@bladerz1, I think your question is something I’ve gotten a LOT of PMs about from UMKC applicants about as to whether the reputation/prestige/caliber/rank (whatever euphemism you want to call it) matters when it comes to your medical school and the residency match - especially if you want to go into a residency that is very competitive: whether that’s due to lucrative reimbursement, having a great lifestyle outside of medicine - no call, rarely any emergencies, etc.
Again, see this from Michigan: https://www.med.umich.edu/medstudents/curRes/M4/docs/Critical_Components_of_the_Match.pdf
When a field has too many interested people applying, and not enough spots even for everyone who is qualified, it becomes competitive. You have to look beyond grades, beyond test scores (since everyone in the interviewing pool already has those things) and look at other factors. Same with when you have 140 allopathic medical schools and counting, vs. in my time when it was only 125 allopathic medical schools. It doesn’t mean, in my time, that the competitive specialties weren’t very competitive, but it does mean that an already tight filter for those specialties is becoming even tighter. So as we get closer and closer to the point where there are too many medical school graduates, and not enough residency spots, we’ll see this happen more and more. People may have to settle for specialties that aren’t their #1 choice.
Most of UMKC’s students still come from Missouri, and quite a few from rural areas (not KC not St. Louis) - many of whom want to do primary care. There is nothing in UMKC’s history or in its current status which points to it wanting to encourage students to become “super” specialists. If anything, it’s the exact opposite. Hence the legitimate frustration when it comes to getting into certain specialties. In order to create a U.S. medical school there are some specialties that are non-negotiable – Internal Medicine, OB-Gyn, Pediatrics, General Surgery, Psychiatry, Family Medicine. You don’t have to have fields or residencies in fields like Rad Onc, Ophtho, Derm, Anesthesia, or Urology, to qualify to create a medical school.
As @bluegrn6 said, if you think you’ll be interviewing at top places or top fields, just because you come from a 6 year program, and you have great grades and board scores, you will end up being very disappointed. I know, as I had people in my class who had all those things and didn’t match into their #1 specialty.
I mentioned about my 4 classmates, who I am still friends with, who all tried to match into Dermatology in Year 6, and 3 weren’t able to do so, even with 2 being AOA. The one who did match that year (and while she is a wonderful person, she quite honestly didn’t have the scores or the grades), we found out later, had an underlying connection. There was a guy who graduated 2 years above me (in 2001), who matched into Derm, who had a family connection in that field and matched. There wasn’t even an Interest Group at UMKC back then in that specialty and in many other specialties like there is now. Maybe UMKC gets more tuition money and uses it for that, not sure ask @blugrn6 about this, as it seems like they have an “interest group” for nearly everything now, or at least most of them.
I think we live in a society in which the concept of meritocracy and individualism pervades much of American life, so it’s shocking for a lot of high achieving high school students (who don’t have any life or work experience), that the world doesn’t work this way in any profession. Just being a “hard worker” isn’t enough. Just having great grades and great scores isn’t enough. Networking matters. Connections matter. Nepotism matters. I’ve seen medical students work their hardest on rotations and get a “High Pass”, and I’ve seen students slack off more and get “Honors”. As @Roentgen was saying, you’ll figure out very quickly that life isn’t fair and you won’t always get what you want.
Part of the problem of being in a BS/MD program is that you don’t have to go through the grunt work of working to get into medical school to earn that spot. With that, comes a lot of personal growth and maturity that you otherwise might not get and thus can lead to a lot of entitlement and not too much maturity - which makes you stick out like a sore thumb later.
I think many people who go into medicine, especially from families in the Asian culture, think erroneously that Medicine is somehow different from Engineering, Law, Business, etc. in that medical school is all about studying and working hard, and the world is your oyster, because there is already a set path: undergrad → medical school → residency → fellowship and then you live happily every after. Realize that this is a large part of your life: 2-4 years of undergrad + 4 years of medical school + 3-7 years of residency depending on specialty + 1-3 years of fellowship. The schools you go to in your education matter and determine which places are open to you no matter what profession you’re going into.
The current teaching hospitals for UMKC are:
1) Truman Medical Center (TMC-West) – Internal Medicine if you are on a docent team here, General Surgery
2) St. Luke’s Hospital – Internal Medicine if you are on a docent team here, General Surgery
3) Children’s Mercy Hospital – Pediatrics
**4) Truman Medical Center-Lakewood/b – Family Medicine
**5) Center for Behavioral Medicine/b – Psychiatry
6) Research Medical Center – I honestly have no idea what rotations are done here since they just recently signed an agreement in 2010, http://info.umkc.edu/news/umkc-school-of-medicine-and-research-medical-center-sign-affiliation-agreement/, maybe @blugrn6 might know.
None of these hospitals are even close to being highly top-ranked ranked hospitals or academic medical center meccas in which you have tons of interesting research going on. It is not at all surprising that UMKC puts most of their graduates in primary care type residencies - IM, Pediatrics, Family Medicine. So whatever you decide, don’t go into this with rose-colored glasses (http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/rose-coloured+glasses). Be sure you know what you’re getting into. The truth is that if you want to get into a competitive specialty or you want to do a non-competitive specialty at a really great institution – everything matters and that also includes the school you’re coming from.