I guess I am misinformed then. I was told that it was just as hard to get into PA...
Different criteria. Requiring more clinical exposure does not mean it's harder.
My argument was merely, that there is overlap in the pools between PA programs and DO's. Nova doesnt even have the lowest mcat average. Saying that PA's are a bunch of people that couldnt get into medical school is obviously not entirely true.
1.And as far as other PA schools there are numerous other PA schools just as competitive as Keck if not more.
2. The 2017 data of 28 average is .6 higher for Nova, the point still stands that Many DO schools have average mcats that are lower or equivalent to PA schools.
3. Sure, but you dont really know what proportion of the class also took an mcat.
4. This exactly makes the point I was making in that there is overlap in the pools,
1. You're being generous with the word "Numerous". Keck is arguably a top 10 program unless you're going by the garbage USNews rankings whose methodology is a complete joke.
2. Again, your comparison is inappropriate. To give you an example, your argument could basically be applied to Step scores from DO schools vs. MD schools. My DO school averaged a 228 Step 1 score a couple of years ago, so by your logic we're equivalent or better than about half the MD schools, which would be a ridiculous statement considering about 30% of that class didn't take Step 1. Plus you're looking at the MCAT scores at a school which pulls from arguably the most competitive applicant pool for med school in the country. Those Keck PA students with their 27 MCAT average are probably so high because those are the Cali kids that wanted to go to med school but didn't have the MCAT/application to do so. There are also plenty of MD schools with average MCATs below 27, but that doesn't make it a valid comparison.
3. No, we don't, which makes the comparison even more invalid.
4. Just because there's "some overlap" doesn't mean it can be compared fairly. There's some overlap between the job of a 4th year med student and the janitor at the hospital, that doesn't mean comparing the two is reasonable.
Because I wanted to show that there is a portion of people going to PA schools that could have gotten into DO schools. I care because the general tone in this thread has been, " dur dur PAs are too dumb to get into a real medical school". I was just proving that assertion is incorrect. There is a good portion of overlap between PA and DO candidates in terms of Academic Metrics.
Lol.
1. First you criticize my methods , then you go on to qoute what your school does as the gold standard for PA's. Lol.
I dont need to show equivalence. I just need to show overlap. Furthermore, Keck is not even top 10 PA programs. Here is the median MCAT and GPA for DO schools. There is no data available for all of PA programs, but it is safe to assume that the top 20 PA programs have better or equivalent academic metrics to DO medians. Thus once again showing that there is overlap in academic characteristics.
View attachment 225366
What is odd is that is that it is difficult for you to imagine a situation where PA's actually wanted to go to PA school .
You don't need to show equivalence, but showing overlap literally accomplishes nothing, especially when you're showing overlap with single data points which may be outliers.
Also, the image that you've included is for osteopathic APPLICANTS, not interviewees or matriculants, while your statement about Keck applicants was for those granted an interview. So again, your comparison is invalid and you're making statements that your "evidence" simply isn't backing up.
I'm not saying there aren't PA students who couldn't have gone to medical school, I'm sure there are many (just like there are many DO students who could have gone MD if they'd applied differently/really wanted to). However, if you're going to try and defend it statistically you have to have valid comparisons and show more than a sliver of "overlap", which you don't.
To the OP regarding the difficulty of PA school: I know a few people who are either PA students that took classes with med students or med students who had PA students in their class. While they took some classes together, they all took different tests, with the PAs having tests that either contained significantly less material or having a completely different test altogether with easier questions. I actually had a PA friend whose class was given the DO student's test by mistake once and he said it did not go well for his class. Idk about the clinical aspects of PA school, but from what I understand from talking to PA friends, the lecture/pre-clinical portion is easier.
