Would med schools do this for low GPA applicants?

[byrdhouse]

The time taken away from the clinical enterprise alone (when monetized), was several times more than the tuition collected. The PhD time was about a wash.

I do believe you are referring to the opportunity cost of being a professor as opposed to a full-time clinician?

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[Med Ed]

How common is a psychotic break among med students? (Or at least manifestation of underlying mental illness)

Not something you expect but it certainly happens. Mid-teens through mid-20's the classic window for first onset. Take enough medical students in their 20's and a subset will indeed develop psychosis.

Depression and anxiety disorders are more common, although I do not have stats.

 

[Goro]

How common is a psychotic break among med students? (Or at least manifestation of underlying mental illness)

Of all the students my school has lost, I'd say maybe two have had psychotic breaks. One was a schizophrenic that simply stopped taking his meds. The other developed psychosis while in school, but I don't know the particulars as to that case.

As Med Ed mentioned, depression is the most common cause at my school on mental health issues.

 

[gyngyn]

I do believe you are referring to the opportunity cost of being a professor as opposed to a full-time clinician?

I was referring to time scheduled for didactic or small group teaching (and taken away from patient care), as well as the time lost to teaching in clinic or at the bedside when students are present.

 

[PreMedMissteps]

Each med school student, on average, cost the university about $600,000 from MS1 - graduation. Of that $600,000 the med student only paid about $175,000 leaving the university to cover the difference.

Ok. So this brings this question to my mind: If it's costing that much to educate each med student, what are the for-profits doing in the Caribb and US (such as Calif Northstate)? Are they educating on the cheap? How can they even begin to compete with US non-profit med schools that are providing a first class and very expensive experience?

 

[PreMedMissteps]

Of all the students my school has lost, I'd say maybe two have had psychotic breaks. One was a schizophrenic that simply stopped taking his meds. The other developed psychosis while in school, but I don't know the particulars as to that case.

As Med Ed mentioned, depression is the most common cause at my school on mental health issues.

Are you saying that mental illness, such as severe depression and anxiety, are often reasons for med schools to lose students? I'm very concerned when I read posts from premeds who mention having horrible grades for a year or two due to depression and/or anxiety. Makes me wonder why they believe that they can survive med school and the medical profession in general.

 

[Goro]

Are you saying that mental illness, such as severe depression and anxiety, are often reasons for med schools to lose students?
Yes.

I'm very concerned when I read posts from premeds who mention having horrible grades for a year or two due to depression and/or anxiety. Makes me wonder why they believe that they can survive med school and the medical profession in general.
Our fears can be greatly alleviated by a sustained period of academic excellence. This demonstrates that the candidates have recovered.

 

[Med Ed]

Ok. So this brings this question to my mind: If it's costing that much to educate each med student, what are the for-profits doing in the Caribb and US (such as Calif Northstate)? Are they educating on the cheap? How can they even begin to compete with US non-profit med schools that are providing a first class and very expensive experience?

Caribbean schools pay a lot of money for their students to do clinical rotations in the US. They make their margins on the M1 and M2 students, who are generally taught via lecture. It is actually beneficial for them to have significant numbers of M1 and M2 students either drop out or repeat, as it does not burden their clinical sites with extra students. To put some perspective on this, I know two hospitals where each rotating Caribbean student brings in $5,000 a month from the school. Multiply that by 10-12 and it's easy to see 100% of M3/M4 tuition is getting funneled into expenses rather than profit.

The financial viability of Northstate's model is still in question.

There are a lot of tricks you can play with the numbers. I'm sure William Beaumont and Northwell are both "losing" money on their respective medical school affiliations, but they are playing a longer game of turning in-house medical students into in-house attendings.

 

[Ad2b]

Ok. So this brings this question to my mind: If it's costing that much to educate each med student, what are the for-profits doing in the Caribb and US (such as Calif Northstate)? Are they educating on the cheap? How can they even begin to compete with US non-profit med schools that are providing a first class and very expensive experience?

I can only guess here with the Carib schools as I've only been in finance at the one institution. The cost of operating the med school (building maintenance, computers, networks, phones, lights, water, gas/heat, lab materials, non-MD teacher salaries, administration - IT, finance, marketing, sales, business development, risk compliance, billing, etc - salaries, subscriptions, licensing fees, credentialing, system payments for EHR, finance, billing, reporting; payment of "tax" to other units in the university setting to offset costs of using the university as a whole as part of marketing, landscape improvements, etc) is substantially less than a Carib school with none of that.

Also, the non-profit schools in the US do NOT, will NEVER compete with Carib. Never ever. Ever. Never. Look what you made me do.

 

[Prometheus123]

Are you saying that mental illness, such as severe depression and anxiety, are often reasons for med schools to lose students?
Yes.

