Medical School Tycoon/Design Your Own Medical School

[Redpancreas]

This is kind of a fun forum but I hope mods will allow it as it is relevant to issues in the medical school process. I've included a scenario below but if it's a tl;dr issue, just address the issues in the bolded headings and tell me how you'd design the medical school and WHY. In the scenario, I also discussed some of the pros/cons of different options in the medical schools.

DESIGN YOUR IDEAL MEDICAL SCHOOL!

Scenario:

The year is 2050 and you have been practicing as a [insert your specialty here], trained at [insert residency here], and graduated from [insert medical school here]. Citizens of your state [you choose] have written letters from your state asking you to develop a brand-new medical school. You have recently been elected as head of a super-committee whose purpose is to build a medical school.

0. Degree:
Will your medical school grant an MD degree or DO degree?

1. Name:
What will be the name of your medical school? Explain.

2. Funding:
Anonymous donors have jumped in want to pay a total $200 million dollars in order to build the new medical school. Either you can take that money and design a private medical school or you can settle down in a location where you live [your choice] and start a public medical school. If you choose the option of a public medical school, you will receive a starter amount of $500 million. However, if you start a public medical school, you will be obligated to fill your medical school class with 60% of in-state residents, be influenced by the state of affairs in congress/senate, and be under pressure to be influenced by pharmaceutical companies in your area. Explain.

3. Mission (Statement):
You can either open up a medical school that aims to provide medical support to the underrepresented in an inner city or a rural area of your choice. If you choose this, you will receive an additional government money totaling 50 million dollars. Another option is to try to enter the academic medicine competition but be aware that funding for this is limited and there are already lots of well-established competitive players in the market (see top research schools on USNews). If you choose to do this, your school will not receive as many competitive applicants as most interested in a career in academic medicine (or many who are gunning for a competitive residency/fellowship) realize that research opportunities at your school are limited for the first twenty years. Lastly, you can choose to run with a generic/community mission but you will still face the stigma of being a new school but you will at least be able to pick from slightly more competitive applicants than you would if you choose an academic school. Please explain your choice.

4. Recruitment:

a.)Interview: MMI/Traditional Interview/No-Interview/Combined Approach/Student Interviews/Other
Please explain your choice. Explain.

b.) MCAT/GPA: (Ignore the fact that this will have changed). Will you pre-screen secondaries? What will be the limits? Explain.

c.) Primary: What EC's will you instruct AdComs to place major emphasis on:

d.) Secondary: What will be the prompts on your secondary? How much will the secondary price be? (Minimum of $25 and maximum of $200). Keep in mind that you have an incentive to make it as high as possible. Given the volume of applicants, you stand to make lots of revenue per cycle by just increasing secondary pricing and unless you go significantly over $100, a good number of applicants won't be deterred by a high secondary fee). Explain.

e.) What will be your admissions communications policies? Explain.
i) When will you start inviting students for interviews (how many dates?) Explain.
ii) How often will you communicate with students regarding their admission status? Explain.
iii) How will you choose to reject applicants? How/will you reject Pre-interview/Post interview? Explain.

f.) Will you choose to hold a second look day?

5. Curriculum:

a.) Will you require a research project/scholarly project? Keep in mind that while this adds diversity and competitiveness to a student's CV, it will also detract from the amount of time the student will be studying. Explain

b.) What type of curriculum will you choose? Lectures (recorded or no?), PBL/TBL? Explain

c.) Will preceptorships be required during first/second year? (How often) Explain.

d.) How will you grade students? P/F, P/F (w/ internal ranking)

e.) Will you choose a systems based approach or an integrated approach?
For those who are confused, a systems based approach (at least in second year) goes through various organ systems individually while an integrated approach mixes them together.

f.) How much time will you allot to USLME preparation? (maximum is 6 weeks...anything over than and your school will be at risk for losing some sort of accreditation).

g. Alternative routes: pick 3
MD/PhD ($100 million to establish), MD/JD, MD/MBA, MD/MPH, MD/MS, MD/MA.

h. Will you allow students to have learning communities?

i. Will you allow students to partake in medical scholars programs where they meet 2-3 days a week with a physician in their field of interest, shadow, and do research in the area (a disadvantage is time lost studying).

j. What will be the order of medical education?

