UMKC 6-year BS/MD Program

Pre-Med & Medical School Multiple Degree Programs
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@potatopeel44, I’m not sure how much the Biology BA degree “messes up the schedule” later on in the BA/MD program these days, now that the science requirements for the Biology BA as part of the BA/MD program have changed immensely to be more in line w/the rest of us who do the Liberal Arts BA.

For example, Biology BA/MD students no longer have to take a 300-level Micro course with lab, they take the same 100 level Micro course with lab that the rest of the BA/MD students take. They also no longer have to take General Biology II with lab either. For lack of a better term, the Biology BA (as part of the BA/MD program curriculum only) has been watered down further in the course requirements.

Before:
https://cf1.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2009-2010/UMKC_Major_map_basic_MD_info_with_BA_BIO.pdf

Now:
https://cf1.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2016-2017/SOM_BA_MD_Bio_2016_2017.pdf

I’ll leave it to others, who did the Biology BA or Chemistry BA, to post whether they felt it was helpful for later School of Medicine required science courses. Most people end up doing the Liberal Arts degree by default. Since you have AP Chemistry credit to test out of both semesters of General Chem with labs, you’ll have quite a bit more flexibility and may be able to move up certain undergraduate science courses from where they are traditionally in the BA/MD major map.

I recommend CLEPing out of certain requirements (i.e. Psych 210, Missouri constitution credit if you haven’t AP’ed out, etc.): http://www.umkc.edu/registrar/transfer-credit/#anchor-2. You’re allowed a max of 30 credit hours from testing (AP, IB, CLEP) credit.

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Is anyone turning down their UMKC BA/MD spot?

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@sampil - There is a FB moderated group started by UMKC 2nd year mentor student for UMKC’s BA/MD potential class of 2023. You are better off joining that group and asking the question. The closed fb group name is “UMKC School of Medicine:Class of 2023”.

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@WGSK88 : Thanks for the info…

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Approximately when in May do the wait listed candidates get notified about admission?

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@studeninflorida, it starts after May 1. Last year they went in 2 week cycles until the whole class is filled up. You’re only contacted if an offer is made. Everyone on the waitlist is notified when the class is filled and no more offers will be made.

6127

2017 Match List analysis - Part 1 of 3

Class of 2017
Internal Medicine - 21
Pediatrics - 10
Medicine-Pediatrics (combined residency) - 2
Psychiatry - 6
Obstetrics & Gynecology - 5
Family Medicine - 6

General Surgery - 4
Orthopedic Surgery - 3
Otolaryngology - 3
Neurosurgery - 1

Emergency Medicine - 5
Diagnostic Radiology - 8
Interventional Radiology - 2
Radiation Oncology - 2
Anesthesiology - 5
Medicine-Anesthesiology (combined residency) - 1
Dermatology - 3
Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation - 1
Pathology - 1
Child Neurology - 2
Neurology - 2

Oral Surgery - 2 (OMFS for Dental school graduates only)

Preliminary Medicine - 1
Preliminary Surgery - 3
Transitional Year - 2

Hey guys, sorry, I’m a little late with my analysis of the 2017 match list, I wanted to wait so that any changes to the match list could be made if necessary after match day and then got a little busy. I’ll try to follow the same format as last year in 2016, with some repeats in terms of analysis.

As students this month will be comparing medical schools at different BS/MD programs (if you’re lucky enough to be in the position of having several Bachelor/MD acceptances in the first place, and it’s perfectly fine if you don’t), residency match lists will be one factor that you will look at. If you’re someone who has not gone thru medical school and does not know any physicians or those who are currently in medicine, it can be very difficult as a layman to properly interpret and reach proper conclusions from match lists for a particular school when making medical school matriculation decisions.

