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October 26, 2021

Reading Time: 19 minutes

Are You Rushing to Attend Rush Medical College? [Episode 441]

Are you rushing to Attend Rush Medical College?
https://media.blubrry.com/admissions_straight_talk/www.accepted.com/hubfs/Podcast_audio_files/Podcast/441_Cynthia-Boyd_2021.mp3

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Get to know Rush Medical College [Show summary]

Built on the tenets of community service and community engagement, Rush Medical College strives to graduate empathetic physicians. In this episode, Dr. Cynthia Boyd, Associate Dean for Admissions offers a closer look into the program. 

What makes Rush Medical College unique? A flipped-classroom model of learning and an unwavering dedication to community service [Show notes]

Thanks for joining me for the 441st episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Will you be ready, next spring, to apply to your dream medical schools? Are you competitive at your target programs? Accepted’s med school admissions quiz can give you a quick reality check. Just go to accepted.com/medquiz, complete the quiz, and you’ll not only get an assessment, but also tips on how to improve your chances of acceptance. Plus, it’s all free.

Now, let’s move to today’s interview. I’m delighted to have on Admissions Straight Talk, Dr. Cynthia Boyd of Rush Medical College. Dr. Boyd earned her MD at George Washington, where she also did her residency in internal medicine, and later an MBA from Chicago Booth. She joined Rush Medical Center in 1998, and has served in a variety of roles, including Assistant Dean for Minority Affairs, Director of Medical Staff Operations, and Chief Compliance Officer. She moved over to Rush Medical College, full-time, in 2019, and is now the Senior Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, as well as Associate Dean for Admissions and Recruitment. Dr. Boyd, thank you so much for joining me on Admissions Straight Talk.

Can you give us an overview of the Rush Medical College program, focusing on its more distinctive elements? [2:07]

Sure, I’ll be speaking primarily about the medical school. At Rush University Medical Center, we have four colleges dedicated to the health sciences: the College of Nursing, Health Sciences, Graduate College, and the Medical College. It has been in existence since about 1837. It was the first medical school established, actually, in Chicago. It is very focused on clinical care, outstanding clinical care, integrating that with education, research, and community partnerships.

We are located on the west side of Chicago, about five miles from the downtown area, the Chicago Loop, as it is called. Our community is a very diverse community, ranging from very wealthy, to the very poor. More recently, our curriculum was changed to become what is described as a flipped classroom, where the students do the learning. The teacher is not in front of them doing didactics, students do the learning, and then they come to class in a group of their peers to share what they’ve learned, to ask questions. It puts the focus on them as their learners, versus the faculty putting out all of the information. That’s changed within the last five years. Probably, one of the newest innovations has been our curriculum.

What does the faculty do in a flipped classroom context? [3:45]

There are specific courses, so to speak, that the students will learn and focus on for anywhere from four to six weeks like gases, nutrition, etc. But they are given readings and articles and videos, and a variety of ways to learn on that topic. Then when they come to class, there is both clinical faculty, as well as basic science faculty, at the same time. So we combine both the normal and the abnormal, in this case, both anatomy for example, as well as pathology, etc.

The students learn on their own, and they interact with each other. It is very important for them to have those oral communication/interpersonal skills to be able to have these discussions. The faculty are there to facilitate that, facilitate the learning, and also to be able to provide individual learning, if that is necessary. But it puts the focus on the student to actually review and learn the concepts. 

When I went to medical school, we didn’t have that. But when you start seeing patients, and thinking about problems, it really puts you in a place of having that critical reasoning and problem solving.

Rush Medical won the Spencer Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Service from the AMC. There are a lot of medical schools with strong community service components to their curriculum. How did Rush differentiate itself in this highly competitive area? [5:18]

Well, first of all, community service is the backbone of Rush, it’s in our DNA. It’s not just the Medical School, it’s the entire organization. I think that is one way we’re differentiated — this is not just a set of opportunities for students or others to get into community and volunteer, and then they’re done. There’s a commitment from the board to senior leadership, and that is disseminated and it cascades down into the organization. 

For example, we have philanthropic funding from donors to support what we do in the community but we also know the ills that are in our community; the structural determinants that affect people’s health. So our students, our faculty, our staff, our residents, everyone is engaged, and it’s interprofessional on the university side.

We have the Rush Community Service Initiative Program (RCSIP) which is 30 years old, and it was started by students. It has several components to it: education and training for our students, but also, it provides care to the community, and provides health literacy to the community. The idea of what, I am sure, came out of the Spencer Foreman award was not only community engagement, but sustaining that, and also measuring the effects. We have metrics that we look at to make sure what we’re doing is serving the community. That is something that we require for students, for the medical school, that they have a quality background or experience of service.

When we review, we don’t use the word screen. But when we review applications to decide whether or not we want to see that person in-person for an interview, we’re looking at the quality of their experiences. So, someone who may have done a couple months or couple weeks of something and then they’re done doesn’t meet the level of our typical applicants that we’re looking to see with that service orientation component. That is because most of our beyond-the-service requirements that the LCME has, our students come, and they are engaged. They are part of our community, and the community as part of their education, as well. But the organization as a whole, our mission is really embedded in the community.

