libraries and go to the specific chapter on combined Bachelor/MD programs, as it really changes very little.
[]juniors who are in the midst of really building up their CVs and finishing up their standardized exams
[]incoming seniors, who will be wrapping things up after this summer/early fall to apply in the fall.
[]parents, who are also learning about this entire process from the beginning and want to know what they can do to help their son/daughter and streamline things[/ol]
Since it’s quite a bit to cover from top to bottom, I’m probably going to do a section at a time and just label it by parts - Part 1, Part 2, etc. I thought of pasting it in a GoogleDoc, but I wanted this to be easily seen by people who’ve never used GoogleDoc before (including parents, for whom even using all the features of College Confidential can be a challenge).
So let’s get started:
PART 1
UMKC Application for Admission (Available after August 1):
So this is the general application for admission to the undergraduate university which is on the Volker Campus. I’m not going to go thru the online UMKC General Application for Admission, as it’s pretty self-explanatory, although you can see it here in PDF format: http://www.umkc.edu/apply/documents/umkc-application.pdf. Most BA/MD applicants who are applying easily make the cutoffs for undergraduate admission to UMKC. It can be easily completed online.
In order to go on to the next step of being evaluated for the BA/MD program, you do have to receive an acceptance to the undergraduate institution FIRST (which is relatively easy). So obviously, if you’re not accepted to the undergrad to begin with, then you won’t be considered for the combined program.
Grade Point Average (GPA):
http://blog.prepscholar.com/whats-a-weighted-gpa-how-to-calculate-it
So each high school/school district across the country will have a different GPA system in which they go by. Because there are so many varying systems, it’s important to put them all along some consistent plane for comparison. So UMKC does this (to my understanding) by going by an UNweighted GPA. Meaning on this scale, a Pre-AP/Pre-IB/Honors/AP/IB course is NOT given extra weight in terms of the calculation of the GPA. Which then leads to the next section, regarding rigor.
For the entering Year 1 2015-2016 class, the average unweighted GPA was 3.81, with a range of 3.2 - 4.0. The minimum to be considered for admission to the BA/MD program is a 3.0.
This does NOT look to be your cumulative high school unweighted GPA printed on your transcript (see under “Holistic Review of Applications” - “the candidate’s unweighted high school GPA in the 17 core requirements of the university”): http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/admission-requirements-eligibility/. Those 17 core requirements are:
Rigor of high school curriculum:
http://blog.prepscholar.com/what-does-a-rigorous-high-school-courseload-look-like
By rigor of your high school curriculum, the program is more trying to see - did you take a demanding or rigorous curriculum that requires more effort and dedication - i.e. Pre-AP/Pre-IB/Honors/AP/IB courses or did you stick with all, if not mainly, “regular”/on-level courses
This will vary at your particular school in terms of available course offerings, but in general, this means, having Pre-AP/Pre-IB/Accelerated, AP/IB, Honors, dual college credit, or college prep classes on your transcript, and more importantly, DOING WELL in those courses.
Class rank:
So based on what was said earlier in the thread in this past 2015-2016 application cycle, at an application workshop done by the School of Medicine, it looks like that your high school class rank is no longer looked at (I don’t know why) at the BA/MD application level.
That being said, if you are a freshman just starting out, these are what you should try to aim for at minimum in terms academic achievement: https://www.umkc.edu/admissions/docs/2009MedApplication.pdf (see page 5) [Note: This is a 2008-2009 BA/MD application]
In-state (Missouri) - rank within the top 10% of the graduating class
Regional (Arkansas, Kansas, Illinois, Nebraska or Oklahoma) & Out-of-state - rank within the top 5% of the graduating class.
Transcript:
Have an official mailed transcript from your high school sent to the university. This should includes grades up until the end of your junior year. UMKC does not require a mid-year transcript to be sent, unlike some other schools. The only other time a transcript will be needed will be once you’ve been given an acceptance and they need a final transcript confirming that you’ve indeed graduated from high school.
Standardized test scores
http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/admission-requirements-eligibility/ - Look under “ACT/SAT Score”
Important to note from the above link: The latest test score accepted for initial application review is the October test date. October test scores are considered as “on time” for admissions consideration. If a student is selected for an interview, the latest test score accepted for final review is the December test date.
