BYU to open medical school

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Faculty will be the easy thing for BYU.

It will be interesting to see what enrollment will be. Tons of BYU grads go to medical school. It’s definitely a top ten feeder for a bunch of schools. Should open up a lot of spots.
 
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I wonder if their medical school will be cheap like their undergrad is? Or even free for mormons?

If I was LDS myself I'd be stoked
 
wysdoc said:
Wow pretty surprising for a state with only 3.4 million population to be planning its 4th med school.
Of course I know they are all independent of one another but wonder where faculty will come from
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I wonder where the patients and clinical sites will come from.
 
Very very interesting move. Speaking here as a former BYU undergraduate:

Will be a big deal for the church and the school as a whole for a few reasons. BYU produces a TON of premeds. The only regret I had going there was that they didn’t have a medical school and so I didn’t have any easy access to clinical research opportunities - research was the big thing missing from my application (I did some basic science stuff in college that never really went anywhere). Giving BYU undergrads access to clinical research opportunities will be a big help to the school as a premed institution and increase the profile of their med school applicants.

I’m intrigued by this idea that they’ll be focusing on international health issues. The sponsoring Church is a worldwide entity with a presence everywhere, including with missionaries in most areas of the world and members native to almost all countries. I imagine their focus will involve a lot of humanitarian projects in resource strapped areas to try and improve global health outcomes not just for church members, but hopefully everyone. The church has a large philanthropic operation around the world too so this could play into that. I don’t see them doing heavy basic and translational research and I don’t see them trying to play the research rat race as much as other schools. They will focus on what they feel like focusing on for its own sake, rather than on what would boost their USNWR rankings. Likely to be a more primary care and public health heavy school.

The school will almost assuredly lean heavily on Intermountain. Per their press release this is already in the works, and it sounds like BYU does not intend on opening, owning and running its own hospital, likely due to the significant cost as well as regulatory strings that come with that. Intermountain functions as sort of a privademic world which is mostly staffed by non-academic physician groups, but some of their docs do publish and Utah med students and residents sometimes do rotate at the larger IHC hospitals fairly frequently so slotting BYU students in there would likely be fairly seamless. The bulk of my clinical experience applying to med school was between a couple tech/orderly jobs at Intermountain as well as being an EMT at BYU and I had over 2000 hours doing these. Between all the premeds BYU is putting out there and adding new med students on top of that, Intermountain likely gets a lot of benefit between volunteer and trainee labor and will likely be able to expand its residency offerings with a BYU affiliation as well, if that’s their interest.

Overall, an exciting new chapter for my Alma mater. I’m kind of surprised as the general rumored understanding while I was there was that neither BYU nor the church had any intentions of getting into the medical school game, but something has clearly changed. The school made minor news close to a decade ago when they bought the huge plot of land that went up for sale between the BYU campus and Intermountain’s Utah Valley Hospital, where the former Provo High school sat (the school was moving to a brand new building in another location). People have been letting their imaginations go wild wondering what they’d be using it for, with everything from student housing to a new football stadium being suggested.. a medical school was mentioned but most people dismissed the idea, but I guess that’s probably what it really was for.
 
At least 20 years late, but I’m stoked! Intermountain used to be owned by the LDS Church anyways, so I imagine the partnership they form will be pretty strong.

I don’t think they’ll have a single problem getting faculty, given the sheer quantity of LDS physicians. I’ve already dreamed about what that would look like for myself when I finish residency! I never really considered academics, but going back to the Y is very compelling.

I also think that, with the more affordable tuition they will likely offer (see BYU MBA and law school prices), they will be able to recruit great classes of students.

I imagine the school will be allopathic given that the president of the LDS church is an MD.
 
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m1redsox said:
At least 20 years late, but I’m stoked! Intermountain used to be owned by the LDS Church anyways, so I imagine the partnership they form will be pretty strong.

I don’t think they’ll have a single problem getting faculty, given the sheer quantity of LDS physicians. I’ve already dreamed about what that would look like for myself when I finish residency! I never really considered academics, but going back to the Y is very compelling.