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How has COVID affected the curriculum and experience at Rush? [8:22]

As everyone did, we switched to virtual. Even initially, for our M3 students. Some experiences in the community were discontinued, but pretty much everything else was the same. Our third-year students were put back on the floors after a couple months. They just weren’t put on COVID patients because of concern for their safety. But otherwise, they were back on their clerkships and in the hospital. Our medical students, some of our first and second-year medical students, as I mentioned, we kept some classes that were hybrid and students were still able to do that.

There were some in-person programs, like the Explorer Program, where they were able to look at other opportunities, other careers, disciplines that had to be discontinued. But otherwise, we made a pretty good pivot from the classroom, where they meet as a group, to doing it online and virtually. The one part that was difficult, and then I would think for most people, was just not being able to see each other in person.

They really missed seeing each other, they really missed being on campus, and the vibrancy of that. Certainly, some of the RCSIP programs, being in the community, and being able to do that. So that part was difficult, but we just tried to make more time, where we interacted with them even outside of the classroom experience to let them know we were there.

This year, everybody is back and pretty much vaccinated. We’ve had a mandatory vaccination for everybody at Rush. All our medical students, 152 of them, entering this year, and the rest of them, 500+ are all vaccinated. There have been opportunities for them to interact. 

I was just with a group of some students at a blood drive yesterday, along with our CEO, myself, and others. We were masked, vaccinated, and still following protocols, as required by our city, as well as our governor. But we’re in a good place right now.

Does Rush have any plans to go MCAT-optional? [11:12]

Not at this point in time. We review our MCAT requirements as a committee every year. We review the data out of the AAMC, we review how our students do in the curriculum. At this point, we’re still with the MCAT.

Is research a nice-to-have, or really important to the admissions committee at Rush Medical School? [11:34]

It’s a nice-to-have. It certainly adds to the students’ portfolio. We don’t require research. So we will see a spectrum of students who come with no research exposure, some with intermediate, and some with advanced. But we don’t require it. It does add value to their application, but we don’t require it. They have opportunities when they get to Rush. If they’re interested, they can be assigned to a PI, a principal investigator, and they’re able to look into areas and get the basics. They’re also able to do some more advanced work, if they like and if they’ve already done it, can look for opportunities to continue it. But we certainly don’t require it.

Are secondaries automatic at Rush? [12:30]

They are not. They used to be. We get about 10,000-11,000 applications and it goes up every year. So as we bring that number down, we’re reviewing and when I say reviewing I mean we get our faculty engaged with this process as much as we can to look at those applications that really reflect what we’re looking for. As I mentioned before, we actually require community service exposure.

There is also some healthcare exposure, and exposure to patients. We don’t want people coming to medicine or medical school without knowing what they’re getting themselves into, and later deciding, this is not for me. So it is a qualitative review. If someone has done multiple, let’s say, shadowing experiences for two weeks here, two weeks there, that’s not necessarily what we’re looking for. We’ve been a little bit more lenient with COVID, because opportunities may not have been available, but we’ve been surprised, as well, of what people were able to do, even with COVID.

When people have community service exposure, it doesn’t necessarily have to be in the healthcare environment. It can be working in a shelter, it can be teaching students. We have people who do Teach for America, or the Peace Corps, or whatever, just something that shows you sacrificed yourself, your time, not for employment, and to recognize that that is what medicine is about. It’s sacrificing. You’re doing something for the good of others, not because you’re going to get remuneration for it. 

Community service, as I mentioned, is our backbone but healthcare exposure is where we want to see if students have had an opportunity to see what a doctor does, what a doctor’s life is like, etc. That can be experienced in the emergency room as a medical assistant, it can be in hospice, you can even have taken care of someone yourself. But it is important to know what the healthcare setting is. It’s not Grey’s Anatomy, necessarily, and all these TV shows, but it is a team approach. People are working together for the patient, and sometimes the doctor is not necessarily the number one person on that team.

That interprofessional piece of it, as well as being able to talk to patients and use communication skills is critical. We look for that in all of our applicants. Obviously, we look at their metrics, which are important. Particularly, considering our curriculum, we want to make sure there’s a good strong foundation in the basic sciences. But we don’t require any types of majors, or anything like that.

We do see people who’ve majored in anthropology, or sociology, or psychology, music, etc., and we love that, because it shows that they have other areas of interest or passion that they have succeeded in. Certainly, you have to have that foundation in the sciences, so that you are going to be competitive and successful in medical school. But we certainly don’t require someone to be a science major.

Do you have any minimums in terms of GPA or MCAT scores? [16:03]

We have a cumulative requirement of at least a 3.0. At the moment, our MCAT requirement is at 503 and above. 

Article by Accepted / Admissions Straight Talk, Medical School Admissions / Med Adcom Podcast, podcast, Rush Medical College

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