Part of interpretation of a school’s match list involves:

a) knowing which are the good residency training programs in each individual specialty, with the top-tier programs in each specialty (regardless of institution) being the most competitive
b) seeing geographically where most students/graduates from that school end up matching esp. in competitive areas (i.e. California) and in which specialties in those areas
c) looking at several years’ worth of match lists to see their past “track record” in being able to sending graduates to specific specialties/regions/program institutions

Top-tier doesn’t necessarily automatically mean Ivy League name prestige, although it can sometimes be true. Particular residency programs can also be more competitive for other reasons: easier residency lifestyle, geography (i.e. being located in sunny California or in New York City), etc.

It’s more helpful to notice match trends overall rather than to hyperfocus on any one particular person’s match or only on one particular year in evaluating a school. For example, noticing 1 hard-hitting stellar match and then extrapolating it to the entire student body/school/yourself is probably not a wise idea, as you don’t know the story behind it (unless you ask/email the person), i.e. did research at the NIH, did an audition elective rotation, have a personal/internal connnection, etc.

Context is always helpful in terms of evaluating any particular person’s residency match. For example, did that person have to take a year off from the BA/MD program to get some research publications under his/her belt in order to come back and hopefully match into a specific specialty? Is that person part of the military match? Did that person couples match with someone else in the same class? Did that person want to follow a spouse from a previous class and thus do residency in the same area? Was that person geographically restricted in some way (i.e. wanting to be closer to family; having a significant other not in medicine, who has to find a job in the area where the person matches)? Did that person do an audition rotation at the place where they matched and knocked their socks off? Were they an MD-only student, who may have done quite a bit of research or had ancillary degrees? Was that person unable to match from the previous match cycle year and had to apply again? All these factors can play into a med student’s match which is the result of a computer algorithm that incorporates an applicant’s rank order list, a residency training program’s rank order list of applicants, and the computer spits out the best possible outcome taking into account both lists. Keep in mind if someone currently in the class applied but didn’t match into any training position even for the the first year of internship, you will not see their name on this list.

Things you won’t be automatically able to see in a medical school’s match list for a particular year:

  1. Whether the specialty the person ended up matching into was that person’s #1 preferred specialty or whether they ended up matching into a backup residency specialty, whether that’s simultaneously applying for 2 specialties, not applying at all for their #1 preferred specialty and instead applying for their #2 preferred specialty that they’d like or at least be ok with and are more competitive for, or going thru the SOAP process (formerly called “The Scramble” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Resident_Matching_Program#Failure_to_match).

  2. Where that residency program was ranked on the applicant’s rank list (whether it’s their first choice or last choice).

Different BA/MD classes have different personalities. For example, one year a lot of people may want to go for more primary care oriented type specialties or one year may have a lot more people going for surgical specialties, which may not be the case in other years.

Med students also take other things into account, besides just the residency training program itself, when it comes to coming up with a rank list and matching with programs: geographical considerations, wanting to live closer to family, spousal considerations, the standard of living of the city - since you’ll be making a relatively low resident’s salary, during residency training. There are also rankings of residency hospitals/programs which you can see from USWNR: http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals and Doximity: https://residency.doximity.com/, which varies by specialty.

One thing I wanted to make clear as I did last year, is that my analysis of this year’s match list is not meant to be a personal judgment of the students themselves. It’s not meant as a personal attack or criticism. My goal is to try to point out trends compared with the school’s prior Match lists and compared to other medical schools. It is also helpful to those who may be considering a particular specialty and need to see a school’s prior track record in getting students into that specialty or in particular geographic areas, which will be relevant in their decision making. If you’re someone who is not at all sure what specialty you want and thus don’t want to feel restricted in any way (and you don’t have to know at this point at all by any means), looking at match lists to see the distribution of matches a particular school is able to get, in terms of specialties and programs, is important. That being said, I kind of think of the match lists as sort of turning on the tv about a minute before the end credits come on, and trying to figure out the plot from the tv show that happened 29 minutes before. You guys are seeing the final product, but you don’t see the years before that went into initially creating that product – studying for basic science courses, taking Step 1, clerkship performance, audition rotations, taking Step 2 CK, research and any publications that came from it, how the person decided which specialty to shoot for and when they decided, how much geography came into play, whether people couples matched, what backups were seriously considered, etc. which also has an effect on the end match, although you can still note common trends from year to year.

