I was applying there, but recently found out how Liberty University is looked down upon by other employers and such about being a Christian school. I was curious if I went there to study Biology would that harm the chances of being accepted to a decent medical school.
Liberty has its own osteopathic medical school. so attending Liberty wouldn’t hurt you if that’s the med school you plan to matriculate into.
But since Liberty teaches that many parts of basic biological science theory and practice are wrong (like evolution), then attending Liberty will likely be a strike against you should you decide to apply to med school anywhere else except LUCOM.
Okay, thank you!
One thought you’ll want to consider is how likely you will be to get a match you like if opting to head toward DO rather than MD.
Read Posts #119 and #120 in this thread:
It could be worth it for you to ask LU where recent grads have gotten accepted into med school. If you like where they’ve gone and can match the stats they had (MCAT/GPA and extra curriculars) then you ought to be able to have the same odds at getting into similar places.
^^^^ Funny that I just read some AMAZING 2018 residency matches from LUCOM, if you search LUCOM in SDN. I was going to reference the tread in another CC discussion(Residency is Next) but CC won’t allow it.
However, those are the exceptions than the rule and unless you can considered to be in those top 5% in DO school, you should not count on it.
@artloversplus I’m glad you’re keeping me updated. We have several students at our school who target DO schools down the line so I like to keep updated on my knowledge of what’s happening to give them advice on what to look for to see if it’s a reasonable consideration for them. I can freely say one shouldn’t really consider Caribbean schools - or only as a very last resort - but DO seems to still have a ? with it with the latest changes. So far it’s seemed decent if one knows they want primary care, but very iffy if they want some sort of specialty - esp competitive specialties.
As far as I am concerned, high competitive specialties are elusive even for a graduate from MD school. But MDs have a better shot at them. MOST, that is about 60-70% of all MD school graduates are matched into primary care anyway. Do not encourage a student even to try who has a goal of brain surgeon, no matter how good the kid is.
Besides, the ultimate reward is to be matched into a fellowship and that will take another round of efforts.
I encourage kids who think they want to be a doctor to go in to undergrad with that in mind, but to keep their eyes open in case there’s anything else they prefer and to always have a Plan B in case medicine doesn’t work out in the end. To those who have a specialty in mind, I tell them to salt that away until they are in rotations since I’ve heard from several who changed their mind during that time.
That said, I also tell them to keep abreast of what’s going on so they can plan and act according to what they like to give themselves the best odds. No sense being blindsided and wishing they had known things in hindsight. Since my lad is in med school I get a lot of questions about the journey - causing me to want to keep up myself, esp if things change.
I also read and lurk for my own lad since he’s yet to do the whole match thing. If either one of us hears something interesting, we share. He’s the first one in our family for generations to ever want to do anything medical related, so it’s all been new to us.