IM at strong, university hospitals are competitive because it allows residents to become exceptional applicants for fellowship by having strong subspecialty departments (usually in the way of exceptional researcher investigators). So anyone who is wanting to do fellowship is funneling into these places, from day 1 these residents associate themselves with the fellows and do as much research with them as possible. These bigger places also usually have strong statistician departments to run and analyze data quickly. IM at the ivory towers (Boston, Penn, Columbia, Yale) will have all of the previously listed x10, with huge names in the field where letters of rec are prob far reaching.
It is easy to match IM at smaller places, every year there are vacancies in IM to many of these programs. When you do IM at a small community hospital, there are no in-house fellowships, there is very little research, and letters from subspecialists here do not carry as much as weight since they do not have a formal academic title (professor, program director). Not saying it's bad or that if you come from a small program that you can't match, but the opportunity to stay connected and involved is a much harder process this way, and subspecialties become more of a tight-knit group where who you know can really matter.
The majority of DO schools lack any teaching hospital. Most DO students get their first taste of academic medicine at a university hospital in fourth year, where MD students have already been able to establish repertoire with their IM department with both residents and faculty, and many have already started/completed projects in the subspecialty they are interested in. It can set DO students back a bit. But again, there are many DO residents who still figure it out and match to subspecialties, but without a doubt they work exceptionally hard to "catch up".
Looking at a match list for a DO school doesn't really do much. There are so many variables to how/why a student matched into a strong IM program. Personally, I would suggest looking at the surrounding city of a DO school to see how close MD teaching hospitals are and if they are, plan on introducing yourself to them as early as possible (e.g. shadowing, doing scut work for research projects right away). Make sure you know if a DO school sends you to specific places in third year, if it's podunk nowhere just know that makes life exceptionally difficult in pursuing anything related to academic IM.
KCU(mb) is only great because they have strong curriculum to do well on boards, and if you're lucky enough to stay in KC, you'll have two neighboring MD institutions that are both great heart centers (KU and UMKC/St Luke's). You will not be able to rotate there until your fourth year. Beyond that, they are too focused on opening a dental school or expanding the class size to become the biggest medical school not only in Missouri, but the United States, and maybe even surpass the gigantic class sizes in the Caribbean. In fact, the only internal medicine program that
Kansas City University has....is in Joplin, Missouri and unfortunately, there is no cardiology fellowship there.
Here are some DO schools that
directly sponsor or host a cardiology fellowship (not sure if these are all ACGME accredited however):
AZCOM
Rowan-COM
MSUCOM
NYIT-COM
OUHCOM
OSUCOM
TCOM
