Hey I got accepted into KCU COB for Fall 2017 received the email, and the snail mail. Haven't secured my seat yet with the matriculation fee and the agreement. Could you give me an overview of the program? Could you also tell me what graduates generally do after the program? Also could you tell me the tuition costs if I am out of state i.e. Virginia?
What's your overview of the program? If you had to give advice to prepare what would it be? Are you from the KC area and have you worked at all during the program?
Okay this post will be long but hopefully answer your questions!
So an overview of the program is that it is a fast-paced, science heavy curriculum that I feel will be a tremendously helpful "stepping stone" of sorts into medical school. It's much more difficult than undergrad but also obviously not as crazy as med school. There are a lot of former COB students in the COM here and they consistently perform better than their peers and have excellent things to say about COB. I think a lot of this is due to the former COB students learning how to study and simply being more prepared for medical school curriculum versus those who come straight from undergrad. You might think you know how to study but trust me when I say this will probably change once you get out of college when you realize just how much you still have to learn!
In the Fall you take five courses (subject to change, as they are always trying to improve the curriculum) which include Human Physiology, Biochemistry, Intro to Epidemiology, Comparative Anatomy, and either Microbiology or Histology (you get to pick). In the Spring you take Molecular Bio, Human Phys II, Comp Anatomy II, Immunology, either Genetics or Embryology and then you also have a seminar class that meets about every other week where you work on preparing a presentation. My only real complaint about the curriculum is this year is the first year they are doing comparative anatomy instead of human anatomy and especially this second semester is very unorganized and poorly taught. During first semester we all wanted to gauge our eyes out as we had to learn in-depth anatomy and development of fish, amphibians, reptiles, etc and it was frustrating when we all hope to become physicians and couldn't care less about fish..second semester is about primate anatomy and evolution and it is a lot of material crammed into one class.
However, the dean and other faculty really value our input and are constantly working to improve things so this course will likely be tweaked for next year.
I'd say a lot of graduates of the program hope to go on to medical school (and many of them do) but some students also do other health professions like pharmacy, dentistry, etc. I believe a couple of my classmates are hoping to do a PhD program as well.
As for tuition, the program costs $28,000 for an 11 month program which is pretty reasonable I'd say. However, you are HIGHLY encouraged to not have a job while you are in the program and I would second that as it really does take up a lot of time and adding in a job would be very stressful. So the cost of attendance is actually around $54,000 for the year. But I will say if you are moving down with a S.O. or are still mooching off mom and dad at all (ie phone bill, car insurance, etc) you won't probably need that much, especially if you live in century towers with a roommate.
I don't really have any advice on how to prepare for it since I'm assuming you have a college degree and have taken difficult science classes prior to starting this program. Keep up with your studying from day 1 of class and do not get behind is really my only advice. And seek out help if you need it. There are plenty of resources on campus for students and there is really no reason anyone should struggle!
I am not from the KC area, I'm from about 3 hours away and like I said, I'd highly suggest not trying to work. Unless you have a crazy flexible job that will let you work on like a 3 day weekend or holiday break/spring break or something. If you are going to spend this kind of money on a program you absolutely want to make sure you do well!
. Iv just been reading all the old ones. This is super helpful!