So right now, the UMKC BA/MD program accepts either the ACT or the SAT (previously called the SAT Reasoning Test). If you’re from Missouri, you are REQUIRED to submit the ACT. If you’re regional or out-of-state, you may submit an ACT or SAT score, as different states have different preferred exams – i.e. http://www.studypoint.com/ed/sat-and-act-test/.
The school does NOT superscore. You can see what superscoring means here: https://ink.niche.com/act-sat-superscore-your-test-scores/. It’s essentially taking the highest scores from each section, regardless of particular test date, to come up with the highest score. To reiterate, UMKC does NOT do this. Also, the writing sections of the ACT and the SAT are not looked at.
As of now, the UMKC program does not ask for applicants to take SAT Subject Exams in particular areas the way some other Bachelor/MD programs do (i.e. Miami HPME, Northwestern HPME, GWU, etc.). AP Exam scores do not enter into the application process, since those are more for obtaining credit, AFTER you’ve matriculated.
Starting with the 2015-2016 application year, the MINIMUM ACT score is a 24 (1090 SAT). This is not equivalent to being assured an interview if you were to get a 24. It’s the minimum floor to even be considered. To put in perspective, the average ACT score for those Year 1s who entered in 2015-2016 was a 31 (this is in-state, regional, and out-of-state all together)
to be continued with Part 2…
PART 2
Personal Information, Program Information, Education Information, Statement of Student Responsibility, Technical Standards
These should all be very easy to fill out. You can fill all this out in less than an hour.
PART 3
Personal Statement
http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/apply/ (Go to “Essay”). There is a 500 word limit for the personal statement.
So this is your traditional personal statement as to why you wish to pursue medicine thru the physician pathway, as well as specifically why through a combined, accelerated 6 year program AND the program at UMKC versus the traditional 4+4 pathway that nearly everyone else does. This is the key. It’s not enough to just address the former point, the latter point is also just as important.
Work on this over the summer, have it read by others (family, teachers, counselors, etc.), edit/revise/proofread (http://sites.middlebury.edu/middwrite/2011/02/16/revision-editing-and-proofreading-what%E2%80%99s-the-difference/) and be ready to paste into the application. DO NOT have other people write this section for you. They’ll be able to tell. Adults know what experiences and views 17/18 year olds have, even with the best academics and ECs and when an essay looks “too” perfect. Write from the heart, tell what & how your experiences have impacted you personally to choose this specific career pathway, etc.
PART 4
Additional short answer responses
http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/apply/ (Go to “Short Answer Responses”)
[/list]It looks like in the past 2 years below, only one short answer prompt was replicated. The rest were different, in different years, when the application first came out in August. Luckily they’re only 200/250 words long, so it doesn’t take that long to write. Again, just like with the personal statement above, type it out yourself, have someone/several people look it over, edit/revise/proofread (http://sites.middlebury.edu/middwrite/2011/02/16/revision-editing-and-proofreading-what%E2%80%99s-the-difference/), and paste the final version into the application. DO NOT have other people write this section for you.
PART 5
High School/College Activities and Leadership
http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/apply/ (Go to “Activities and Leadership”)
From excerpts from the application posted earlier in the thread: “reviews your high school/college activities to better understand you and your involvement and leadership in activities outside of the classroom.”
These are to show your involvement in things that are not straight academics (i.e. grades and standardized test scores). Are you someone who just does the required: wake up, go to school, come home, study, eat, sleep and repeat? Do you have some level of involvement outside of just required classes? What is the extent of your involvement and why in those specific areas? Do you take leadership roles amongst your peers? How well do you get along with other people and in working towards a goal (including people you may not naturally agree with or even are friends with personally)? Why is all this important? Because part of being a physician involves some aspects of being a leader, at some level. It doesn’t mean you have to be a leader in every single thing you attempt, of course. This is overall what this section shows. Remember, you are limited to 10 activities and these are to be NON-healthcare oriented activities.
