She has been on a waiting list since the moment she scored the Nashville site! But I am thankful she is only one time zone away now. She’s a night owl so I was concerned it’d be extra hard to get up early with a 2-hr time change for an all-day exam. I guess in hindsight, one should register at least 9 months out. She wanted to get her scores before the May 31 day (I believe that is the date) when first round applications open.
Just curious for those experts. How does one decide between an MD and DO program ? Does MD typically get bigger level applicants or it simply a different medicinal philosophy (DO more holistic medicine) and the same level of kids apply to both ?
We know for Nova you need a 502. What about for a middle of the road program - is a 502 enough ? Is that low ? Work for some but not all ??
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Saw this online
Average GPA and MCAT Score for Every Medical School (2023) — Shemmassian Academic Consulting
We are getting off topic here. But sometimes you don’t “choose”. Many medical school applicants apply to 20 or more programs, and a mix of MD and DO schools. Sometimes…you only get one acceptance…and that’s where you go.
Really, the training at MD and DO schools is just about identical. DO students do training in OMM which MD students do not do. The residency match for DO and MD students was merged a while ago. For all practical purposes, they are all doctors. And MDs and DOs work side by side in many places.
There are websites that provide average scores for schools.
You need a minimum of a 502 to continue as a BA/DO student at Nova.
We don’t know what other applicants might have applying to the DO school only from elsewhere.
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The AAMC has a summary sheet of what the minimum pre-reqs are every allopathic med school in the US—
https://students-residents.aamc.org/media/7041/download
The chart also shows if AP credits, online or CC credits are accepted for pre-reqs
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Interesting - 502 is low (the lowest was Ponce, Puerto Rico at 499) but these were averages, not minimums.
Thanks for sharing.
Amazing how many unique names are out there in the medical school world.
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The right hand column has min score. Most do not show a min score, but the lowest score that a school does post (New England DO school) is 490.
Those are median scores, not average scores. There’s a difference. Average scores are more affected by the presence of outlier scores (high or low) than medians.
Also Ponce along with CNU has the notoriety of being the only two LCME private, for-profit med schools in the US.
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The Nova BS/DO program is interesting to me (not a doctor, none of my kids want to be doctors).
Once accepted to the program, students need to maintain a 3.5 in science GPA, as well as their cumulative GPA.
Nothing less than a C accepted for any class.
502 minimum MCAT score with at least a 125 per each subsection (no super scoring).
I wonder how many participants leave the program due to each of those factor individually. And where those withdrawals come from most.
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I know what a median is but the link provided by @CMCMLM is average gpa and average mcat.
Generally speaking—not referring to Nova’s program specifically-- most BS/MD and BA/DO students drop out because they change their minds about going to med school, not because they can’t maintain the required GPA or MCAT score.
Expecting a 17 year old to make a major life decision about a career that will require them to spend the next 11-20 years of their life before they finish their education is a lot. Moreso when most of said students have not really had much exposure to medicine as a career, nor dealt with patients and patients’ families. Or any of the other day-to-day stuff that medicine involves. (Insurance, medicare, medicaid, billing, patients who think Dr Google knows more than you, clinic or hospital administration, endless paperwork, shortages of everything from adequate nursing staffing to toilet paper in the lav, over-scheduling appointment time) Medicine sounds like a really interesting, glamorous and well-paying career; the reality is quite different.
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Thanks a lot for posting this! It is amazing info. I knew that most schools take CC credits but I did not realize how many. I have never seen this info.
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A caveat: you need to check the admission website of each medical school to see if they recommend ( and in med school speak recommend = require) that CC and AP classes be supplemented with additional UL electives in the same field.
Also, the use of CC credit for med school admission is more acceptable for non-traditional applicants who already have a college degree and are changing career fields than for traditional recent college grad applicants.
Med schools are trying to be inclusive with their list of acceptable courses so that they don’t place additional roadblocks in the way of career-changers, military vets and socio-economically disadvantaged students. For traditional students, the expectation is still that they take their pre-reqs at a 4 year college.
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I believe DO schools even more open to CC credits, but I have not seen similar DO info in one place. I am not sure is it available or not.
I don’t know if this is still true, but in the past UMD medical school did give a tip applicants from outlying Maryland counties (eastern shore, counties close to West Virginia) hoping those students would return to practice in their hometowns. So if you see that the UM med school does accept CC credits or they use terms like ‘bulk of credit’ from 4 year colleges, that could be for those coming from far away from Baltimore Metro or the DC counties. Those rural counties may not have offered alternatives to CCs or enough APs in the high schools.
I worked on a case where an med student from Ocean City was failing classes. The school bent over backwards to keep this student in the program and I don’t think they would have done it for a metro student. She’d also had some assistance getting in to the program as far as scores and grades went. They really wanted students from rural counties.
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I think the schools you get accepted to decide for you. Wherever you can get in.
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I think the sentence noted above that the OP needs to focus on is this: “For traditional students, the expectation is still that they take their
pre-reqs at a 4 year college.”
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I believe Ursinus does. We were told about it during tour.
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