UMKC 6-year BA/MD Program

Pre-Med & Medical School Multiple Degree Programs
7652

These are all really great questions. So first, I would say I think it’s great that you’re asking these questions NOW as a junior in high school rather than asking them as a senior after you’ve already applied or after you’ve interviewed when you might feel much more obligated to attend if given an acceptance. In terms of getting in, your highest chances, just in terms of the number of seats available, is by being an in-state applicant.

You’ve probably perused in great detail the UMKC School of Medicine website, but some things that I want to bring to your attention that you might want to look at:

https://med.umkc.edu/saturday-academy/

https://info.umkc.edu/stahr/

https://med.umkc.edu/admissions-events/

https://med.umkc.edu/bamd/visits/

So some things to keep in mind:

In terms of the program, unlike other Bachelor/MD programs across the country, UMKC BA/MD students here do not take all of the traditional premed prerequisites (Gen Bio I & II + Labs, Gen Chem I & II + Labs, Organic Chemistry I & II + Labs, General Physics [non-calculus based] I & II + Labs). Now some BA/MD students will tell you that it’s not necessary to have that, which is true, but in terms of a fall back, if you were to decide to go the normal route, depending on when you leave the program, it’s very much possible that you would have to redo some undergraduate years.

The program runs year around with no huge breaks in time that some other Bachelor/MD programs have. Is that something you can handle? Only you really know that answer.

I think in terms of preparing yourself for the coursework in the BA/MD program, there is only so much you can do as a high schooler. AP courses are great, but even those only take you so far although they are excellent in terms of preparation for course content in college level science courses. If you have a high school Anatomy course, that may be helpful although it’s not in any way a prerequisite for Year 1 Anatomy in the UMKC BA/MD program.

That being said, there are some AP tests that are helpful when it comes to knocking out courses for the undergraduate degree:
https://catalog.umkc.edu/colleges-schools/medicine/typical-six-year-program-of-study/

AP Chemistry, AP English Language, AP US Government, AP US History, AP Psychology are all helpful towards being awarded credit towards the undergraduate degree in the Bachelor/MD program. You can see the required scores here:

The AP Biology exam does NOT give you credit for General Biology I and II at UMKC, so don’t waste your time with that exam.

Are you going to “have a life” in the way that a normal undergraduate in a 4 year degree program would? Honestly, I would say that will not be the case. And anyone who is being honest with you will be upfront about this fact. This program requires BA/MD program students to “grow up” faster (maybe even sometimes too fast) than what they normally would in the traditional route.

In terms of “What should I include in my application and/or resume to make myself a better candidate?”

I think outside of doing the best that you can academically, taking the most rigorous high school curriculum (often this involves Honors/AP courses) that you can handle, getting involved in health care experiences that show you how the medical field is really like, is important. This can include “clubs and organizations; volunteer or work experience in a hospital, doctor’s office, nursing home, or other health-related facility; shadowing experience (includes shadowing of any health-care professional); participation in structured or formal health-related programs; medical or health-related research; and other health-related experiences that may contribute to your interest in medicine.” These should be things that you’re genuinely interested in and which you can learn from. I would have activities that you’ve had a sustained involvement in, rather than just doing things temporarily for like a month or two and then being done with it in order to check a box.

In terms of if you decide to leave, you would have to apply to medical school through the normal route. That’s somewhat easier to do in earlier years of the program to catch up than later. We really don’t have much school released data in terms of those who leave the UMKC BA/MD program and then apply to med school traditionally either at UMKC or at another undergraduate institution. It would be entirely anecdotal and something you’d have to seek out in terms of information from current BA/MD program students (who either may not know, or may not readily divulge that information of friends of theirs who may have left the program).

Hope this helps. If you have any other questions or if I forgot to address something, please let me know and I’d be happy to answer it.

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7653

Even if they may not use the credit, aren’t students better off taking the AP Bio exam? They report AP scores to colleges and not taking the exam could be perceived as shying away from the subject.

