do schools consider academic awards? Example, if i am a coca scholar in high school, does that hel;p
Hey HappyToGraduate,
Thanks for your advice from your past post in this thread about emailing and getting in touch with a contact of someone in the program and that link to the “31 questions I wish I had asked” from the AAMC. I am OOS so I esp. wanted to find out more about UMKC.
I nicely emailed the person in charge of admissions at the medical school TWICE, regarding what UMKC’s average Step 1 score is and to please give me an email contact of someone in the program I could talk with to find out about their experience in the program, and I got NO response.
I definitely will not be applying to this program for sure as it seems like they’re hiding stuff. The other BA/MD programs I did apply to were more than happy to give me that information. Thanks again.
Usually when you apply to medical school (if you do the 4+4 route), they only want your awards from your freshman year forward. So if you got the Coca-Cola Scholarship which you are eligible to apply for only if you are a high school senior (I don’t think they have awards you can apply for while in college) , it wouldn’t count for applying to medical school.
For undergrad schools, yes, this would be good.
k. Is there an impressive awards (like gates millennium for high school) that are highly recognizeable?
Are you talking about in application to undergrad or application to medical school?
Happy to help Froggie2009. Helps to get the information you need when you are able to get it.
application to med school and something that looks good on the resume
Once again, it isn’t a SPECIFIC award that matters to medical schools outside of Phi Beta Kappa (if a chapter exists at your undergrad).
In that regard, putting down something like Gates Millenium for High School students probably wouldn’t be appropriate on an application, as then once they see that, they would start questioning how many of those awards you actually got in high school vs. during undergrad.
There are awards/scholarships that would impress med schools: Rhodes Scholar, Fullbright Scholar, Marshall/Udall Scholars, etc. They’re just ridiculously hard to get. Phi Beta Kappa is probably the easiest award to get since it just involves you taking some liberal arts courses and graduating in the top 3-10% of your class. I personally don’t think adcoms give it a lot of weight because they can just look at your transcript to determine that you’re a good student. For that reason, PBK was the last thing I listed on my med school apps (out of 15 EC’s/awards).
Rhodes, Marshall and Gates Cambridge stand an order of magnitude above Fulbrights, based on both numbers and nature of the award. To explain, the Rhodes awards 32/year. Marshall around 40. Gates Cambridge similar number. And all these are based strictly on academics and leadership potential. In contrast, there are about 5,000 Fulbrights, if I recall correctly, and they are not strictly based on academic potential. There is a big cultural exchange component. So they signal far less to a med school committee.
But the bigger problem with each of these is that they are awarded late fall of senior year at the earliest, so for them to count, you would be a late applicant to Med School.
There are a series of nationally known scholarships awarded to undergrads that would show up on a med school application. The most relevant is the Goldwater, but a Truman or Udall would also be impressive.
PBK would count a lot more if you were one of the few that received the award as a junior, since by PBK bylaws, universities can only award a small fraction of the honor to juniors.
thanks! do you have any website for them?
^ use Google…just type “goldwater scholarship” for example… 
The website says only around 800 US Fulbrights are awarded per year.
Anyway, there are so few premeds with any of these (Rhodes, Fulbright, Marshall, whatever) that each award would be considered significantly by any med school. I don’t forsee the late awards as being a problem. You will get on tons of waitlists and being able to say “Oh, by the way, I won the Fulbright this year” on an update letter or letter of intent is a pretty good way for you to get picked off the waitlist.
Hey guys,
I’m an instate applicant, and these are my stats:
ACT: 34 (36 if you calculate using superscores)
SAT: …2130
Rank: 16/426 (this should go up after 1st semester)
GPA: 4.341 (Current is 4.5)
AP: Chem-5
Gov’t/Politics-4
Awards:
National Merit Semifinalist (will prolly be Finalist soon)
Pfizer Award for Excellence in Research
2nd in Regional FIRST FTC Robotics Competition
Extracurricular:
Robotics Team
Math Club
National Honors Society
Beta Chi Pi (Vice President)
Community Service:
Volunteer Teacher at Religious Weekend School
Tutor (Chemistry, Math, Spanish)
<h2>Also, I will graduate at age 15. Maybe this could be a plus during the interview?</h2>
Another question: what AP’s does the 6-year accept (and for what scores)
Oh, and to add another to my short list of extracurriculars:
Spanish Club
I would say a beastly chance
thanks that’s really encouraging az1698!
any other opinions? and also if anyone has info about their policy on AP’s, that would be great.
The AP scores accepted are very low so you’ll have no problem in that area:
[UMKC</a> Registration and Records - Credit by Examination](<a href=“http://www.umkc.edu/registrar/creditbyexam.asp]UMKC”>http://www.umkc.edu/registrar/creditbyexam.asp)
To be honest, your age WILL be a problem, as the lowest age UMKC actually has accepted and really is ok with accepting, has been 16. They don’t want you younger than that, as ALREADY it is an accelerated and highly compressed curriculum/program, not to mention getting the MD degree at an even younger age when u graduate. You probably would get an interview, it’s after that, which is the question and you would definitely get that as an interview question by your interviewers. Just to give you a heads up.
Questions that are asked by interviewers are trying to probe and gauge your commitment to medicine and more importantly your maturity and coping skills to enter a six year accelerated BA/MD program, which is hard enough to ask to an 18 yr. old so you can imagine asking a 15 yr old or in your case I guess the interview would happen when you’re 14.
just make sure you act mature during the interview.
dont dress like a nerd. no high pitched voice. just nothing that would give off a childish vibe, and then i think youll be ok.
Thanks for your input guys.
-Granted that I receive the interview, it’ll be when I’m 15. If 16 is their unofficial minimum age-I’ll turn 16 before the fall semester starts.
-If it comes down to being mature, I don’t mean to sound snobbish or anything, but that really shouldn’t be a problem. Most people get the impression that I’m already in college when they talk to me, and I don’t look 15 anyways. (I’m just shy of 6’, have a deep voice compared to my classmates, and can grow a beard)
-In regards to the AP, I already visited the link you gave me, and (though I’m not sure), I think that chart applies to general UMKC admissions. From what I hear, the 6-Year Program doesn’t accept all of those listed (such as Biology) and may require higher scores for some AP’s. I am not sure whether that’s true or not, but maybe somebody here does?