Elimination of grade replacement in DO school application is the first step to close the gap between MD and DO applicants.
Dd is looking into both types of programs. I still feel patients would prefer to be seen by an MD vs a DO. I get the impression DOâs are still discriminated against. In our area alone we have only 8 DOâS that practice but many many MDâs. I have a family member that is an MD (cardiology) and another one that is a DO (infectious disease)
If a student gets admitted into a DO program should they accept the spot or do a POSTBAC and try to apply for an MD program?
Your question probably should be posted in its own thread since it deals with MD admission and is not related residency matching/placements.
But to answer your questionsâitâs foolish on many level to decline a DO acceptance in the hopes of maybe, possibly one day in the future one might gain a MD acceptances.
Why?
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there is no guarantee that even after strengthening oneâs application, one will get MD acceptance. IOW, only turn it down if one would be Ok with never going to med school. (Bird in handâŠ)
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many/most secondaries ask if you have ever been accepted to med school (not just MD programs, but any medical school) in the past. Admitting you have but did not enroll will cause adcomms to strongly question your commitment to becoming a physician and they will likely decline to consider your application.
2a) An applicant who lies about having been admitted previously is committing an ethics violation which if discovered (and there is plenty of back-channel communication among adcomms at various schools both MD and DO) will get that individual permanently blacklisted from both MD and DO schools, and will cause any admission to revoked, even revoked retroactively after the student has graduated from med school. Medical schools take ethics very seriously.
With the coming (likely) unification of the application process (starting this year they are using the same processing company to handle applications), tracking of applicant statuses w/r/t acceptances at MD and DO schools will become available to every adcomm at every school.
- opportunity cost â by postponing admission to med school by one or more years, the individual is losing out on an equal number of years of an attendingâs salary
The general advice given to applicants isâonly apply to a school if you would happy attending it. If you donât want to be a DOâdonât apply to DO schools.
RE: âdiscriminationâ against osteopathic physicians is diminishing as the difference between MD and DO get blurred. Itâs also diminishing because there are larger number of DOs being graduated. Osteopathic med schools used to only exist in a few statesâPA, MO, KS, IL, MIâand only graduated a small number of physicians (<1000 annually). People who lived where DO schools didnât exist and few DOs practiced didnât know what they were.
I grew up in a state that lots of DOs and I lived near the 2nd oldest DO program in the country. DOs even ran their own hospital system (with multiple sites in several counties). The distinction between the DO and MD wasnât as pronounced as it is where I live now where there is no DO school and maybe 30-40 DOs practicing in the entire state. People here didnât know what DO is.
However, even here patients preferring DOs isnât a thing because all the major clinic/hospital systems (including the state med schools and their associated hospitals) statewide employ both MDs and DOsâand you see whoever the clinic schedules you for. Or you see whatever doctor is practicing locally in your rural or small town area.
DO and without any hesitation
Thank you. Didnât mean to derail the thread.
Spoke at length with D1 tonight. This is the advice sheâs giving her sister about residency:
- Above all, remember that a residency is just a job that will allow you to someday get another job.
- Don't let the glamour or reputation of a program go to your head. It matters a whole lot less than you think. If you do a good job and get good recommendations, you'll find a good job when you graduate.
- Don't pick a residency just because it's close to Yosemite--you won't have time to go. Ever.
- Pick a residency that offers things that will make your life better--a location where you can afford to live; an extra $15/year in salary; a 3rd week of vacation; neighborhoods near the hospital that have a grocery store, a laundromat, a park where you can relax/run your dog, and some really good take out places.
3, hahaha
An extra $15/year doesnât really seem on par with the other things on that list (50% more vacation, affording a place to live)
Oops!
#4 should be $15K/yearâŠ
@iwannabe_Brown @raclut I would not personally pick DO without any hesitation. Picking DO over MD has implications. For example, do you want to eventually practice medicine outside of the USA? if so do not go with DO because you will be severely limited. Many people outside of the US and Canada have never heard of a DO degree.
Some postbacc programs also guarantee an interview or admission into an MD program. If youâre considering such a program, I would recommend that over just settling for DO.
Good luck!
@mom2collegekids
Things are good, settled into this attending thing, baby is healthy and growing up so fast.At once both the longest and shortest 10 months of my life.
Generally, it is a toss off between DO and SMP, however, as WOWM indicated, if you got an DO admission and donât go, it might impact your future application. So if some one wants MD only, apply MD only, if you want become a doctor and are on the borderline , apply both MD and DO together.
Take SMP, not only postbacc as career changer, in an MD school only get about 50% chance to get into an MD school. I saw on sdn that one applicant got HIGH scores in SMP and decent MCAT but still did not get into MD school and had to settle on DO.
There is a risk to do any thing, for $80K program, one year wasted and 50% chance or a DO now, Iâd take DO and run. As far as if DO cannot work overseas, Iâd think you should take med school wherever you want to practice, do not spend 250K$ in US and ended up work in Japan or Frankfurt, if that is all possible.