Leadership:
http://www.collegeconfidential.com/dean/what-qualifies-as-leadership-on-college-applications/
http://www.studypoint.com/ed/high-school-student-leadership/
https://www.noodle.com/articles/how-to-get-leadership-experience-in-high-school
From the application for each activity (limit 10):
*** under the description, list any honors or awards you’ve gotten for that activity, since there is no separate section for honors & awards on the application
Activities that count as part of this category:[ol]
[]school sponsored clubs and organizations - officially school sanctioned student organizations
[]community related activities - activities outside of school (non-healthcare) that aren’t volunteering/community service
[]volunteer experience and/or community service - non-healthcare, pretty self-explanatory
[]work experience - a job in which you are getting monetary compensation usually outside of school, i.e. a part-time job or full-time job during the school year or over the summer[/ol]
Examples of school sponsored clubs and organizations[ul]
[]Class Officer, Student Council President
[]Cheerleader, Dance Squad
[]Sports – Football, Basketball, Soccer, Track & Field, Tennis
[]Speech and Debate
[li]Clubs – Academic Bowl/Decathalon, Math & Science Club, Chess Club, Foreign Language Clubs, Community Service Clubs[/ul][/li]Any leadership positions (if applicable) – head cheerleader, varsity football captain, drum major, first-chair saxophone, officer of a specific club or organization, etc.
Examples of Community Service/Volunteering
being a teacher’s aide in the summer, reading to kids at your public library, taking part in a recycling/environmental initiative, doing Meals on Wheels, taking part in Habitat for Humanity, etc. There are TONS of great ideas (non-healthcare related), more of which you can find here, in your area:
http://www.volunteermatch.org
http://www.allforgood.org/
PART 6
Health Experiences
http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/apply/ (Go to “Health Experiences”)
http://www.premedlife.com/feature-articles/5-extracurricular-activities-every-medical-school-admissions-committee-wants-to-see_7334-1403/
http://www.prospectivedoctor.com/how-to-stand-out-with-extracurricular-activities/
excerpts from the application posted earlier in the thread: “reviews your health experiences to better understand your involvement with health-related activities and your investigation of the medical profession.”
Do not list experiences in this section that you have already listed in the High School/College Activities & Leadership section. You are limited to 10 health-related activities.
From the application for each activity (limit 10):
School related
any official in-house clubs or organizations at your high school which give some type of healthcare exposure: i.e. HOSA (Health Occupations Students of America)
Work experience
any healthcare related type of experience in which you are getting monetary compensation – i.e. emergency room tech, pharmacy tech, phlebotomist, EMT, physician scribe, and paramedic. These can be harder to find or be able to certify for as high school students.
Structured/Formal program
any official program (can be outside of your high school) that gives exposure to healthcare/medicine, i.e.:
http://med.umkc.edu/summerscholars/
https://www.envisionexperience.com/explore-our-programs/national-youth-leadership-forum-medicine
http://www.nslcleaders.org/youth-leadership-programs/summer-medical-programs/
http://blog.prepscholar.com/medical-programs-for-high-school-students
Volunteer experience
any healthcare related type of experience in which you are NOT getting paid but doesn’t fall into a structured/formal program or shadowing
Shadowing
This explains best of what shadowing is and more importantly WHY you should be doing it, and thus why med schools want to see evidence of this:
http://www.uwmedicine.org/education/md-program/admissions/applicants/shadowing
http://www.uwmedicine.org/education/documents/md-program/Shadowing.pdf
Shadowing some type of healthcare professional → since you’re applying for medical school to become a physician), it would help to shadow physicians (although it’s not necessarily a requirement). This is probably much easier done with a private practice physician who works in a solo or group practice, although it is possible to do this at an academic teaching hospital
Research
- can be directly or indirectly medicine/health related, usually in science
- this can be laboratory based (so test tubes, beakers, blah blah) or less commonly at your age level, clinically based (going thru patient charts, usually)
- usually under a college/university PhD professor or an MD clinician, under the supervision of postdocs or research fellows
- can be done on your own or thru an official program: http://blog.prepscholar.com/medical-programs-for-high-school-students
Best to probably do this in the summers, although depending on time commitment it can be done during the school year. Hopefully you’ll get something tangible – it can be a poster, an oral presentation, an abstract, or a publication, although it’s not necessarily mandatory. At the more competitive combined programs, it’s not uncommon for applicants to have 1 tangible result of their research.