I also think that, with the more affordable tuition they will likely offer (see BYU MBA and law school prices), they will be able to recruit great classes of students.

I imagine the school will be allopathic given that the president of the LDS church is an MD.
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Yep - a lot of people may not know but there are quite a few Mormons in medicine and a couple high ranking church officers are docs. Russell Nelson (the church president) got his MD at Utah, did a residency at Minnesota along with a PhD and was on the research team that developed the first cardiopulmonary bypass machine.. Another church leader, Dale Renlund, trained in IM and cardiology at Hopkins. I’m sure they had a large role in the planning of this school
 
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Goro said:
Very true. Norda had trouble filling its class this year and fell short by something like 10 to 30 seats I think.
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Wait really? They had an empty seats even after wait list? Is that where we are now?
 
DO2015CA said:
Wait really? They had an empty seats even after wait list? Is that where we are now?
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There are DO schools having to accept rejected people in order to fill their classes.

Serves them right, for expanding like tumor cells.

Luckily, my school dodged that bullet
 
Goro said:
There are DO schools having to accept rejected people in order to fill their classes.

Serves them right, for expanding like tumor cells.

Luckily, my school dodged that bullet
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Wow that is insane. Is this the first year? You had mentioned there is decreased interest in med school right now as a whole. Do you think this was an odd year or have we truly met the critical number of seats:applicant?
 
chilly_md said:
I imagine this will make things more complicated for Noorda and the RVU campus once BYU opens up.
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Honestly, would it? I doubt the same caliber of applicants would be applying from those schools to BYU.
 
Nontrad_FL_LGBT said:
Honestly, would it? I doubt the same caliber of applicants would be applying from those schools to BYU.
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Yes. Rvu gets more competitive applicants than they should because they get to stay in Utah. Prob same is true for Noorda. And with rotations in the future who knows. Idk if they rotate through the planned BYU sites now
 
Nontrad_FL_LGBT said:
Honestly, would it? I doubt the same caliber of applicants would be applying from those schools to BYU.
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Yes. From a rotations standpoint both will be in big trouble. Not only is BYU assuredly going to be an allopathic school, it has deeeeep pockets and will 100% be top dog for the Intermountain rotation sites.
 
Nontrad_FL_LGBT said:
Honestly, would it? I doubt the same caliber of applicants would be applying from those schools to BYU.
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See above. I also would not be surprised if local applicants start to ignore Noorda and RVU once it opens. Many will feel like they don’t have to bother filling out AACOMAS with 2 MD schools.
 
chilly_md said:
See above. I also would not be surprised if local applicants start to ignore Noorda and RVU once it opens. Many will feel like they don’t have to bother filling out AACOMAS with 2 MD schools.
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They still will. I suspect BYU will have a small class size. And Utah has a huge number of applicants
 
The thing that will hamper the other schools will be not only the competition for students, which may not change so much, but the competition for patients, in other words, for clinical slots. Unless you are setting up bleacher seats in the delivery rooms, there are only so many students you can put in an OB rotation at a given time and give everyone the opportunity that they deserve and that LCME wants them to have. LCME is the accrediting agency and it will want to see that there are adequate clinical opportunities, with US patients, to run a med school.
 
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Goro said:
How many qualified applicants?
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I suspect that this number is actually pretty high, given that BYU students tend to have above average stats compared to other MD matriculants. I attached an infographic from the BYU premed counseling website that shows that the average BYU student who matriculates into an MD program has a 515/3.85, which is above the national average. You could chalk this up to the fact that we only had one in-state MD school, had poor premed advising, or perhaps the fact that we look like a pretty homogenous group that is largely white male, but nonetheless, some pretty qualified students consistently fall through the cracks during the app cycle. Either way, this always kind of surprised me since BYU students often speak multiple languages and have a demonstrated dedication to service. One of my buddies from BYU who applied with me with a 518/3.90 and ended up matriculating at a DO program (which was not his preference). I suspect that a low-cost medical school at BYU will pick up a lot of these students as well as some who may have the opportunity to attend another program but prefer to stay in-state or avoid as much debt as possible.

 
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