Exs. Western MI for example does 2 years basic science with weeks off for USLME prep and then does a third clinical year with weeks off for UsLME prep and then they take it after year 3.



6. Hospital Affiliations:

Your hospitals will already be up and running. What kinds would you associate your school with? If you want, you can spend 400 million to build a 300 bed university teaching hospital and it can have its own patient centered approach, custom population, mission, etc.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Mr Roboto]

1. Best Medical School (BMS). Self-evident.

2. Public. I like the emphasis on local education and connection to the community.

3. Provide care to an underrepresented urban center. I'd rather live in a city than in a small rural area, the patient population will be larger and presumably more diverse, and it's easier to attract students to a city with good quality of life.

4.
a) Traditional. I just like the format, no strong belief here.
b) No. I'll send them out automatically, then prescreen how I review the secondaries. This brings in more $$$ us. MCAT <26 or sGPA <3.25 gets you screened out.
c) Scribing. Anything done consistently for 2.5+ years. Automatically ding people who list being a member of a pre-med society as an activity.
d) $95. Getting as close to $100 as possible, but staying below it because that's a big psychological barrier to overcome.
e) Not sure what you mean.
i. September. Keep interviewing through mid-March.
ii. When we make a new decision.
iii. Reject them whenever we decide they're not going to be accepted.
f) Nah.

5.
a) No.
b) Lectures mixed with PBL and group activities. Lectures recorded and posted 24 hours later.
c) Have them available, wouldn't make them required.
d) Everyone gets A's.
e) Systems based.
f) Four weeks? Id

6. I'd like to have a small teaching hospital, eventually. Might not build one right away, though, if there's a local healthcare network in place that would accept our students on clinical rotations. Because that's a huge percentage of our capital to put into one area.

 

[tanhauser19]

1. Name:
Thunderdome Medical School

2. Funding:
Private school, with tuition paid for by switching out white coats with NASCAR-type jumpsuits cluttered with pharmaceutical brand names or, for that matter, any company that will make a donation!

3. Mission (Statement):
Applicants will be admitted based in part by how much they can bench. Do you even lift? Juicing is encouraged. This will save money on hiring security for affiliated hospitals, as M3-4 students will be able to dispatch and subdue any security threats with strong choke-holds. Applicants are also considered on TV show taste and some test we heard about this one time.

Bench press in lbs + MCAT x 10 + MCAT x 100 + (on a scale of 1-100 how much do you like the HBO show Game of Thrones?) = applicant score

4. Recruitment:

a.)Interview: The interview will be replaced with a Thunderdome in which applicants will engage in melee combat. 2 applicants enter, 1 applicant leaves. Studies show that bench press amount is highly correlated with how much you can crush the Thunderdome opponent and the STEP 1... computer.

b.) MCAT/GPA: Students who score below the 30th percentile will be mailed a special recruitment flyer to participate in the Thunderdome as special animal handlers during the wild animal attack portion of the Thunderdome.

c.) Primary: What EC's will you instruct AdComs to place major emphasis on:

d.) Secondary: The secondary will require applicants to send in videos of their extreme skills. Twerking is prohibited. These videos will then be aggregated into a promotional video for our recruitment use in ads that will air on SpikeTV during COPS marathons.

e.) What will be your admissions communications policies? Wat.
i) When will you start inviting students for interviews (how many dates?) Interviews will take place as often as the Thunderdome can allow. Applicants who want early consideration should impress the committee by arriving at the admissions office in a helicopter, preferably a weaponized one.
ii) How often will you communicate with students regarding their admission status? Never.
iii) How will you choose to reject applicants? How/will you reject Pre-interview/Post interview? Applicants will be rejected via humiliation. On clear days, their names will be written in smoke by pilots we hire to fly over major metropolitan areas.

f.) Will you choose to hold a second look day? Applicants will be so impressed we to not anticipate the need for a second look.

 

[Spinach Dip]

LOL



I'll do curriculum only. (other details TBD)

All students are required to take the anatomy block semester 1. After that, everything is elective. You take a 'practice step 1' to determine your weaknesses, then are free to sign up for whatever classes you want. Attendance is not mandatory. Taking midterms/finals is not mandatory. Summer classes are offered for those who want to take them.

