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Baylor College of Medicine is considered the top medical school in the state of Texas, and one of the highest ranked in The United States. Its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences also ranks among the best in the nation.

History

The school was formed in 1900 in Dallas, Texas as University of Dallas Medical Department. It allied with Baylor University in Waco, Texas in 1903 and moved to the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas in 1943.

In 1969, Baylor College of Medicine separated from Baylor University under the direction of Dr. Michael E. DeBakey. Currently, it is led by Dr. Peter Traber, formerly of GlaxoSmithKline and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Medical School

Baylor College of Medicine ranked 10th in the 2007 U.S. News and World Report rankings for medical schools. Currently, 168 medical students join the medical school each year, 75% of whom are from Texas. For medical students, the average GPA is 3.75 and average MCAT section is above 11. Baylor College of Medicine is the only private medical school in the southwest region of the United States and has the lowest tuition of all private medical schools in the United States.

Graduate School

BCM ranks 11th in terms of research funding from the National Institutes of Health (2005), and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences ranks 22nd for best Ph.D. program in the biological sciences (2007). Additionally, it received several "Top Ten" rankings by the NIH in 2005:

100 students join the graduate program each year, of which one-half were women and one-third were graduates from foreign schools. The average graduate student GPA for is 3.5 and the average GRE score is above the 70th percentile.

Many departments of the graduate school collaborate with Rice University and other institutions within the Texas Medical Center. Currently, 489 graduate students are enrolled in one of the fourteen different PhD programs. These programs are:

Biomedical Research

Baylor College of Medicine has dedicated more than 800,000 square feet of its space for laboratory research, and is adding another 322,000 in the next few years. According to the National Science Foundation, BCM spends more on research and development in the life sciences than any other research institution. Housed within this research space are exceptional centers and facilities, such as:

Physician Assistant Program

Baylor College of Medicine is also home to a Physician Assistant (PA) program. Thirty PA students are accepted each year. For PA students entering in 2004, the average GPA was 3.70 and the average GRE score was 1169 verbal/quantitative and 4.9 analytical. Baylor College of Medicine ranked 7th in the 2007 U.S. News and World Report rankings for Physician Assistant schools. The overall passing rate for all graduates of the PA Program on the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination is 97 percent with a 100 percent pass rate for the past eight years.

Baylor College of Medicine is also home to a nurse anesthetist (NA) program.

Hospital affiliation

BCM is affiliated with many of the hospitals that make the Texas Medical Center the largest medical center in the world. These include the Michael E. DeBakey Veteran's Affairs Hospital, Texas Children's Hospital, Ben Taub General Hospital, St. Luke's Hospital, the Texas Institute for Rehabilitation and Research and the Menninger Clinic, which moved from Kansas in 2002. Methodist Hospital had been Baylor's primary private teaching hospital for many decades. Baylor and Methodist terminated many of their connections in 2004 for reasons that remain somewhat obscure but that seem to revolve around a planned ambulatory care center and ownership of the physicians' private practices. Baylor's primary private affiliate is now St. Luke's, while Methodist has affiliated with the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, which is located in New York City. Methodist and Baylor retain some affiliation, but there remains significant rancor between the two administrations and a significant lack of clarity in regard to the future of the many physicians and programs that had been shared by the two institutions.

University Affiliation

Baylor is also affiliated with DeBakey High School for Health Professions, the only exemplary high school in Houston Independent School District. The high school is part of a premed program with Baylor and the University of Houston where the top students in the senior class apply to receive conditional acceptance to BCM after completing college at the University of Houston. Tuition for both schools is fully paid.

Baylor has combined Bacc/M.D. programs with three other universities besides the University of Houston. They have a long-standing combined program with Rice University in Houston, with the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas and with Baylor University in Waco. For all these programs, entering college freshmen who are accepted into the program receive conditional acceptance to Baylor College of Medicine. This means, that if certain GPA and MCAT requirements are met, acceptance to BCM is automatic. The Rice/BCM program, however, does not require an MCAT. The UTPA/BCM program pays tuition at both institutions.

External links

Institutions in the Texas Medical Center | Schools of Medicine in the United States | Universities and colleges in Houston

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Baylor College of Medicine".

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