Other health experience
anything healthcare related that does not fit into any of the above categories.
Healthcare setting examples:
http://www.jblearning.com/samples/0763746878/46878_CH01_pass1.pdf
[ul]
[]Hospitals - General, Specialty, Rehabilitation, Behavioral Health (Psychiatry) – Adult and Children’s hospitals
– county, private community, VA (Veterans’ Affairs) hospital, academic teaching hospital, ambulatory surgical centers
[]Long-Term Care Facilities - Assisted Living Facility, Independent Living Facility, Nursing, Residential Care, Retirement Community
[]A private practice (solo or group practice) physician’s office (usually more on an outpatient basis)
[]Emergency Room
[]Urgent Care Facility
[]Home Health Services
[]Hospice or a Palliative Care facility
[]Indigent care/Free clinics[/ul]
PART 7
Recommendation Provider
http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/apply/ (Go to “Step 4: Reference Forms”)
So the UMKC SOM does not ask for actual letters of recommendation. As you can imagine, letters can be very variable in terms of the person’s prose in describing you specifically, and not very standardized in terms of being able to directly compare applicants. Instead, they will have your recommenders fill out a reference form, see pages 17-18: https://www.umkc.edu/admissions/docs/2009MedApplication.pdf (Note: This application is from the 2008-2009 application cycle, but at least you can see, more or less, what are the parameters and characteristics being looked at, as well as the spectrum of the type of scale you’re evaluated on, more or less).
Teachers, counselors, school administrators or others who can speak to your academic ability AND personal character can complete the online UMKC School of Medicine Reference Form (No family members, your neighbor, etc.).
DO NOT have your references send in a letter of recommendation, in addition to filling out and submitting the online form. They fill out the reference form on the online form platform and that’s it. It even says, “Letters of recommendation will not be accepted in place of or in addition to the official Reference Form. References will not be accepted by email or mail, but must be submitted online.”
When I applied, you got 3 hardcopy reference forms to give directly to 3 people and they mailed the form in. Now they have you enter in the recommender’s email on the application so that the form goes directly to the person, who then submits it online. A minimum of three fully complete reference forms are required for a complete application, although you’re allowed a maximum of 6.
As a general rule (since you guys will be applying to other places) in this area:[ol]
[]Bring in a typed CV with listing your accomplishments from 9th-12th grade to give your recommenders. This is a good start: http://www.mass.edu/gearup/documents/WritingaResume.pdf. Write down your academic accomplishments, your ECs, etc.
[]Please give your teachers/counselors/principals enough time, plus some, in which to be able to write your letters of recommendation or fill out college reference forms. I recommend the first week of August when you get back to school. Contrary to what you may believe, your teachers, counselors, principals, have lives outside of their careers - personal, their own families w/children, etc. It’s basic human courtesy and respect to give someone enough time to fill out something for your application to a school, internship, job, etc.
As someone who has written letters of recommendation for people, it really does take time to sit down, clear your head, and write well about you and often it’s not in just one sitting. You give me less time to write your letter/fill out a form, I can’t write about you as well as I’d like. So at best, it can end up being a lukewarm letter, which isn’t helpful.
[*]If you want to know whether you’ll get a strong recommendation, when requesting, you should ask the question like, “Do you think you’d be able to write me a strong letter of recommendation/reference form for applying to [School X]/UMKC’s 6 year combined BA/MD program”? It gives people who wouldn’t feel comfortable writing you a strong letter for a variety of reasons (but who don’t want to hurt your feelings) a good “out”, so to speak, so that you can look for an alternative person. I repeat, you DO NOT want either a lukewarm or a mediocre recommendation on the reference forms. You want them to be a strong advocate for you.[/ol]
PART 8
Certification and Submission
http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/apply/ (Go to “Step 5: Check the Status of Your Application”)
Once you’re satisfied with what you’ve filled out and entered in the form, the personal statement, and short answer responses, you can submit the application. Once you submit the BA/MD supplemental application, you won’t be able to make any more changes to it. Follow up to make sure that all the other parts – transcript(s), score reports, the general application for admission, at least 3 completed reference forms, application fee, etc. have all been received. Once EVERYTHING is received, only then will your application finally be complete.