All that matters is that you pass the step 1. If you pass, you move on to year 3. If you fail, you have no one to blame but yourself.



That's a school I'd love to go to.

 

[dbeast]

In this thread: pre-meds designing a medical school curriculum. Nicely done.

 

[Redpancreas]

In this thread: pre-meds designing a medical school curriculum. Nicely done.

It wasn't meant to be ironic or to imply that we can actually do it. It was just supposed to be a little fun.

 

[snowflakes]

After interviewing at a variety of schools and seeing the many different admissions and curricular approaches that are in place, this sounds like a fun activity! Going through it will probably help me get a sense of which schools I'm leaning towards. I will come back to this with my answer. Just this morning I was thinking about a particular school and thinking if it were me designing the curriculum, I'd do this, this, and this differently, haha. So here's my chance! 😀

Just a suggestion--I think you should add a question to the curricular component about 2 vs 1.5 vs 1 year pre-clinical curriculum, and an option as to if students will take STEP1 before or after the clinical year or if you leave the choice up to them.

Oh, and I also think there should be a question about class size.

 

[Chipster.]

Just a suggestion--I think you should add a question to the curricular component about 2 vs 1.5 vs 1 year pre-clinical curriculum, and an option as to if students will take STEP1 before or after the clinical year or if you leave the choice up to them.

You uh....you need to do some homework on all this...

 

[dbeast]

It wasn't meant to be ironic or to imply that we can actually do it. It was just supposed to be a little fun.

No I was serious. I like it.

 

[snowflakes]

You uh....you need to do some homework on all this...

...not sure why? Duke and Vandy both have 1 year pre-clinical curriculums and several more have 1.5 year curriculums (such as NYU, UVa, Penn, Columbia, Cornell). Many schools with accelerated preclinicals have students take step1 after the first clinical year (like Baylor, Duke, Cornell, Vandy) while others have students take it at the end of the pre-clinical year, while others give students lots of flexibility in scheduling the date. There are pros and cons to each approach.

 

[Redpancreas]

You uh....you need to do some homework on all this...

No he doesn't.
Duke has only one year of basic science lecture followed by a year of clinical, then there's a year if research followed by a year of electives so that's an example of a 1 year pre-clinical program. Western MI is doing the USLME after 3rd year (apparently there has been research showing that students who do this do better?...I don't really know if that's true). In all fairness, I wouldn't have known this until I was in application cycle.

 

[baconshrimps]

You uh....you need to do some homework on all this...

False. Florida International University schedules Step I at the end of 3rd year.

 

[Redpancreas]

2. Funding:
Private school, with tuition paid for by switching out white coats with NASCAR-type jumpsuits cluttered with pharmaceutical brand names or, for that matter, any company that will make a donation!

Hahahaha!!!!!!

 

[baconshrimps]

Okay, so I'm only quoting the things that genuinely made me LOL.

1. Name:
Thunderdome Medical School

3. Mission (Statement):
Applicants will be admitted based in part by how much they can bench. Do you even lift? Juicing is encouraged. This will save money on hiring security for affiliated hospitals, as M3-4 students will be able to dispatch and subdue any security threats with strong choke-holds. Applicants are also considered on TV show taste and some test we heard about this one time.

b.) MCAT/GPA: Students who score below the 30th percentile will be mailed a special recruitment flyer to participate in the Thunderdome as special animal handlers during the wild animal attack portion of the Thunderdome.

d.) Secondary: The secondary will require applicants to send in videos of their extreme skills. Twerking is prohibited. These videos will then be aggregated into a promotional video for our recruitment use in ads that will air on SpikeTV during COPS marathons.

i) When will you start inviting students for interviews (how many dates?) Interviews will take place as often as the Thunderdome can allow. Applicants who want early consideration should impress the committee by arriving at the admissions office in a helicopter, preferably a weaponized one.

ii) How often will you communicate with students regarding their admission status? Never.

iii) How will you choose to reject applicants? How/will you reject Pre-interview/Post interview? Applicants will be rejected via humiliation.

 

[yqwe]

You uh....you need to do some homework on all this...

no I think you do....there's actually quite a bit of variety in med school curriculums. It's hard to realize until you start interviewing.

 

[listener23]

If this was real, I would build a medical school and only let me in it....mcat waived and all

 

[Reckoner]

1. Name:
Named after my avatar's son, Stan:

Stan Ford University.

