What are the pros and cons of going through a BS/MD program? List of good BS/MD programs?

Pre-Med & Medical School Multiple Degree Programs
1

I am a freshman in high school and I want to be a surgeon. I have seen the name BS/MD and I have done some searching about it. I have found that one of the top cons of a BS/MD is the fact that you often miss out on humanities and sociology.

I just want to know in your view what are the pros and cons of BS/MD programs and what are some of the top BS/MD programs. I have heard that the Baylor^2 program is really good.

2

That’s not the top con at all. The top con is that you are typically going to an inferior undergraduate program you would otherwise not attend. The kids who get into these programs could get into any school in the country, but you’ll notice that only two of the top 25 universities have such a program (Brown and Northwestern), and only two of the top 25 medical schools have them (UTSW and Northwestern). This is especially unfortunate if the requirements to advance from the undergrad phase to the medical school are such that you’d have a decent chance getting into medical school anyway.

If it’s an accelerated program (i.e. it takes fewer than 8 years to finish) you are risking some degree of burnout in an already stressful path. Shaving that one year off your training could cost you a career in your medical specialty of choice (e.g. if you wanted neuro/plastics/ortho surgery you may hurt your grades enough to force you into general surgery) or force you to go to a less desirable residency program within your specialty of choice. I’ll talk about the “extra year of salary” below, but one extra year of general surgery money comes no where close to the loss sustained from a career in general instead of neuro/plastics/ortho.

I’m kind of lukewarm on 8 year programs (my general stance is the BS/MD needs to be a bonus for picking that school and not the main draw. In other words: without the BS/MD program, that undergrad is still a school you would realistically choose) and very much against accelerated ones. So if Baylor undergrad was already on your radar before you started thinking about BS/MD programs then I think there’s nothing wrong with doing the Baylor^2 program.

The pros to these programs are obvious: no need to go through the medical school application process and usually don’t have to maintain the same level of academic standards as a traditional pre-med which can give you more freedom in undergrad to do more outside the classroom or take classes that might otherwise hurt your GPA. If you assume no risk of hurting your academic performance in an accelerated program, you also get an extra year of working at a doctor’s salary.

And from the university side, the pro is that they attract a top tier student who probably would not have come there if it weren’t for the program.

3

“I am a freshman in high school and I want to be a surgeon. I have seen the name BS/MD and I have done some searching about it. I have found that one of the top cons of a BS/MD is the fact that you often miss out on humanities and sociology.”

  • I am not sure what you would include in humanities and sociology, as there are choices, I believe.
    My D. was in BS/MD program. She said that some classes of her Music Minor were covering the requirement for humanities. Not sure about sociology. However, you can take any classes while in bs/md program and you can be any major anyway. D. had Zoology major / Music minor / Neuroscience minor and graduated with the first 2, while dropping the Neuroscience minor being only 2 classes short of completion. She also took some random classes like “Parer Making” class, which despite of the name was in fact one of her harder and definitely the most time consuming class. Nobody is preventing you from taking any classes that you wish. D. did not have any con’s in her bs/md, but one con may be that if you decided to apply out of your bs/md via Regular Route, you may not keep a spot in the medical school in your bs/md program. One huge advantage of D’s program was that she actually could keep her spot while applying out. She was the only one who applied out of her program. Imagine going to med. school interviews knowing that you already have at least one spot! It is all different ball game. Study different bs/md programs, they have different requirements and different rules / policies. There is nothing general about them.

    One big “must” for my D. when she was choosing her college was also to be feel that she belong there. She ended up attending at her #2 choice and looking back and being closely familiar with her #1, she is convinced that she attended at absolutely the best place for herself. She was surrounded with very top HS kids, mostly valedictorians and mostly outside of her program. Her bs/md had only 10 spots, but her Honors college had 200 spots with the requirement of being top 2% of HS class with ACT=31+. She actually had to go out of her way to meet a wider variety of people than just intense crowd of valedictorian pre-meds. That was the major reason why she added a Music Minor and was in sorority. You do not want to be stuck with the same group that tend to focus a bit too much on academics. You want to expand your social horizon and grow personally during college.
    Anyway, I do not see any cons in bs/md. Nobody is chaining you down to anything, you can stay in bs/md, you can get out if you do not like it. Since the students in the program are taking the same classes as the students in general, they still getting weeded out as part of general pre-med weed out process. in D’s program, the survival rate was about 50%. So, it was about 5 of them at the end. D. attended at in-state public on full tuition Merit award and that was another major attraction choosing this specific college. She was accepted to 3 additional medical schools when she applied out and ended up attending at the medical school of her dream way back in HS.

    Best wishes, apply widely and do not feel that you are restricted in any way if you decided to be part of bs/md, because you are not limited by anything, you are free to construct your UG years as they fit you personally.
4

“I have found that one of the top cons of a BS/MD is the fact that you often miss out on humanities and sociology.”

That is not even close to being a top con, considering that even in my program at UMKC , most of our students do a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree.

5

It depends on your confidence level. The success rate for getting into med school is poor, even among motivated bright students. If it is something you really want to do, then I would take the bait. If you end up a physician, you are not going to quibble when you are 50 about whether you went to Baylor or Middlebury.

However, knowing that you want to be a surgeon at age 17 is pushing it in terms of specificity. Even if you have been exposed (e.g. parent) to the surgery profession you really have no idea what you are getting into. I would keep an open mind and not get too locked in.

In terms of some of the advice above: if you have the stuff of neurosurgery, shaving a year off undergrad is a small thing. I think that is getting ahead of yourself. Take a sure bet and adapt.

6

@cerealguy3 If you are particular about Humanities, there is a BA/MD program just for that. It is OU Medical Humanities Scholar program (4+4) and it is mandatory to do minor in Medical Humanity and you can do whatever major you want along with the typical pre-med courses.