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If your gonna try for a top DO school, why not try for lesser MD school, and if your gonna do that, why not try for Harvard. I think you'll be able to match really well if you do that.
Reapply or Caribbean?
- Thread starter Ddubz
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Yea it's flawed logic.. you take the best US MD or DO acceptance you can get and run with it...
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Some MD schools reward reinvention but honestly your best chance is going to be going for a DO school. If you're going for a DO school you should try to get in at a top one. You need a 3.5 SMP and about a 505 to be competitive for a DO school when you would need a 3.7 and a 512 to do so for an MD. Alot of MD schools would take someone who didn't need to do an SMP because the average MD applicant has a more competitive application.
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Many PDs won't interview DOs, so you school won't matter for them. The best thing you can do is have good class rank, board scores, audition rotations, and recommendations. These are what will get you an interview. Matching a residency is becoming more competitive and the match game is quickly changing. It's important to play the match game well and apply mostly to programs where you and your stats will be competitive. Good luck!
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"Many" PD's? Not according to the PD survey.. most often or atleast seldom interviewed DO's
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Program director, the people in charge of a specific residency program
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Many isn’t a fraction and would qualify here even if “most” do interview DOs because there will still be “many” that don’t.
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This is also specialty dependent
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Agree with the wise @Goro . The recent PD survey suggests 2 thirds of PDs interview DO regularly and roughly one third rarely or don't. My thoughts are evolving on school choice as the Residency Match game changes. More students are entering the match due to new school graduations while residency slots are not keeping up. Clinical teaching service experience is getting harder to find as university hospitals aren't increasing their slots for students. This all translates to a much more competitive residency and fellowship matching process, requiring applicants to be even more competitive. Gap research yr, higher board scores, higher class rank and academic honors, (AOA), etc.. DOs will still be considered for these programs, but it will be a higher hill to climb. I believe in the near future more DOs will be shifted back to their primary care roots. I have no proof, but this is my analysis of the recent trends.
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All low tier MDs and DOs should enter medical school with the assumption that they will do primary care and maybe get a pleasant surprise come match time.
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I understand your sentiment, but I don't like the implications of it. There are many fields other than just primary care that are uncompetitive or moderately competitive and provide a great lifestyle. Psychiatry, Neurology, PM&R, Pathology, DR, etc. A lower tier school (US MD or DO) may limit your ability to attain the upper echelon of competitive specialties and residency placements, but it will take you to most places perfectly fine. While I do often fall into using negativity as a coping mechanism, I think it's important for the pre-med students who may be lurking to know that they will not be delegated to solely primary care if they choose to pursue a medical degree from a lower tier school. Primary care is quite underrated as well, don't count it out just because of the "prestige".
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I think this is too strongly worded, especially for the low tier MD students. I would say if you go to a DO school make sure you are okay doing primary care, but also know that all but 5-10 specialties are very achievable.
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Yes my bad…I was moreso referring to Ortho, derm, plastics, neurosurgery, urology, optho, ent, vascular, IR. Others are still achievable though rates are looking scarier and scarier for rads and anesthesiology
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Anesthesia looks to have cooled down, Rads is very hot right now..
The individual makes the residency as much as the school. Don't underestimate there are fine candidates in your perceived lower tier schools. This is snobbery at its finest.
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surelu every1 knows ou-hcom right
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It’s not snobbery. Just an opinion based on match list strength as one goes down USNWR
Also I’m going to a low tier MD school. Is it even possible for one to be a snob when not attending an elite institution?
Underestimating individual contributions and relegating all match lists to school rankings is nieve. Many look down on such schools in the lower tier. That is snobbery which isn't directed towards you but to that subsection that think school ranking is everything. Many high quality individuals are found in lower to higher tier. Granted the higher tier has a higher percentage. Those students make the difference in where they place...
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Biggest question is who the hell cares? No matter where you train, the check hits the same. No one knows or cares if you did your training at a community program vs a state university program or an elite Ivy League name.. even if you want to do something like academics.. there’s PLENTY of academic faculty at institutions across the US who trained at community programs…
Being on the other side of match now, I realize that the process is incredibly random.. and it’s nothing more than a job search.. in any other industry, people are happy to land a job anywhere in thier field.. why is it that medicine makes it into another competition? This is precisely why I find it funny that some PD’s exclude low tier school(MD/DO) and IMG’s right away. Because residency really isn’t like applying to med school or undergrad (where pedigree should matter more) it’s a whole lot more like applying to a job where your ability to work with a team should matter much more. I doubt Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other big name companies just auto exclude everyone who got their degrees from “low tier” schools so why should over inflated and inefficient and mostly poorly run hospitals and hospital systems?
Being on the other side of match now, I realize that the process is incredibly random.. and it’s nothing more than a job search.. in any other industry, people are happy to land a job anywhere in thier field.. why is it that medicine makes it into another competition? This is precisely why I find it funny that some PD’s exclude low tier school(MD/DO) and IMG’s right away. Because residency really isn’t like applying to med school or undergrad (where pedigree should matter more) it’s a whole lot more like applying to a job where your ability to work with a team should matter much more. I doubt Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other big name companies just auto exclude everyone who got their degrees from “low tier” schools so why should over inflated and inefficient and mostly poorly run hospitals and hospital systems?
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GI/cards fellowship. Some IM residencies barely match these.
Even some decent community programs like Scripps Mercy tend to have below average fellowship placement
Compare the prospects of graduates from UCLA Ronald Reagan to Scripps Mercy/Green.