2. Funding:
Private. Can't be beholden to those fickle state legislators.

3. Mission Statement:
The mission of the Stan Ford University School of Medicine is to train physicians. Good ones. Mostly using NIH grant money that gets mistakenly sent our way due to confusion with a similarly named (but inferior) institution.

4. Recruitment:

a.) Interview: Each applicant will have one semi-traditional interview, lasting as long as is necessary. Interview rooms will be equipped with 1 desk, 2 chairs, and 1 foot long poop hot dog.

b.) MCAT/GPA: No numerical screen. School's website would display statistical odds of getting in at any MCAT/GPA combo to dissuade Hail Mary applicants.

c.) Primary: Long term commitments will be highly valued.

d.) Secondary: Prompt will read as follows:
"In the space below, write an autobiography covering all the events of your life, from birth to the present day. Now edit it down to 10,000 characters, without omitting any details.
Done?
Good, now send it to UCSD and mail us your receipt. We'll reimburse. No one should have to suffer like that."

e.) Communications policies:
i) Interviews will only begin after all applications have been received. Interview days will be very small (5-6 students), so that the applicants can be kept under constant surveillance by AdCom members disguised as plants and office furniture.

ii) Students will be told an exact date and time when decisions will be released. The time is intentionally four hours too early. Anyone neurotic enough to call during that four hour gap asking about their status gets rejected.

iii) Pre-interview rejections will entail a form email. Post-interview rejections will include crushingly honest reasons for the applicant's rejection.

f.) Second look: Will involve bringing applicants back to their interview rooms. Those that exhibit PTSD-like symptoms get acceptances rescinded.

5. Curriculum:
I only know what I've read on SDN about curricula, so I'll skip this one. I do know my grading system would consist of gold stars and rainbow stickers

6. Hospital Affiliations:
We'll figure this out when the school opens

 

[Redpancreas]

I know I've made a lot of mistakes and assumptions but here's mine!

0. Degree:

MD

1. Name:

University of Delaware School of Medicine in Newark, DE

2. Funding:

I will make it a public school (+500 million) and 80% of applicants will come from in-state. In-State Tuition will be 25,000K a year and out of state tuition will be 45,000 a year.

3. Mission (Statement):

UDSOM strives to provides to train exceptional, problem-solving clinicians of the future for primary care and various specialties for the state of Delaware.

4. Recruitment:

a.)Interview: Applicants will be selected via an MMI. There will be 8 stations with each one lasting 8 minutes. Two of the stations will be acting prompts, 2 will ask for personal reflection, 1 will be a team-work exercise, one will be on a future issue in medicine, and two will be problem solving situations in which students will be given a somewhat complex problem and will be give some extra time to think and then discuss their solutions with the MMI assessor.

b.) MCAT/GPA: Secondaries will be pre-screened and nothing less than a 27 overall and with at least an 8 in each section will be given a secondary. Anything below a 3.25 sGPA and 3.00 cumulative GPA will be pre-screened. Serving a population of nearly a million, setting the standards high will be very important.

c.) Primary: What EC's will you instruct AdComs to place major emphasis on: Activities in student leadership, experience in genomics, computational biology, genetics research computer science majors, etc. The due date will be September 1st for primaries.

d.) Secondary: What will be the prompts on your secondary? How much will the secondary price be?

The Secondary Cost will be $100.00 and will be due on December 31st.

Essay Questions:

1. What do you think are the three most important skills a clinician of the future must develop that were not required twenty years ago? (700 words)

2. Tell us about a time where you had to devise a creative solution to a problem. Describe the context of the problem, your thought process, actions, and ultimately the results (500 words)