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2017 Match List analysis - Part 2 of 3

So in our strongest specialty at UMKC (in terms of higher level of exposure to IM, esp. at the Years 3-6 level), which is Internal Medicine, ON AVERAGE our students matched into middle-tier institutions, maybe strong middle-tier. In the past, as was this year, we have had 1-2 students (usually the top students academically) in a particular year match into top-tier places like Mayo and Wash U for IM who know the performance of our graduates well in their residency – notice that both are in the Midwest (vs. top tier programs on the East Coast - Hopkins Osler, UCSF, Mass General, Brigham and Women’s, Duke, Penn, etc.). Keep in mind, in comparison to traditional graduates, we do 4 more months of inpatient Internal Medicine than everyone else, not including our weekly half-day ambulatory IM clinics for 4 years, at which other schools, at most, do one month of ambulatory clinic. I think this confuses people, since the amount of Internal Medicine education we get at UMKC is much more when compared to other medical schools, so you’d think that we’d be matching more people into top-tier IM institutions easily in this field, since we get the added exposure and maybe greater confidence that students at other schools don’t get heading into IM. Of course, it’s much more complicated than this, which I won’t go into here, but clearly just having more student curricular exposure is not the only factor in selection for the top-tier IM residency programs, or it’s not enough on its own to justify taking someone, as that’s what residency training is for, in which the learning curve is very steep and thus people catch up quickly. Most people going for IM tend to go with the intention of becoming subspecialists thru fellowship - Cardiology, GI, Heme/Onc, Allergy, etc. although people also can become hospitalists as well.

For Pediatrics, most students matched into middle-tier and lower-tier Pediatrics residency programs, with one top-tier program match. In Peds, the rate of subspecializing after residency is different, as the income factor discrepancy isn’t as pronounced in the Peds world from generalist to specialist, as it can sometimes be in the IM world.

We had a more people match into Psychiatry than in previous past match lists (middle-tier and lower-tier programs), but that’s probably more indicative of the particular class. More people matched into OB-Gyn this year, once again probably more indicative of the particular class, 1 match at UMKC the rest at other places. Our OB-Gyn home residency program doesn’t have too many home subspecialty fellowships, compared to other places, similar to our General Surgery program.

As is pretty typical for our student match lists, very few in total of our students go for surgery, whether that’s general surgery or the surgical subspecialties, for a total of 11 this year, as our school’s overall emphasis is much more on Internal Medicine (thru the Docent system) and primary care specialties (Family Medicine and Pediatrics). Our only surgical residencies we have at UMKC are General Surgery and Orthopedic Surgery. All others Urology, ENT, Plastics, Neurosurgery, you will be dependent on outside institutions for matching into that field.

In terms of the more ancillary specialties: Radiology, Radiation Oncology, Ophtho, Anesthesiology, Derm, PM&R, etc., many of the matches that were in the more competitive specialties in this list were those who voluntarily took time off from medical school to do research in that specialty in order to increase their chances of matching (although it’s not a guarantee). We do not have home residency programs in Radiation Oncology, Derm, and PM&R. Radiology, has gotten much less competitive over the years in terms of matching (it used to be almost on par with Derm in terms of competiveness), so accordingly, our match lists have opened up to more people being able to match into Rads coming from UMKC. 2016-2017 was the first year of the Interventional Radiology integrated specialty (vs. as as a subspecialty fellowship after completing a full Diagnostic Radiology residency). This is the first year I noticed in which no one in the med school class matched into the field of Ophtho, even with our home residency program in the field.

There were 6 who matched only into the first year of internship (preliminary year or transitional year), although two are military matches, to where often they are given military orders to only match into internship, at least initially. They tend to go thru the Military Match later for their actual residency. The others will apply again for the match later on this fall, to complete a full residency, whether in an advanced specialty or categorical specialty.