7654

So AP Exams (as well as IB exams and CLEP exams) are considered testing credit at UMKC. The purpose of testing credit is for colleges to give you credit for introductory level college courses to either free up space in your degree plan or to allow you to take upper-level courses in that area. Generally you do not get grade points towards GPA for it at most colleges and universities. At UMKC, you are limited to 30 hours of testing credit that can be applied towards your undergraduate degree. AP scores are not used in the decision making process with respect to acceptance in the UMKC BA/MD program.

In terms of course material, I think students should take the AP Biology course in high school if they can, as it’s good preparation for General Biology I and II in undergrad, especially if you end up doing the traditional premed route. You would effectively be doing the same course again in college, but just for an actual grade. At UMKC, the AP Biology exam gives you credit for the Biology 102 course which is really just a biology course for non-Biology majors. It does NOT give you credit for Biology 108 + 108L or Biology 109 + 109L, which are generally taken towards the Biology degree at UMKC by premeds.

Transfer credit is different (meaning courses you have taken at a community college or university) that UMKC allows you to bring in and receive credit for. There is no limit on transfer credit like there is for testing credit. If you want credit through that way, I would go to this link and either see through Transferology or Pathway whether the General Biology I course that you’re taking qualifies for degree credit at UMKC:

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7655

Appreciate your writings Roentgen
I’ve a regional junior aspiring to be -

How is the quality of education, teachers, professors incomparision to other Medschools?
Also what is your view on the cost for this program - like the economics for 6 year spend

Any scholarships that I can look, apply for this program?

7656

So I would say that I absolutely loved Year 1 of the program. I thought my UMKC professors for my undergraduate science courses on the Volker campus that year were really great and knowledgeable. Year 1 Docent (Fundamentals of Medical Practice) was also fun too w/getting at least an initial exposure to clinical medicine. I think many students feel like they’re juggling both, but for the most part it works out pretty well as all Year 1 students are required to live in the dorms the entire first year of the program and we go through it together. Being only a freshman in college and already having/wearing your own short white coat is an amazing feeling to have at the age of 18. As a BA/MD student, although you do take college courses, you’re not like a regular undergraduate student and you will not have that same experience.

I do think that the curriculum after Year 1 leaves much to be desired in terms of the coursework one is allowed to take and the course load. In some ways I would say that the increased level of difficulty can sometimes be too much at once – for many students that is Year 2 Summer where students take Cell Bio + Organic Chem + Organic Chem Lab or in Year 2 Spring when the Human Structure Function (HSF) series starts. I do think that other medical schools are more organized and comprehensive on the basic science coursework front, although that may be moot point with USMLE Step 1 being Pass/Fail now.

Whether this program is right for you really depends on what your goals are for the program, especially if you’re interested in a specialty that is more competitive.

No question that in terms of tuition, it can be quite a lot: https://med.umkc.edu/bamd/finance/. For regional, I’d say it depends on the state you’re coming from and the competitiveness of getting into the medical schools available in your particular state. I would say the non-resident tuition rate now is absolutely INSANE and is not worth the price tag if you’re someone whose parental finances are not from highly affluent means.

You can see what scholarships are available here:

https://med.umkc.edu/som_scholarships/

https://med.umkc.edu/ext_scholarships/

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7657

https://med.umkc.edu/docs/curriculum/2023-2024-UMKC_SOM_BAMD_and_MD_Calendar.pdf
I don’t observe any breaks scheduled in the calendar for the last 4 years. How will this be managed?

7658

results came out yesterday morning (25th March 2024 ~ 10 AM CT)

7659

Hey @lathasai,

So Year 3 tends to follow a more traditional semester based schedule so there are still holidays like Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Winter Break, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Spring Break, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, etc. The gray boxes in your link also are specifically designated time off in between semesters.