e.) What will be your admissions communications policies? Vague question.
i) When will you start inviting students for interviews (how many dates?) Explain. Interviews will occur 4 Saturdays per month in the Student Affairs office.
ii) How often will you communicate with students regarding their admission status? Students will be notified when we have received their primary application and will have the secondary sent to them by email. They will be notified when the primary is received. At the end of each month, we will select interview candidates for the next month and admissions will be on a rolling basis. For September interviewees, we will take the highest MCAT/GPA students who have ample clinical experience, leadership, volunteer hours, research (preferably in something with computers/modeling), and interesting stories. At the start of October, we will have ranked applicants into 4 tiers based on advice from our admission committee members. 1) To be interviewed, high priority, 2) To be interviewed, lower priority 3.)Maybe interviewed once spots open up. 4.) Will not be interviewed. Only group 4 will be notified as the applicants will be continually shuffling down this last as more and more applications are received. Every month, 100 applicants (25 each session) will be interviewed for a total of 600 interviews (we will end in February) and we will accept 200 students and matriculate 100 into the medical school. After we reject and waitlist applicants, we will pull from the to be interviewed but lower priority resulting in a shift up on the list. By December 21st, you will be notified where on the list you stand (1,2, or 3).

iii) How will you choose to reject applicants? How/will you reject Pre-interview/Post interview? Explain.
After interviews, we will reject applicants based on holistic factors. In our rejection letter, we will use tone similar to BU's rejection letter, but also add that you may contact our office to ask why you were ultimately rejected. MMI performance, GPA, MCAT, EC factors will be discussed as well as what your overall weaknesses are.

f.) Will you choose to hold a second look day?

Second Look day is optional and will begin submission of a pre-written essay and an additional interview to determine what the applicant can bring to UDSOM in terms of research/other talents. Based on this and academic merit, full tuition and half tuition scholarships will be awarded to ten applicants (on a later date). Students will now tour the medical center (not during interview day) and will then meet with either a clinician, researcher, or other faculty member based on what they selected pre-Match Day on the admissions login page.

5. Curriculum:

a.) Will you require a research project/scholarly project? NO.

b.) What type of curriculum will you choose? Lectures (on-site but also recorded).

c.) Will preceptorships be required during first/second year? (How often) Explain.
Once a week, students will be required to attend a 2 hour primary care pre-ceptorship.

d.) How will you grade students? P/F w/ Internal Ranking disclosed only upon request from residency program directors.

e.) Will you choose a systems based approach or an integrated approach?

A student will always be taking three classes:

1.) Organ System Course (GI/Cardio/Neuro/etc.)-70% of student credits
2.) Introduction to Clinical Medicine (students will learn skills relevant to area of study)
3.) Medical Literature Interpretation Class (students will learn to think critically about papers in the literature and they ones chosen will somehow relate to the area of study).


f.) How much time will you allot to USLME preparation? (maximum is 6 weeks...anything over than and your school will be at risk for losing some sort of accreditation).

-5 weeks will be allotted to USLME study.

-In addition, after every exam (end of each systems unit; will be an NBME exam) students will have one week off for a total of 6 weeks off. During this time, students will have to check-in to a computer lab to listen to a 2 hour pre-recorded lecture with the rewind function disabled. This lecture will cover high yield material on the USLME on the unit they are about to cover. A proctor will ensure that students are doing what is required of them. Afterwards, they will take a mini-NBME quiz that lasts thirty minutes. Afterwards, they are free to spend the day however they would like.



g. Alternative routes: pick 3
MD/MBA, MD/MPH, MD/MS in Healthcare Informatics w/ partnerships with University of Deleware.

h. Will you allow students to have learning communities?
Nothing of the sort will be mandated. Students can socialize, meet mentors, and make friends on their own time.

i. Will you allow students to partake in medical scholars programs where they meet 2-3 days a week with a physician in their field of interest, shadow, and do research in the area (a disadvantage is time lost studying).
During first or second year, a student must sign up for for a Medical Scholars Track. They will be required to shadow a physician of their specialty interest and perform research in that specialty. This is where all the research money will be allocated towards (10 million/year) (Note that there is NO MD/PhD program).

j. What will be the order of medical education?
2 years basic science, 1 year clerkships, and one year electives. Before clinical, students must give evidence that they have passed the USLME.




6. Hospital Affiliations:
University of Delaware will spend 300 million to build a 300-bed teaching hospital equipped physicians of all specialties. It will unfortunately not have a children's hospital affiliate but will seek the partner with one and a VA hospital in the future. All students will do all their clerkships in this brand-new hospital located in Newark. We will push to have students do offsite electives the following year.

Long term goal:

The school will probably never be ranked in the USNews top 100 medical schools but it will hopefully produce students per its mission statement and have them match into competitive residency programs.