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2017 Match List analysis - Part 3 of 3

I would say overall for this year’s match list, taking into account the overall breadth & variety of specialties matched into (with specific individual matches from those in the prior year’s class who took a year off for research), residency program institutional caliber even for the non-competitive specialties, geographical distribution, I would say this year’s match list overall is about average to a little weaker than previous years’ match lists for UMKC. Keep in mind that UMKC Med has always been a smaller, lower-tier medical school so the spectrum of specialties/programs that a student is able to match into coming from here will be different than medical schools that are middle-tier/solid middle-tier and top-tier.

I think there are several things at play here:

1 -- The residency match for medical students has gotten tighter (and continues to get tighter) due to the ratio of the number of U.S. residency spots (and the number of residency spots allocated to each specific individual specialty) to the number of U.S. med school graduates, with new medical schools created having been added by the LCME in recent years, and thus more U.S. senior graduates that weren't there before in previous match years. Thus, medical school reputation, both in terms of academic prestige, and also being "known" entities to residency programs, in terms of the quality of their medical graduates, is a lot more important now than it used to be. Thus, more lower-tier medical schools (esp. newly created med schools that don't really have a track record) will be the first to feel the crunch, while top-tier med schools will be the last to feel it, if at all.

2 -- UMKC's BA/MD class composition has changed a lot in terms of geography (Class of 2013 was the first class who had the regional category added, entering as Year 1s), a weakness started to emerge in terms of students matching into the more competitive specialties, since the demand for them now is higher (not surprising, since students from outside of Missouri make up more of the class now and pay more in tuition than in-staters, and thus are more likely to gravitate towards or at least consider specialties that are more competitive or have a higher income, to pay off their higher debt loads sooner, although income potential is not the sole driver or even necessarily a major driver of specialty selection). I think UMKC students coming in these days are much more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the med school early on in being able to place them in certain specialties/programs, so students are much more willing to do things like take a year off to expand their CV (it's likely not something they planned to do as a Year 1) or try to get involved much early on in research, as the medical school is now trying to encourage, expand, and promote research which it didn't really make an effort before. It was much different when the class was only 90% in-state, 10% out-of-state, in terms of the type of specialties the majority of students in the class were seriously considering and shooting for (Class of 2012 and earlier), although that's not a hard and fast rule.

You can compare these match lists for UMKC to those at Mizzou, SLU, and Wash U above, as well as Google medical schools’ match lists from your own home state as most med schools have posted them online. If you have any questions at all on the match list, the actual matching process, or anything I’ve said here, please feel free to ask.

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@sampil, they won’t let you join into “UMKC School of Medicine:Class of 2023” on facebook, if you are not admitted.

6131

@midwestFem, @sampil

I think it has changed for this year. Last year and in years past, the “official” Facebook group was for those who were accepted and waitlisted, and this year it was just for those who were accepted. Don’t know what spurred the change.

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@midwestFem @Roentgen : Thanks.

Facebook group is for accepted candidates or admitted candidates?

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@sampil, the description says “accepted” candidates (so most likely meaning those who have been given an offer of admission [an acceptance] and they have until May 1st to either take or reject the offer to matriculate). My guess is anyone who comes off of the waitlist to receive an acceptance in the days/weeks after May 1 and decide to matriculate would be able to join the group.

6134

@sampil, for your question “Facebook group is for accepted candidates or admitted candidates?”, from the college standpoint, it might mean the same - (1) College has accepted the student into its program (2) College has admitted the student into into its program. You do not need to worry about these interpretations, until after your status moves from Waitlisted to Accepted/Admitted.

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@Roentgen @midwestFem : thanks for clarification. This is my dream college.
Hopefully I move from waitlist to accept soon.

6136

I think your analysis could use a few more specifics, especially regarding more competitive fields.

We had a gen surg Stanford match and ENT WashU match from the surgical field (none of whom took time off). We had 3 derm matches (only 1 took time off). We matched 2 into rad onc at WashU (out of 4 spots total in their program, the other 2 of which are MD PHDs). The majority of Ortho matches didn’t take any time off. To my knowledge, no-one applied to Ophtho, Urology, or Plastics this year.

