Hey @GulabJamun,
No, it’s not too personal. In hindsight, if I had to pick which moment would have been best to leave, that would have been spring semester of Year 1 - so right after finals, but before having to stay longer in KC for Hospital Team. The reason that would have been best is that it is MUCH easier to transfer your credit at that point into a “real” bachelor degree. You also have a lot better chance of playing “catch up” in terms of graduating “on-time” in 4 years (if that’s a priority for you - which would have been the case for me), while doing the normal traditional 4 + 4 application process. It is difficult to make that transition much later on in the program, when you no longer are in undergraduate courses, but are taking BMS courses which don’t necessarily have an undergraduate equivalent, although Biochemistry is probably the one exception here, since there are upper-level undergraduate Biochem courses.
I think there definitely were red flags, but in Year 1, at that age and level of life experience, you tend to give more slack or ignore things that might make you go “Hmmmm…” otherwise. For example, from the beginning you’re already limited to very specific majors (now I guess you only get 3 options vs. the many more available before - Liberal Arts, Bio, Chem, but also Sociology, Psychology, Comm Studies, Philosophy, etc.), I mean what can you do if you wanted to do an undergraduate degree in Engineering or Business? Well at least for the 6 year program as it is now, nothing. You’d have to extend, assuming they’d even allow you those degrees and still be in the program. You have to understand most people in Year 1 are soaking up just not having to be premed (based on whatever (mis)perceptions they believe that entails). As a Year 1, you get “your” white coat, go to Docent, in which you get to “feel” like a doctor for 2 days a week. It would be a self-esteem booster for any incoming graduated high school student. You feel very “different” from your premed counterparts at UMKC and from home who are usually in General Bio and Chem while you’re taking Anatomy and Micro. I think in many ways it makes it that much harder to leave.
You likely won’t see, as a Year 1, all of the inherent compromises that you’re making just yet or the potential disadvantages that are part of the combined program, the medical school and university, at that point. Or you might think that all of those things are easily surmountable (that can be true in some instances andnot true in other instances, depending on what it is).
As far as why I didn’t leave the combined program, I think there are several reasons. Part of it I think was not wanting to “feel like” that I had somehow disappointed my parents, after deciding I wanted to go to medical school in the first place, trying to find out more about the alternative route to get there (The College Confidential Bachelor/MD forum did not exist back then, so applicants only had the MSAR book officially released by the AAMC, which has a chapter on Bachelor/MD programs, university packets/brochures, and maybe current students/alumni word of mouth if you happened to know someone personally), filling out an application, writing essays, getting references, interviewing, waiting for the decision, getting an acceptance, and jumping up and down with sheer joy that I had somehow “made it”.
In many ways I felt that it was my fault, that somehow I didn’t do enough due diligence to look behind the curtain at the program - not that I would have even known what to ask to find those answers at that age, and there wasn’t much available to turn to to get those answers. In reality, my parents would not have cared as much if I left at that point, if I was truly that miserable – it’s still 5 figure tuition, but is still relatively easier to pay off, but you know how Type A 19 year olds can be (or I guess you don’t know just yet!). By that time, I felt that I had already invested ~$90 K at that point (~$45 K if you’re in-state) for tuition alone for what was effectively a Liberal Arts degree. That’s several times over what I would have paid in total tuition for a full 4 year bachelor degree as an in-state student, at a great public undergraduate state flagship.
If I had pulled out of the combined program at the end of Year 2, I didn’t know if I would have been shooting myself in the foot to still be able to make it into a traditional 4 year med school or another healthcare professional school period, or even what new career to envision myself in, since so much of what I had aimed for up until that point was becoming a physician and trying to get into med school in the first place! I also think at THAT time, in terms of how the medical school interacted with and treated BA/MD students, there were prevailing perceptions (whether right or wrong) in the BA/MD student body that a) the school was purposefully trying to get more BA/MD students to extend or to extend and then eventually drop out, as well as make things harder, b) the school did not genuinely care about the legitimate complaints and concerns of BA/MD students, and c) the school was not likely to help out BA/MD students if or when they were to find themselves in some type of academic trouble in coursework - thus an overall huge problem in student advocacy type issues. So for many of us, we didn’t want that “system” we felt we were working against to win - which I think as a byproduct resulted in a MUCH more cohesive BA/MD class, although not under very great circumstances. Hopefully the above has actually changed in 2016, in terms of how the medical school addresses these issues that you asked @mrsoccer1448 about.
Good lord that was personal! No more personal questions on this thread ever!!! LOL. j.k. I do reserve the right not to answer though, which I haven’t had to use yet.