 

[terp720]

a.) Will you require a research project/scholarly project? NO.

.......

i. Will you allow students to partake in medical scholars programs where they meet 2-3 days a week with a physician in their field of interest, shadow, and do research in the area (a disadvantage is time lost studying).
During first or second year, a student must sign up for for a Medical Scholars Track. They will be required to shadow a physician of their specialty interest and perform research in that specialty. This is where all the research money will be allocated towards (10 million/year) (Note that there is NO MD/PhD program).

couldn't decide on research requirements?

UDSOM sounds quite nice

 

[Chipster.]

no I think you do....there's actually quite a bit of variety in med school curriculums. It's hard to realize until you start interviewing.

1. Accepted, but thanks.

2. I apologize to all, I misread and didn't see the last part of the sentence, thought he was talking about making step 1 optional.

 

[Lucca]

I know Dell Medical School will be finished by 2017 but....
0. Degree:

MD

1. Name:

Bullock College of Medicine at the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, TX. I chose the name Bullock in a shallow attempt to get the Bullocks to donate money to the institution. Alternatively, Ryan Gosling may also buy out the name if he so chooses. Lance Armstrong too, maybe people will forget about the whole blooding thing. Also if McCombs wants to throw some money our way....

2. Funding:

BCOM will be a public university located in the Downtown area of Austin, TX. I wanted to make it private but I wanted the school's tuition rates to compete with other schools in Texas. Tuition will be 15,000 a year in-state and 50,000 out of state. We will accept 70% of applicants in-state and 30% OOS. OOS students may apply for in-state tuition after 1 year at the school.

3. Mission (Statement):

The Bullock College of Medicine is committed to producing the best clinical physician and physician educators in the state of Texas and in the country. Mentorship and the ability to communicate information effectively to mentees, students, patients, and the population at large are the primary goals of the institution. Due to the importance BCOM will place on mentorship and education, the class size will be limited to 60 students. (The small class size also makes it so that there is also the option to go to the much larger Dell Medical School in Austin).

4. Recruitment:

a.)Interview: Applicants will be selected via a set of four MMI interviews and 1 traditional interview. The aim of the traditional interview is to discern the candidate's interest in medicine, ability to communicate effectively in a stressful situation, and - most importantly - determine if they are of a desirable character to join the school's small class. The 4 MMIs will be as follows:
1) This is the longest MMI (might be incorrect to call it an MMI even) where the applicant is given 20 minutes to solve a series of logic and reasoning puzzles with nothing but a pen and paper. This will very closely resemble the interview process at tech and top consulting/finance firms. Questions like: "My wife and I recently attended a party at which there were four other married couples. Various handshakes took place. No one shook hands with oneself, nor with one's spouse, and no one shook hands with the same person more than once. After all the handshakes were over, I asked each person, including my wife, how many hands he (or she) had shaken. To my surprise each gave a different answer. How many hands did my wife shake?"

2) The applicant will watch a short video of a patient being treated in the hospital. The applicant will have ten minutes to analyze the scene. The applicant must then determine the emotions of everyone in the scene, attempt to determine what is wrong with the patient by their breathing patterns/vitals/expressions, analyze the body language of everyone in the room, and determine if any of the healthcare workers actions are somehow impeding or reducing the quality of care. Bonus points for identifying the relationships of everyone in the room. This is an empathy check mostly and not meant to be a test of the applicant's clinical knowledge or scientific knowledge, the ability to naturally (and quickly) recognize and respond to emotion is enough. Also, this is a test of the applicant's mad detective ability.

3) Teamwork exercise with other applicants.

4) Public Policy/Issues in healthcare interview.

b.) MCAT/GPA: Anything less than a 27 and a 3.0 gets screened immediately.

c.) Primary: What EC's will you instruct AdComs to place major emphasis on: Long-term activities involving mentorship/teaching, research with extra weight given to computational research, other long-term activities.

d.) Secondary: What will be the prompts on your secondary? How much will the secondary price be?

The Secondary Cost will be $95 and will be due on December 31st.

Essay Questions:

1. The word doctor comes form the latin docere, meaning teacher. What does the physician's role as an educator mean to you?