@artloversplus Iâm not sure if you mean that it might impact your future application to DO programs or MD programs or both? Not accepting a DO offer does not have any impact on future MD applications. There are post bacc programs like GWUâs which have linkage agreements allowing their post bacc students the opportunity to receive interviews at these medical schools so long as they meet the GPA and MCAT requirements. Post-baccs are similar to SMPs but there are still differences.
There are many reasons why applicants apply to DO schools even though they are unsure of whether to go the DO route. If they are accepted to DO but are not sure about attending, taking the DO route can really hurt especially if at $200+ in debt, you realize options for residency are more limited and that you are tired of always feeling like you have to work harder than your MD counterparts to prove yourself ⊠etc.
I did not say if some one got admitted in to DO and did not attend that will impact future MD and DO applications, I was just referring to WOWMâs post, in that, yes she said it will impact all future applications, DO and MD. If you have evidences either way, please provide the link.
There are many postbacc programs, one is for some one could not complete or did not take the pre-req and continue to take pre-req after graduation, that is what I mean career changing post bacc. SMP like you mentioned, the GWU program, which I am very familiar with, to apply for that program, you need to completed your pre-req and have a decent MCAT to be accepted. The GWU program essentially is teaching subjects in MS1, not the college level courses, whereas the career changing postbacc programs teaches college level courses. One DO school post bacc even brush up MCAT skills. The kid went to the GWU program did not get an interview with GWU, only the top 10-15% from the program got interviews from GWU. It is not automatic. The kid I know did very well at GWU and only got into one MD program afterwards, it was not easy and with a lot of risk. If any thing slipped, he might not get in and become a re-applicant or have to work in other disciplines.
My D is in a DO school and obviously she will be biased in residency. But, if she do well in USMLE and Comlex, she will be able to tap into the MD residency programs. She had to work double hard in that. The DO residency match is 80%, unless you did real badly, the $200K is not a waste. The MD residency match is 95%, so there still is a risk not to be matched. Please go to sdn to see all those crying babies from MD schools.
Life is a gamble, you win you lose, nothing is 100%, to goto a DO school is lot safer than to get a Bio major in UG spend 80K in SMP and work as a clerk in Walmart.
Most american students have no intention of practicing overseas so I literally couldnât care less about the global prestige of the DO degree.
The odds of a DO student getting a residency are 80% in the main match and probably higher in the DO only match. An SMP student is probably not in the statistical bracket that has better odds than that at an MD program.
Itâs pretty low risk for a med school to promise an interview. Thatâs not really that enticing of a linkage agreement.
I also donât think career changer post-baccs are really that similar to stat boosting SMPs. Thereâs a difference in the appeal for medical schools between the successful lawyer or computer scientist who decides they want to do medicine instead and the student who stumbled a bit through college and then got it together for the post-bacc.
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@mom2collegekids Things are good, settled into this attending thing, baby is healthy and growing up so fast.At once both the longest and shortest 10 months of my life.
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I bet! Squeezing parenthood into all of this must be a challenge!!! At sonâs MatchDay, one of the students walked up with her 5 day old baby! We all were impressed!!
Best wishes and congratulations on your baby and your Attending position!
Residency has a lot to do with how you perform in med school, MD or DO.
Here is a posting I saw on SDN:
"One of the DOs I shadowed was a surgeon who had a pretty similar story to yours. Intended to go allopathic, had a lower MCAT than expected and got into one DO school in a rural area that he wasnât psyched about going to.
Fast forward 15 years and heâs an attending at a major hospital in one of the top five largest cities in the country. This idea that DO schools make it impossible to get the residencies you want is ridiculous. A lot of DO programs admittedly put most people into primary care specialties, and some specialize in placement in rural areas. Most are upfront about this.
Did you ever consider that the reason most of the grads from this school go into rural areas is because they chose that school because that was always their goal? A lot of people actually want to practice in these communities, and arenât settling. Maybe then, the reason this schools grads in city residencies are âfew and far betweenâ is because few of them wanted to end up there in the first place.
If I were you, Iâd absolutely put this deposit down and see what happens with the other schools. You are NOT dooming yourself to a life of rural PCP. Just handle your business in school and youâll be fine. Do you really want to do another cycle? If youâre so concerned about cash, that clearly doesnât make a lot of sense."
Not sure where to post this exactlyâbut parental bragging warning appliesâ
D2 will be one of two keynote speakers at this yearâs White Coat Ceremony for incoming MS1s at her med school.
Huge, huge honor. I am very proud of her.
WOWMom!! Congrats to DD!
@WayOutWestMom are there programs with only 2 weeks of vacation? The residents I know claim 4 weeks. One other issue I hear is moonlighting in later years which some programs forbid but can be a large source of income.