In Years 4, 5, and 6, it’s about 1 month designated per year specifically as Vacation.
https://med.umkc.edu/docs/curriculum/UMKC_SOM_6Yr_Curriculum.pdf

You can see this discussed more in detail here in page 74 of the UMKC BA/MD handbook:
https://med.umkc.edu/docs/sa/UMKC-SOM-Student-Handbook.pdf

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7660

Thank you so much!

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7661

Hi All, My daughter just got the acceptance. She also got the acceptance from UMKC BA/MD 6 years program (we are of out of state for both universities), and got acceptance into UT Austin premed track which in state for us. We are debating ourselves and any help with your suggestions/feedback/guidance is greatly appreciated!

7662

I meant…She got acceptance into Drexel BS/MD 8 years program and got acceptance from UMKC BA/MD 6 years program, & University of Texas, Austin premed undergrad program

7663

Which program is the least expensive (including the professional portion of the program)?

7664

Hey @TMedStudent, have you gotten any non-loan based financial aid for UMKC’s BA/MD program or Drexel’s BA/BS+MD Early Assurance Program? If so, how much?

Your home state of Texas is one of those states that not only has quite a few medical schools (Accredited U.S. Programs | LCME) but also requires that no more than 10% of the matriculating class of Texas medical schools be made up of non-Texas residents (Texas Residency Determination).

7665

Few questions about overall UMKC program

  1. I heard drop out rate prior to year 3 could be 15% (not sure if it is accurate). Any insight into what drives the attrition? Is it more from IS or OOS students?

  2. Does UMKC have graded pre-clinical (I assume year 3-4) or is it P/F (since step1 is P/F)? Does the 2.8 GPA requirement apply only to undergraduate courses or med school courses as well from year 3? I heard med school science courses are counted in the reported GPA. If so, I was curious what is the average GPA at the end of the course?

  3. Based on some of the concerns I found in this thread (lower tier school with difficulty matching into competitive residencies, accelerated bachelors etc.) is it better to pursue a BS/DO program (for a student who has explored options and decided to pursue medicine after high school)? I am curious if the outcomes are comparable from UMKC’s MD vs a well-regarded DO school?

7666

@Roentgen , Thanks for your reply. We have not gotten nor been offered any non-loan based financial aid for UMKC’s BA/MD program or Drexel’s BA/BS+MD Early Assurance Program. We are thinking that we may not be eligible for any “Need based finance aid” based on our income levels. Hoping for only for Merit based scholarships which could a remote chance.

Thanks for the info on Texas schools,. Are you saying even though we decided to go with UMKC 6-year BA/MD program, she will have higher chances of getting the residency (her preference is oncology) in Texas as she is graduating from a Texas high school now?

She is the youngest girl in her class, Here are her stats from high school. Do you think its better for her to attend the UT Austin for UG and then try for Medical School in Texas (So that she will not miss out her “College Life” and easy on finances (200K vs 600K).

So much to considered…we are looking for someone to say “GO FOR IT” :slight_smile:

Looking forward for your opinion!!!

Thanks

7667

I have a kid who is in Year 4 at UMKC.

  1. from my observation it’s mostly with the instate students who didn’t go through an aggressive schedule at their high school
  2. UMKC has better Residency match especially for the overachieving students. As majority of the students are from Missouri, they prefer to stay in state and they skew the residency results IMHO.

This year batch is the first one who just had the residency results after Step 1 went to pass/fail and they had very good results.

7668

These are REALLY great detailed questions, @marcopolos! I’m so glad people are asking them in this month before the deadline on May 1st to make a more informed decision.

1) So I do not know what it has been in recent years. This is something that the UMKC School of Medicine admissions office should be willing to answer (if not, that’s a huge red flag). According to publicly released data which you can find in this article here: The University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine: T... : Academic Medicine

“As might be expected, the attrition rate in this school is higher than those of traditional four-year medical schools. Of all 3,377 students admitted at year one from 1970 through 2005, 20.6% left the program without the MD degree. However, attrition in years three through six is lower; only 161 out of the 3,377 admitted students (4.8%) withdrew or were dismissed during the last four years of the curriculum.”