As a recent graduate, I am not saying that UMKC is the best medical school ever. But I think it is unfair to say that “many” took time off in order to match competitive specialties.

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I think you are misinterpreting my analysis. I didn’t say that every person who got into a competitive specialty this year had to take a year off (a 1 yr leave of absence, although it can be less than that) from medical school. What I am saying is that there are more students in recent years at UMKC (I’d say in the last 8-10 years) who are more open to taking a leave of absence (and do so) when going for certain competitive specialties, especially ones in which UMKC does not have a department or a home residency program in that specialty. It was much less common to do so by students in years before that time period, which I’ve discussed in the thread why that is.

For applicants deciding this month, UMKC Med started an Office of Research and in the years since its creation has taken efforts to try to expand its research foundation and to encourage more students to get involved and to streamline the process better, which can be daunting for BA/MD students to do on their own: http://med.umkc.edu/faculty-appointments-will-enhance-student-research/, up to and including those who do take a year off to get involved in a longer endeavor like Doris Duke, HHMI-Cloister, etc.: http://med.umkc.edu/student-research/external_opportunities/. MD-only students (who aren’t BA/MD students) also get 5 months “free” in their curriculum to take a leave of absence which they can use for their own purposes, including doing research in the specialty of their choice: http://med.umkc.edu/md/curriculum/.

As I’ve said on this year’s analysis, it’s more helpful to notice match trends overall over several years, rather than to hyperfocus on any one individual’s match and then try to extrapolate that individual’s match to the overall track record of the school. For example, an applicant had asked in the thread about an Ortho Stanford match from 2 years ago. That’s usually not a common occurence, but that person had also been selected to take a year off from medical school to do a research program at the NIH. Is that the only factor that sealed the deal? No. But that type of context matters in interpreting that particular match result. As you well know, rotation grades, AOA status, Step scores, LORs, and audition electives all factor in both on specialty & program matched into, and over the years, surgery and its subspecialties have tried to make an actual concerted effort (vs. just lip service) in recruiting more women and those who are underrepresented in medicine, to bring more diversity into the surgery workforce. All these things go into the cauldron of the residency match process and contribute to the final result.

Without being too specific, but since you brought up certain specialty matches in your post:

  1. ENT - 1 did a predoctoral research summer program at the institution that was matched at, 1 was a previous graduate who applied during a year of research, 1 was an MD-only student who went thru the military match separate from the NRMP match
  2. Derm – 1 person took a year off to do research and 1 I believe was an MD-only student
  3. Rad Onc – 1 was an MD-only student who did 5 months of research, one was a BA/MD student who also took time off to do research in that field. Both students ended up matching at the program that they had taken time off from medical school to do research with.
  4. Ortho – 1 BA/MD student took a year off to do research working towards an ancillary degree, 2 were MD-only students (it’s not as necessary for our students to take a year off to do Ortho research somewhere else since we have a home Ortho department/residency program to begin with and which has become a lot more student friendly in terms of advising)

I mentioned Ophtho more as a statement in passing that there were no Ophtho matches this year – whether that be no one applying at all or having self-selected out, or people dual applying to 2 specialties, in case they don’t match Ophtho (since Ophtho goes thru the earlier SF match vs. the regular NRMP match). My statement “All others Urology, ENT, Plastics, Neurosurgery, you will be dependent on outside institutions for matching into that field,” still stands.

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Hello, this thread is so massive, its difficult for a newbie to sort through all the posts!! For those of you who received interviews at UMKC this past cycle, would you mind sharing a copy of your RUC score? If you’re not comfortable sharing in the thread, please PM me.

My DD is a junior and we are trying to look into which BS/MD programs she should apply to based on her chances of getting an interview. Thank you everyone.

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@bamdhopefully, what’s a RUC score? I’m not aware what that is, at least in the UMKC BA/MD application realm in terms of the med school.

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@Roentgen it’s an assessment that estimates your chances of receiving an interview for UMKC’s program. We used it when it was free, but now it costs a few dollars.