I REALLY want to get into the 6 - medial program at UMKC.
Below are my stats, it would really help if you guys could tell me if I had a chance or not.
PLEASE BE REALLY HARSH!! 
Just a little info about my weird high school… I was accepted to this school and it is one of the most renowned public schools in MA, junior year is VERY VERY tough basically all the classes are higher than the AP level ( and it stated as such on my transcript. And senior year we take freshman level classes at a local college
(From Massachusetts)
ACT: not out yet ( probably ~29)
SAT: 1260/1600
SAT II:
Math 2: 750
Chem: not out yet
Physics: not out yet
GPA: 3.74 UW
Class Rank: Not given
AP Calc AB: 5
AP Calc BC: 5
AP Physics CM: 4
Honors and Awards:
100 hr award for food bank hrs
Many awards for dance
( nothing really)
Extracurricular Activities:
Science Olympiad (Co-Captain)
Primary Instructor at KUMON
Math Team
National Honor Society
Indian Classical dance ( have gave many preformaces nationally and over seas & I teach)
Indian Classical Singing
Violin
Community Service:
Boston Children Hospital Volunteer (120+hours)
Tutoring Students
Food Bank ( 100 + hrs & got an award)
New England Hindu Temple Volunteer
Work Experience:
Kumon -Primary Instructor (2 Yrs)
My Dance School - Teacher’s Assistant
Health Related Stuff:
Shadowed an OBGYN doctor for a week
Shadowed 3 Doctors at a hospital ( won’t disclose names )
The ER surgeon is writing my recommendation
I will say in terms of the UMKC BA/MD program, very few out-of-state students come from places like Massachusetts, just as an FYI. So UMKC may or may not know your school’s history even if it is “one of the most renowned public schools in MA”. But as an out-of-state student, what hurts you the most, by far, is the 1260 out of 1600 on the SAT. You should bump that up to at least a 1400. The average ACT score for the entire Year 1 class entering 2015-2016, if you see my prior posts, was a 31 (so on the SAT that’s about 1360-1390 out of 1600; 2100-2150 out of 2400, according to this: http://www.studypoint.com/ed/sat-act-concordance/), and the out-of-state pool’s average standardized test scores would likely be higher than that 31, so a 29 would put you below average.
Have you taken some type of prep course, or gone thru many timed practice exams? Either way, I’d see if you can really prep really hard this summer and take the ACT again either in September and/or October, since the SAT is only offered one more time in October. Your SAT Subject Exams and AP Exam scores will not factor into the application process at UMKC - which sucks, since you did quite well on them.
Your unweighted GPA is pretty good, although still slightly below the average unweighted GPA of 3.81 but that will likely be taken in context with the rigor of your curriculum.
Your ECs in terms of school involvement look good. I don’t think you need to really expand anymore on that and should put your efforts towards other more glaring weaknesses. Your “Health Experiences” section is pretty weak. I would look at my post above (Part 6), to strengthen that over the summer and thru the early fall before submitting on Nov. 1.
I honestly don’t know what you mean by “basically all the classes are higher than the AP level”. AP level courses, by definition, are supposed to teach material at the introductory college level. So for example, AP Chemistry, is equivalent to General Chemistry I & II with the labs, which if you get the right score, gives you credit for that entire sequence, so you can move on to the next sequence (usually Organic Chemistry). And taking classes at a local college/community college (dual credit), is the same idea, although probably a little easier in terms of rigor, which is what you’re doing in your senior year.
@Roentgen,
Thank You SOOOOOO much for the feedback, I will definitely work on improving my application over the summer.
I’ve been reading this thread since last year, thanks for all that you do for us.
I’m an incoming Year 1 to the program, but I won’t have any Chem credit - I only got a 3 on the AP Chem test last year, which shocked me, as I thought I did so much better. It only gives me credit for CHEM 115, CHEM 115L. I didn’t take it again this year since it was so far back from when I learned it the year before. I can’t take Chem over the summer. We’re vacationing in India to visit family relatives, and will be staying there the entire summer. We haven’t seen them in a very long time. What should I do since I’ll be taking Chem all over again? I knew the stuff, it was just the AP test that sucked for me. Should I look at Organic now while I have time or during the school year?