I'm very concerned when I read posts from premeds who mention having horrible grades for a year or two due to depression and/or anxiety. Makes me wonder why they believe that they can survive med school and the medical profession in general.
Our fears can be greatly alleviated by a sustained period of academic excellence. This demonstrates that the candidates have recovered.

Goro makes a good point that there's a difference between applicants who suffer from depression currently and those who have recovered from it.

 

[PreMedMissteps]

Goro makes a good point that there's a difference between applicants who suffer from depression currently and those who have recovered from it.

Ahh....I didn't know someone could recover from depression or anxiety. I thought that they could only be managed.

 

[Prometheus123]

Ahh....I didn't know someone could recover from depression or anxiety. I thought that they could only be managed.

I think there are a lot of young people who go through a quarter life crisis that gets labelled depression. I guess that's the problem with the medicalization of normal human development. Such people tend to grow out of it in the due course of growing older and wiser.

Also, I've read experts say that it is possible to recover from depression depending on the etiology. There are dozens of possible organic causes of depression, some of which can be resolved permanently, others of which can be managed effectively. Google "differential diagnosis depression" if you're curious.

 

[Goro]

Ahh....I didn't know someone could recover from depression or anxiety. I thought that they could only be managed.

I can't speak as to anxiety disorders, but as someone who has been on medication 2x for depression, and seen a clinician for it at least five times in my adult life, I can tell you that one CAN recover from acute depression.

 

[Prometheus123]

As @Med Ed points out
-US schools may have 100 to 250 students per class all starting in the fall
-Carib schools can have plans for up to 1800 (yes, 1,800) per year. Ross goal is 600 students starting in 3 terms, SGU is 800 in 2 terms

-US school may have 100 students in a course, with multiple full-time, highly paid faculty as course coordinator and instructors.
-Off shore have 400, 600, even up to 800 -per course, with one large lecture for all taught by an instructor at a much lower rate.

As to @Ad2b points
-US school's cost are paid on the scale in the US. Imagine the Cost of Living/Doing Business in New York
-Off shore costs in buildings, running the school, etc are much less

From a purely business perspective, the revenue stream is nearly guaranteed and presents little risk. That is, once a student is accepted, I mean accepted by the US DOE for loans, the lender sends the money to the school and the student, whether drops out or not, is responsible for the debt. There is almost no downside risk to a school. When people say the requirements for entry into these schools requires a warm body and a viable checkbook, it truly is all that is needed


SGU: just had a $750 million dollar investment from a hedge fund, after a $250 million special dividend to the founders.
The school is now valued at more than a billion (that's billion with "b") for sale. All that money made off of incoming students
Altas, Baring To Plow $750M Into For-Profit Med School - Law360
Historic St. George's University explores sale - sources

Saba: Founders were accused of fraud and not reporting income to IRS after selling the school to Prairie Capital. The founding husband absconded with some $20 million and is still a fugitive while he left his wife to be convicted in federal court.
Founder Saba Medical School on trial for tax evasion in US
Florida Doctor Convicted of Federal Tax Crimes

BTW, Prairie Capital also purchased MUA and St. Matthews forming R3 Education as investment vehicle. You can put money into this fund that also includes a metal fabricator and a wireless company. Prairie Capital - Fund Investments

For Ross and AUC, Just to make sure that everyone understands where these school's priorities and, in fact, legal obligations to shareholders as a publicly traded company lie, here are the second quarter financial results call where the business discusses with analysts. The below is concerning Ross and AUC, which are wholly subsidiaries of DMI (DeVry Medical International), which is under DeVry's Medical and Healthcare segment, providing the largest portion of revenue and earnings for the parent holding company recently renamed Adtalem Global Education (stock symbol ATGE:NYSE) current price of about $34 a share

DeVry Education Group (DV) Q2 2017 Results - Earnings Call Transcript | Seeking Alpha
"Suffice it to say, getting our marketing efforts right and returning our medical schools to growth is a key priority for me. These are excellent institutions and valuable institutions for our portfolio, and demand for MD programs remains very healthy, primarily due to the large surplus of students looking to become MDs and the limited spots available at schools in the U.S."

Newsflash: This just happened yesterday. The former dean of DeVry University, which less than a year ago paid $100 million dollar fine deceptive ads to students, was just named to head the Federal DOE unit that investigates fraud in education by a President who settled a lawsuit with New York State over his for-profit school for $25 million dollars. Is Trump University Casino Resort and Medical School really outside the realm of possibility?

These businesses are pimps, with the schools as their brothels, with mostly unknowing students who prostitute themselves to become doctors. I have no moral objection to the transaction but I do to the way that it is mostly hidden from the students and the rest in premed community.

Wow. I hadn't heard about our "great leader's" new DOE appointment. Clearly that's not the most reprehensible thing he's done in the past few weeks, but sounds like we can safely add it to the top ten (or hundred).