Keep in mind “attrition” is those who have left the program entirely without receiving the MD degree, not those who complete the program in 7 years instead of 6 years (what is commonly known as “extending” in the program). Since then the school has attempted to address this, although I don’t know how successful they have been overall with respect to the Bachelor/MD cohort of students.

https://med.umkc.edu/docs/odi/DEI-Report.pdf

There is a statistic here in this UMKC School of Medicine DEI report where they state from 2009-2010 to 2013-2014, the retention rate of BA/MD students matriculating to Year 3 of the program was 85% (which would make the attrition rate in Years 1-2 at 15%, like you mentioned). When it comes to Years 3-6, on average from 2011-2012 to 2015-2016, the graduation rate of BA/MD and MD only students (meaning both students together, not just BA/MD students) obtaining their medical degrees was 93% (meaning the attrition rate in Years 3-6 of both student groups was 7%).

You can compare those UMKC School of Medicine statistics to those of US allopathic medical schools overall: https://www.aamc.org/media/48526/download
Looking at graduation rates of students enrolled between 1998-1999 and 2017-2018, the average attrition rate at 4 year U.S. allopathic medical schools is around 3.2%. Students in combined Bachelor-MD programs had the highest attrition rate at 5.7%.

Of what drives attrition in the UMKC BA/MD program, I think it’s a variety of factors – some of it is due to academics, but it can also be due to non-academic factors (change of career interests, personal circumstances like family issues, health problems, or financial difficulties, burnout from the program itself due to the accelerated nature with limited breaks unlike other Bachelor/MD programs). These are more broad categories that I’m referring to.

In terms of number of people who actually leave the program, I’m not sure if it’s necessarily a function of being in-state vs. out-of-state (this program only takes 10-15 out-of-staters and so in-staters drastically outnumber that group) as each student is different, although I do think that if one is out-of-state, there are already more external incentives for the person to complete the program, due to the amount of money already invested at the out-of-state tuition rate, unlike an in-state person who pays a lot less tuition in total.

2) UMKC still has letter graded preclinicals. As you probably know by now, the trend is toward Pass/Fail grading in the preclinical years but UMKC does not do that even for MD onlys in the program.

You can see that data here: Grading Systems Used in Medical School Programs | AAMC

At UMKC, all required undergraduate science courses (Year 1 Anatomy + Lab, Year 1 Microbiology + Lab, General Chem I & II + Labs, Organic Chem + Lab, Cell Biology, Genetics), BMS (basic medical science) courses, Clinical Correlations (a concurrently running course with Human Structure Function although credit is awarded in the summer semester), and Pathology I & II are letter graded and are used to calculate the School of Medicine Cumulative Science GPA. This is an internally tracked metric from Year 1 till the end of Year 3 for promotion purposes.

That being said, in terms of graduation latin honors in Year 6, it’s the cumulative GPA (meaning all courses that you’ve taken at UMKC) that is a part of the calculation. The GPA that is calculated is a Year 1-6 GPA. Hope that makes sense. I am not sure what the average cumulative GPA or average School of Medicine Cumulative Science GPA are and those figures have likely not been released publicly.

3) If your choice is between a BS/DO program vs. a BS/MD program, I would go with the latter (BS/MD), although it depends on the specialties that you’re interested in and the DO school in question. I also would not sell yourself short by being locked into a DO school so early in the process, as DO schools tend to have slightly lower average GPA and MCAT requirements at baseline and higher acceptance rates just in the normal admissions process.

7669

No, @TMedStudent, what I’m saying is that when it comes to your particular state, your state’s medical schools tend to greatly look toward their own state’s residents to fill their medical school slots. This is mainly due to legislative restrictions by the state legislature which limits the number of out-of-state students each medical school in the state can accept, as well as most of your home state’s medical schools being public institutions that receive funding from the state (funded by state taxpayer dollars). That is because generally by admitting and training in-state students, there’s a higher chance they’ll stay in their home state for residency and to practice medicine.