Also what about Anatomy and Anatomy lab? I didn’t know if I should maybe just read the first several chapters in the book over the summer or something. I’ve never taken an Anatomy class in high school (I couldn’t fit in my schedule). HELP!!!
I was going to make a deadpan joke and tell you that you should have at least half of the required textbook read, with notes, by the time you start Year 1 in the fall, if you have any hopes of doing well. Then I realized that some people might actually take my joke seriously causing chaos, if they don’t see my later posts saying that I’m clearly joking. Oh well.
I don’t know about you, but when I was in school, we always got a summer AP English reading assignment to ruin our summers, so this is probably your first summer in a long time in which you don’t actually have something to do in terms of school, so you reflexively feel like you have to do something. So this is one thing I need to stress (and I can’t stress this enough) – this will be your last, completely free of any obligation, summer you will have until you finally graduate from the program. Unlike other accelerated combined Bachelor/MD programs, there is no summer that is built-in that you have “off”, with no coursework enrollment, either in Years 1-2 (which you could consider to be the “undergrad” part) or Years 3-6. Even most traditional 4 year medical schools give you your first summer after MS-1 off. You are enrolled full-time in some type of coursework every semester (including summers) for all 6 years to pay tuition & fees, regardless of the amount of incoming credit you have.
I’m not trying to intentionally scare you, but I am trying to point out the importance of completely capitalizing on this last summer vacation – traveling internationally as you are doing, spending real quality time with your family and friends before you move out to KC, tanning at the pool, work on your physical health, etc. Trust me, you’ll have the whole 6 years to study your heart out (even more than you even want to some days).
1) General Chem
If you did well in terms of actually learning the material the first time (for the most part) in AP Chemistry class, General Chemistry at UMKC will bore you to tears and 7:40 am class every MWF won’t make it any more palatable. One of my friends who was in the situation you are, was so utterly bored the first few class meetings (they literally spent an entire week over things like what matter is, what the scientific method is, converting units, significant digits, blah blah) he never came to class after that and only showed up for exams (and on days of attendance checks for extra credit) and completely aced the class, but keep in mind it’s because he was rehashing through the exact same material he had already covered in his AP Chem class. General Chemistry II does tend to be slightly harder, in terms of concepts and topics, just because you’re now building off from Chem I. You get 1 exam per month, which is more than enough time during the normal school semester.
2) Organic Chem 320
It’s not offered in the fall semester, only the spring and summer. It’s different from General Chem in that you have to be able to visualize things in 3D as there are reaction mechanisms you have to learn. For those of us who utterly suck at doing this (i.e. me), our professor allowed us to use a molecular model set on exams. Exam questions are usually more application in nature of what you’ve learned, rather than just memorizing facts or just plug and chug type of problems (where u go thru the same exact steps but just change the numbers up) in General Chemistry. If you’re really that bored with General Chem, I guess you could study Orgo material along with your classmates who are taking it in the spring so it’s not that huge of a shock to you in the summer. Orgo builds a little on SOME discrete concepts in Chem II, but since you’ve taken AP Chem, you probably already know them.
3) Anatomy
Year 1 Anatomy is colloquially called “baby” Anatomy, not because it’s a cakewalk, but because in comparison to the Anatomy taught in HSF, the information to master is actually pretty doable in terms of relative detail and the time you have to study for each midterm exam. If you’ve had a high school Anatomy & Physiology course offering which many public schools do offer (http://www.waconiahighschool.new.rschooltoday.com/page/3071), I do think Year 1 Anatomy will be easier for you just because you’ve probably already been exposed to the info, although if you haven’t, it doesn’t mean you’ll be at some huge disadvantage. Like General Chem, it’s about 1 exam a month, so 4 weeks is really enough time. So many of us, since we were just starting out in college, studied in groups, went to SI sessions, blah blah, etc. that it wasn’t a problem.
