Premedguy, Hey, it is funny that you are responding to each suggestion with such details and almost argument. You have asked for suggestions / advice / opinions on the board that consists of lay people, some med. students, parents of med. students / residents. We are NOT adcoms of Med. /DO Schools here, we just providing you with suggestions that are based on OUR personal experiences, anything else, all other information you can easily find on the Internet, you can check the stats of accepted student and see where you fit to apply with your stats, that is if you rock MCAT (I hope somewhere!) since as of now your application is not strong. You basically wasting your time now with all these replies to people who cannot actively participate in your future. Get on with something more useful for you now, do not worry about answering to us, if you like advice, take it, if you do not like it, do not take it. This is my additional advice and frankly, I do not need a reply for it.
I do not believe I am wasting my time, I am trying to have an open conversation with people to 1) increase my awareness of what yet I need to do and what I want to do and 2) help me get organized in my mind with how I’m going to apply and with what I will stock my resume with. I have only been on this board for 2 days so it’s not as though I am vegetating over the computer for weeks. I do not expect anyone on here to be an expert- I just don’t know why you assume that I will not or have not been taking note of and using the advice I have already received on here. Judging by the use of the word “you” in your response, cutting others down is a pastime of yours. How can that atmosphere be beneficial to young adults making some of the most important decisions in their life? Thank you to everyone else for their thoughtful responses.
I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen. The last time I did any real research on the topic I couldn’t find anything one way or the other with regard to whether programs will be allowed to discriminate based on MD/DO as they currently can. Since I know it won’t really affect me I haven’t looked as hard as I could. I don’t think things will get worse for DOs. As far as I can tell, the merge theoretically opens up more spots for them. Things will definitely get worse for the foreign MDs though.
OP
Stop worrying about whether DO will be excluded by certain specialties. You should concentrate on getting the best MCAT scores and apply broadly to DO Schools. If you feel uncomfortable with certain grades from a class, retake it. As far as I know, DO students, if you do well in classes and Step 1, you will have a chance to be matched in any specialties. The only difference a DO is different from MD is that DO need to take some OMM classes.