Residency selection (or in the case of oncology, which you are referring to, which is subspecialty fellowship selection after residency) is a different process.

It really depends on your daughter as she is the one who will be going through it. Does your daughter want a normal 4 year undergraduate experience, both in terms of social life and breadth of courses available to her? Is your daughter much more likely to be very homesick or greatly miss her friends because she’s not close by in Texas? Will she be fine with being in a state that is a plane flight away? Is the amount of debt that she would be taking (I do not know what your personal family finances are) be something that would mentally impact her and possibly get in the way of her studying and her quality of life? A lot of these questions are hard to answer or unknowns right now but it’s helpful for everyone to be honest about those feelings now, not just take an acceptance due to feeling obligated or pressured to do so and hope for the best. A program like this is not very amenable to that based on its structure.

I’m sure you have already made a spreadsheet comparing the tuition & fees for UMKC BA/MD program vs. Drexel 4 + 4 program vs. UT-Austin + Texas medical school, as you probably guessed the total tuition & fees are drastically different. You can see annual tuitions for Texas medical schools here in these AAMC links:

https://students-residents.aamc.org/media/7071/download

I would say one aspect of the Drexel program in Philadelphia, PA, because it’s a 4 + 4 combined program, it does allow your daughter to have a somewhat normal undergraduate experience, and she can decide to go the traditional application route to medical school if she wants. I don’t know if that’s something that may appeal to her eventhough the total tuition of Drexel undergrad + Drexel med school is about $80,000 more than UMKC’s BA/MD non-resident tuition.

What I would do is call up the UMKC School of Medicine admissions office and ask to talk with current students who are from your home state of Texas in different years of the program. They should be able to give you contacts or have students from Texas in the program who are willing to talk with applicants and be able to contact you. Your daughter could also go on Facebook and find current UMKC BA/MD students and see if any are from Texas. She can then cordially send them a message introducing herself and ask them about how they feel about the program. The key is to do it for students in different years. How a Year 6 will feel about the program will be drastically different and more nuanced than a current Year 1 who is sort of adjusting to being away from home and basking in the short white coat feeling.

LOL, so I will say that I am not the type to tell people to “GO FOR IT” and you shouldn’t really want that either anyways. It’s not about making you feel better. It’s about getting accurate information (or knowing where to go to get that information) so you can use it to make an informed decision and not second guess it (which is easier said than done).

7670

Thanks for your perspective on preparedness of incoming students and residency outcomes.

So it looks like a high school curriculum with significant AP/DC courses focused on science - Bio/Chem)/anatomy etc. - should reduce the risk of falling behind (regardless of IS vs OOS). Any perspective on their majors - BLA vs Bio vs Chem - based on your kid’s experience?

By no means I am an expert on match lists (just a data nerd), but one competitive specialty where other schools in the state seem to match well, but UMKC matches less seems to be ortho(looking at last 4 years of match list, after adjusting for class size etc.). Though UMKC has an ortho program and not a derm or plastics program(based on their GME website), more students seemed to have matched into dermatology/plastics/ENT. May be just a reflection of student interest?

7671

Thanks @Roentgen for the quick response.

  1. Appreciate sharing the background information. 15% was higher than my expectation, especially considering the larger student body at UMKC compared to typical BS/MD programs with 20-30 students and the fact that there was no MCAT requirement. I was curious about academic/non-academic factors that may cause that. May be something to follow up as you mentioned.

  2. I have heard mixed opinions about P/F from med students. Some high achieving students at other med schools - usually those with >=3.9 GPA from undergrad - thought graded preclinical would have helped them to stand out more for residency applications (assuming they could repeat similar performance). It looked like DO schools had graded pre-clinicals vs while MD schools were P/F. Any thoughts on the impact of grading at MD schools from that perspective? Also does this graded pre-clinical affect step1 preparation?

  3. Thanks for that perspective, that was my opinion as well. I was just curious if there was any anti UMKC BS/MD bias like “DO stigma” when it came to next steps like residency/fellowship.