All this being said, I know 18 year olds, esp. Type A ones, don’t listen to people who’ve gone thru it before, no matter how right they may be, so this is what I would do. So if you are going to do something (and YOU DO NOT HAVE TO, just to be clear) - make your own flashcards or charts of the muscles and of the bones (with all of their anatomical landmarks and markings - tubercles, tuberosities, fissures, foramen, etc.) just because the info. volume tends to be very high here since there are obviously so many of them. For the muscles, do it as a group: Muscles of the forearm, Muscles of the posterior thigh, Muscles of the anterior thigh, blah blah. For the bones, you can do an index card for each specific bone. Unless things have vastly changed – knowing the origin and insertion of every muscle is not something that is required in baby Anatomy. Every other topic in Anatomy can be studied quite well within the time frame you’re given of 4 weeks.
Example flash card: a picture or drawing of the Humerus on the front – then the same drawing on the back with labels of all the anatomical markings – greater tubercle, lesser tubercle, intertubercular groove, anatomical neck, surgical neck, radial groove, capitulum, trochlea, etc.
Example flash card: picture or drawing of the muscles of the upper limb – then on the back, labels of all the muscles - biceps brachii, brachialis, brachioradialis, etc. all the way down to the end of the forearm (excluding the hand)
Then once you make them, you will already have them ready by the time you need them. You’ll see that a lot of terms and words in Anatomy you can easily learn and reason out in your head as to why they are named that way, knowing what certain medical greek & latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes mean, which you’ll learn in your Med Term class (hopefully), i.e. a muscle called serratus anterior, looks like a serrated knife, which is how you can remember it.
4) Anatomy Lab
So this is at the School of Biological Sciences where they have a lab room filled with anatomical models as well as microscopes for histology. There are no cadavers used here, nor dissection. You meet for 1 day a week for about 3 hours. That seems like a very long time, but depending on how many structures you have to go through, both on the plastic anatomical models and on microscope slides, it’s really not a whole lot of time, nor not enough times in terms of practicing repetition to get it down. It’s a lot of work for just a measly 1 credit hour class, in the grand scheme of things. The lab course doesn’t always correlate exactly in-step with the lecture course, so just keep that in mind.
Unless things have vastly changed, exams in this course tend to be lab practicals, so something like this: http://www.colorado.edu/intphys/iphy3415/samples/. Although obviously it would be in real-time at stations which are timed which you rotate at (See example pics here of how it kind of looks like: http://iws.collin.edu/mweis/Current%20Testing%20Folder%20for%20A&P%20Basics/Basics%20Lab/Basics%20Lab%20Practicals/basics_lab_practical_testing_instructions_MAP_version.html)
Tips:
-
Take any lab structure sheets that you get before your lab session, and write the textbook page number where you can find it, next to each structure, before the day of your specific lab. This is so that on the actual day of your lab, instead of wasting time going thru the index and flipping all over the book trying to find the specific structure in the limited time that you have, you’ll be able to flip directly to that page, see the specific structure, correlate it with the anatomy models they have, then move on to the next structure, etc.
-
Now with the invention of smartphones, you can probably take photos of the anatomic models or histology themselves and then study them later on your own time.
-
You can find many of the same models in the SBS as well as study some of the histology, at the Media Center at the medical school on the 2nd floor: http://med.umkc.edu/memc/ to practice with before your lab exam.
I am from Illinois and I am looking into the BS/MD program. I took the new SAT for the first time and got a 1340. I need advice on what I need to do to better my chances?
@Manu007, have you enrolled in some type of official commercial SAT prep course, like Kaplan or Princeton Review? What about going thru practice exams under testing conditions and then reading the explanations so you understand what you got right and what you got wrong? I don’t know much about the “new” SAT, as it’s been a while since I’ve taken high school standardized exams, which seem to always be changing.
What are some things that these programs look for besides the SAT/ACT?
See the list here:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19701171/#Comment_19701171
See the application starting here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19738185/#Comment_19738185
You can also see on the website here:
http://med.umkc.edu/bamd/admission-requirements-eligibility/
What are some example EC that I should look into I have already done:-
Student Council
Key club
FBLA
Science Club
Soccer
Track
Academic Team
Health Occupation Student Association