 

[Prometheus123]

I just want to appreciate your courage, @Goro. I’ve personally known and read about several great recovered depressives in my time who I admire and look to for guidance. I see a lot of similarities between them and you.

President Lincoln suffered from very severe clinical depression that was never treated or managed medically. Nevertheless, he led America through the gravest moral crisis in our history, the choice of whether to turn a blind eye or fight America’s original sin: slavery.

Lincoln’s untreated depression broke him on several occasions. In response, he rebuilt his psyche from the ground up. This became not just an adversity that he overcame, but also a source of surprising strength. In the crucible of his depression, Lincoln forged qualities like humility, risk-aversion, forethought, compassion, empathy, self-discipline, self-care, mindfulness, faith, self-transcendence, moral clarity, an ardent service-orientation, strategy, perseverance, grit, dogged determination, and resilience.

This rare set of strengths enabled Lincoln to persevere through many years of extreme chronic and acute stress, long-hours, tragic personal losses, defeat at the ballot box, public humiliation, a loveless marriage, the death of many people in battle on his orders, and the hatred of most people on both sides of the war.

Ironically, Lincoln would probably not get elected if he ran today. He wouldn’t appeal to the TV audience for one, and on top of that, his depression would be seen as a liability. That label and stigma would probably turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy because fewer people would vote for him. The same thing is true for the medical school admissions process and many other selection processes for positions of great responsibility in the US today.

But is it wise to discriminate against people just because they have a history of depression, even if it’s well-managed or recovered completely? The truth is that every person with a history of depression, just like all other people, is unique. To evaluate them accurately, it is necessary to consider each individual on her or his own merits, not on labels, statistics or stigmas. This profiling probably does avoid some truly high-risk candidates, but at what cost to society? How many truly great candidates like Lincoln and Goro have we lost?

By contrast, President Trump does not have a history of depression. Yet, he appears to be so morally bankrupt and cowardly that he won’t consistently condemn racism and hate even though it’s easy nowadays, thanks in part to Lincoln the depressive’s leadership, sacrifices, and resilience. In hindsight, I hope we can all agree that Lincoln turned out to be the lower risk candidate.

EDIT: Source: Lincoln's Great Depression published in The Atlantic.

 

[Ad2b]

President Lincoln suffered from very severe clinical depression that was never treated or managed medically. Nevertheless, he led America through the gravest moral crisis in our history, the choice of whether to turn a blind eye or fight America’s original sin: slavery.

By contrast, President Trump does not have a history of depression. Yet, he appears to be so morally bankrupt and cowardly that he won’t consistently condemn racism and hate even though it’s easy nowadays, thanks in part to Lincoln the depressive’s leadership, sacrifices, and resilience. In hindsight, I hope we can all agree that Lincoln turned out to be the lower risk candidate.

EDIT: Source: Lincoln's Great Depression published in The Atlantic.

Question 52: What would be the most likely non-defensive unusual statement, if true, that would weaken the author's argument for depression management?

A. Depression is a serotonin issue within the brain that stems from lack of gene encoding during DNA translation
B. Depression is not chemically based and therefore, depression is not manageable
C. Depression is a serotonin related issue outside the brain that stems for a gluttony of gene encoding issues during RNA transcription
D. I'm really sick of studying for the MCAT (and only then to hit up the center to take it and have it canceled on us by Prometric)

On a not funny note:

My son suffers from infrequent bouts of serious depression. Unmanaged, depression can/will not only destroy the individual, it can/does destroy families.

I encourage any and all who fight depression (friends, family, selves) to get help.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline:
1-800-273-8255

 

[Prometheus123]

Question 52: What would be the most likely non-defensive unusual statement, if true, that would weaken the author's argument for depression management?

A. Depression is a serotonin issue within the brain that stems from lack of gene encoding during DNA translation
B. Depression is not chemically based and therefore, depression is not manageable
C. Depression is a serotonin related issue outside the brain that stems for a gluttony of gene encoding issues during RNA transcription
D. I'm really sick of studying for the MCAT (and only then to hit up the center to take it and have it canceled on us by Prometric)

On a not funny note:

My son suffers from infrequent bouts of serious depression. Unmanaged, depression can/will not only destroy the individual, it can/does destroy families.

I encourage any and all who fight depression (friends, family, selves) to get help.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline:
1-800-273-8255

Thanks for making that point, I definitely also advocate getting help! Lincoln beasted through it because that was his best option at the time (the medical standard of care back then was mercury), but only because he didn't have the benefit of modern medicine. Anyone reading this today, does, and should act accordingly.

My point is that if Lincoln did what he did despite severe untreated depression, imagine what a contemporary person whose depression is well-managed can withstand and accomplish (quite a lot). For instance, think of the huge number of successful residents and physicians who are recovering from depression.