Clearly matters less for things like ortho, anesthesiology, ent etc. than specialties in which a lot of people do fellowship (im, general surgery)
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Yea but why? A dude from scrips mercy or any community program who is easy to work with and reliable and has passion for GI is much better than a blowhard/stuck up person from UCSF or some academic program who is just a cog in the wheel, they got the spot because of the name on the resume.. seems really shallow… and while what your saying is true unfortunately, there’s cases of people matching elite IM fellowships(Stanford GI) from smaller community programs each year.
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Stronger programs have more connection to help build the better application
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It's important not to get into a fixed mindset. While I do concede that the ivory tower and subspecialties may be harder to get from smaller community programs, you are not forced into these programs either. Vox you will be a USMD, do not worry about whether or not you will be stuck in a community IM program (or whatever field you choose to go into). You are in a much better position just based on the LCME accreditation than many in the DO forums. We will all be fine, hopefully enjoying the work we do enough that we don't hate our lives.
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Just a little FYI:
www.allaboutadvertisinglaw.com
The FTC Moves Its Attention to A For-Profit Medical School
Last week, the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint in the Northern District of Illinois against the Saint James School of Medicine (SJSM), an
www.allaboutadvertisinglaw.com
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Just over 60% get a residency? That's a lot of students with 6 figure debt and no job to pay it back.Just a little FYI:
The FTC Moves Its Attention to A For-Profit Medical School
Last week, the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint in the Northern District of Illinois against the Saint James School of Medicine (SJSM), an
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I always assumed that this was a known risk of going to Caribbean
Not saying it’s right but I’m pretty sure that people going to these schools could have found this info through a quick Google search
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Known risk, but largely ignored. Especially since schools misrepresent their data. They prey on students who are academically grasping at straws like cancer patients going to Mexico for Snake Oil treatments. These people all believe they are academically going to sink that 40 ft 3 pointer to win the game at the buzzer. Meaning they are now going to be academically successful when they have not been before. Otherwise, they would be in a US med school. Do some get through? Yes. The data is never reported on how many start and how many successfully run the gauntlet of their program. The residencies where they match are mostly lower ranked primary care, FM, IM, etc. Unless you have unlimited funds, I believe they should be avoided. Better to be a non MD with no debt than an MD with $300k in debt with no residency. No residency means no license, which means no job.
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Denial is more than a river in Africa.
Ddubz
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TL
RThe info isn’t that easy to come by and most people assume they will be told the truth.
I can’t speak for all Caribbean schools or all those who apply to them but at least for me and my experience it was incredibly difficult to reach the information available to determine whether it’s a smart option or not.
I spent the equivalent of days searching the school’s website for data. Only to find a list of students and what they matched into for the previous year. (So still no accurate depiction.)
I had to do a good amount of comparisons and calculations to determine that the advertised match rate of 93% couldn’t be possible.
I think the general attitude for most students is to assume that you’re going to be told the truth when applying to schools. Which is how it should be and is, in part, ingrained in us from our market economy culture where we have rights as consumers to be accurately informed.
There is also the sad truth that there are people out there that are a lot closer to students than the random “naysayers” here on SDN, no offense intended. For instance I had multiple students in undergrad tell me that they were also considering med schools outside the US and, even worse still, I had several physicians I worked with at one point advising me to go to the Caribbean school I was accepted to and even excited for me.
If not for the people here on SDN and the few physicians I worked with that shot it to me straight, I’d probably be in St Maarten with the other students that were probably like me and just wanted to get accepted somewhere to finally be a doctor.
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One thing that was not mentioned on here was that AUC would be more than happy to hold a spot for you in next semester's class. Not that I think you should ever go to the Carib, but if you were worried about the deadline, you could just defer for one semester or one year.TL
The info isn’t that easy to come by and most people assume they will be told the truth.
I can’t speak for all Caribbean schools or all those who apply to them but at least for me and my experience it was incredibly difficult to reach the information available to determine whether it’s a smart option or not.
I spent the equivalent of days searching the school’s website for data. Only to find a list of students and what they matched into for the previous year. (So still no accurate depiction.)
I had to do a good amount of comparisons and calculations to determine that the advertised match rate of 93% couldn’t be possible.
I think the general attitude for most students is to assume that you’re going to be told the truth when applying to schools. Which is how it should be and is, in part, ingrained in us from our market economy culture where we have rights as consumers to be accurately informed.
There is also the sad truth that there are people out there that are a lot closer to students than the random “naysayers” here on SDN, no offense intended. For instance I had multiple students in undergrad tell me that they were also considering med schools outside the US and, even worse still, I had several physicians I worked with at one point advising me to go to the Caribbean school I was accepted to and even excited for me.
If not for the people here on SDN and the few physicians I worked with that shot it to me straight, I’d probably be in St Maarten with the other students that were probably like me and just wanted to get accepted somewhere to finally be a doctor.
I honestly had a very similar experience to yours. I knew multiple people that had completed med school at big 4 schools and even non-big 4 schools, that were either coming back, were in residency, or completed training. Compare that to very few DOs. If you look at what the schools taut, you'd think every school had USMLE pass rates of 95%+ and match rates >90%. What you don't see is that >1/3 of their students never make it to Step 1 (many even get filtered if they pass the courses but don't pass the comprehensive exam - essentially an NBME - which is required before sitting for the Step). Looking back, about 1/2 of my friends that went Carib never made it out. They failed out or mysteriously switched careers.
I will also say that having been in the game at the time, 2010 is very very different than 2022, and will be different than 2026 when someone entering the Carib now is projected to actually finish. Its not worth it. Plenty of opportunities stateside.