2. Write about a time you came up with a creative solution to a problem (stolen but I liked this one).

e.) What will be your admissions communications policies?
Transparency.
i) When will you start inviting students for interviews (how many dates?) Explain. Interviews will occur 4 Saturdays per month in the Student Affairs office.
ii) How often will you communicate with students regarding their admission status? Students will be notified when we have received their primary application and will have the secondary sent to them by email. They will be notified when the primary is received. At the end of each month, we will select interview candidates for the next month and admissions will be on a rolling basis. For September interviewees, we will take the highest MCAT/GPA students who have ample clinical experience, leadership, volunteer hours, research (preferably in something with computers/modeling), and interesting stories. At the start of October, we will have ranked applicants into 4 tiers based on advice from our admission committee members. 1) To be interviewed, high priority, 2) To be interviewed, lower priority 3.)Maybe interviewed once spots open up. 4.) Will not be interviewed. Only group 4 will be notified as the applicants will be continually shuffling down this last as more and more applications are received. Every month, 100 applicants (25 each session) will be interviewed for a total of 600 interviews (we will end in February) and we will accept 120 students and matriculate 60 (if yield is particularly high then we can make push class size a bit)into the medical school. After we reject and waitlist applicants, we will pull from the to be interviewed but lower priority resulting in a shift up on the list. By December 21st, you will be notified where on the list you stand (1,2, or 3).

^ Stolen again, I thought all of this was reasonable.

iii) How will you choose to reject applicants? How/will you reject Pre-interview/Post interview? Explain.
After interviews, we will reject applicants based on holistic factors or if the applicant does not seem to be a good fit for our particular mission of training physician educators. The rejection letter will be personalized and include the reasons for rejection .

f.) Will you choose to hold a second look day?

Yes. On this due admits will be given a tour of Austin and the city's history. Emphasis will be placed on the extremely segregated nature of the city and how that affects the patient population they will be taking care of for the next 4 years. Sixth street on second to last day because "rage, you're going to be a doctor".

5. Curriculum:

a.) Will you require a research project/scholarly project? Yes.

b.) What type of curriculum will you choose? Lectures (on-site but also recorded). Through a partnership with UT Austin, students will be required to TA Anatomy and Physiology courses and hold at least one presentation per-semester for the science honors programs at the university or the undergrad population at large.

c.) Will preceptorships be required during first/second year? (How often) Explain.
Preceptorships will be required once a week in an area of the student's choosing.

d.) How will you grade students? P/F

e.) Will you choose a systems based approach or an integrated approach?

Classes will all start out with a broad integrated approach that will narrow and narrow as the pre-clinical years go on. This follows the principle of making "smaller circles" that helps with retention, "information chunking", and conceptual understanding.

f.) How much time will you allot to USLME preparation? (maximum is 6 weeks...anything over than and your school will be at risk for losing some sort of accreditation).

-5 weeks will be allotted to USLME study.

-In addition, after every exam (end of each systems unit; will be an NBME exam) students will have one week off for a total of 6 weeks off. During this time, students will have to check-in to a computer lab to listen to a 2 hour pre-recorded lecture with the rewind function disabled. This lecture will cover high yield material on the USLME on the unit they are about to cover. A proctor will ensure that students are doing what is required of them. Afterwards, they will take a mini-NBME quiz that lasts thirty minutes. Afterwards, they are free to spend the day however they would like.



g. Alternative routes: pick 3
MD/MBA with McCombs School of Business, MD/MPH with UT School of Public Health (option to take time off to complete MPH at UT School of Public Health in Houston), MD/M.Education (0.5-1 year fellowship in education in partnership with UT Graduate School of Education, tuition is waved for this period and a stipend is provided for living expenses).

h. Will you allow students to have learning communities?
Learning communities will be strongly encouraged but nothing will be required.


j. What will be the order of medical education?
1.5 year clinical; 1.5 year clerkship; 1 year electives.




6. Hospital Affiliations:
BCOM will spend 300 million to build a 300-bed teaching hospital equipped physicians of all specialties. The college will be affiliated with Dell Children's Hospital, Dell Medical School, and hopefully we can get access to the Texas Medical Center in Houston for away rotations and electives.

Long term goal:

The goal of the school is to provide Texas and the US with competent, empathetic, and effective clinicians and educators. The school is centered around the idea of "Learn One, Do One, Teach One."

 

[Lucca]

dp.