While it is certainly possible to match ortho out of DO, the numbers show that it gets more and more unlikely every year. If you are absolutely certain about wanting to do orthopedic surgery at this stage of your career, I would recommend exhausting all the options you have to make yourself more competitive for MD before matriculating to a DO school because the odds will be much more against you in the latter case. The chances are very high that you end up down 4 years and 250k and ultimately need to settle for a different specialty. DOs are still full scope physicians just like MDs, but one of the stated goals of the AOA is to improve primary care access, so do not be surprised when that is the most likely outcome for you and your classmates.
Absolute nonsense. You cannot compare match percentages directly. The self selection on the DO side is much more intense. Why don't you ask any of the DOs on here who matched ortho if they felt like they were only 10% worse off because of their DO status.
You have no idea what you are talking about. That much is clear.
Its actually both at 60/40 surprisingly,, this is because there are many former AOA programs that made it to ACGME that almost exclusively take DO's.
Obviously hard to compare the two matches due to the reasons listed in various posts above, but matching has lot to do with networking. Considering the already existent self selection for DO schools (most of my peers and myself are interested in DO friendly primary care fields) and the existence of former aoa programs that exclusively take DOs (PCOM has an Ortho program that only takes MDs trained in OMM) consider taking advantage of the few advantages you can extract from being a DO
No. Someone needs to look at some actual data. 0-10% would be true for MD programs only.
Wow, a DO student desperately clinging to the belief that they will be seen as equal by competitive residencies. What a shocker !
Either you are in undergrad or a retired MD who graduated in 1965. Either way you are wrong.
Chill dude. I didn’t say they were only 10 percent worse off. I know how hard it is. I’m applying ortho right now. But to give up a DO acceptance to reapply MD is a huge risk and no guarantee
This is correct. Applying as a DO is very different than applying as an MD. We don’t really compete for spots and DO usually do more sub-i’s than MDs. Like DO’s doing 5-7 while MD’s maybe do 1-3
I agree with this sentiment and parrot it to all the people I meet in person trust me, but for a small subset of students who are truly dead set on a surgical sub from day 1, I think its a risk they should take.
Once again, your comments would be true if we were talking about traditional MD programs without considering the presence of DO programs (which remain overwhelmingly DO).
DMU has matched 100% of those who wanted ortho the past 2 years. 7/7 2022, and 6/6 2021. So definitely not bad. I would definitely not reapply in hopes of an MD acceptance. That'd be insane!
That is a better match rate than my somewhat prestigious MD school had for ortho last year. There were some extenuating factors that may have affected ours, but still...a 100% match really ain't shabby. If this is your only acceptance (which is really tbd since it's only Sep), I really wouldn't turn it down just for that. If you get into an MD school or a DO school with an in-house ortho residency, you might have to really weigh your options.
I have cousins and friends in both allopathic and osteopathic schools whom I talked to about this particular topic in depth when I was considering retaking the MCAT or applying AACOMAS and moving on. All of the osteopathic school people gave the same sentiment about them and their classmates needing to be literal superstars just to be held equal to an MD with a decent scores in the surgical subs.
How could you possibly know exactly how many people wanted ortho to begin with? Because everyone who ended up applying ortho matched, is not the same as everyone who wanted ortho getting it.
I know for a fact that isn’t true and DMU has matched about 50% of their ortho applicants during those years.
In ortho there are ~115 DO slots and the former DO programs take mainly DOs because MDs don’t spend their aways on DO programs. In ortho audition rotations are king.
As someone who has been giving DOs real talk for many years now, you have to actually know your data. Arrogantly spouting off nonsense doesn’t do any good.
I spoke with the school about it and with 2 students who are currently pursuing ortho there. Idk, I don't believe they would misguide me on the match rate for the school. Maybe I misinterpreted what they said, I wouldn't want to be giving false info.
So the rest of the 172 matches were Uber competitive matches? HIGHLY doubt it
You need to be comfortable with primary care as a DO. Even my low tier MD school has about 5 ortho matches per year out of like 90 students. Adjusted to a DMU rate, it would be about 15. I’m guessing OP would have a much easier time matching ortho from a place like this, When reading DO match lists, one has to be careful because most of the classes are huge.
Also this is a lie. Even schools like Cornell, Case, Pitt etc. don't have ortho match rates like that
How did you calculate these odds? Ortho is competitive, but odds are probably 30-40 percent just based on numbers, and likely higher if OP had high scores and research. Plenty of DO applicants applied with average stats and little research when I was still reviewing applications (4 years ago), but I hear that’s changing. There are over 100 spots that were historically DO and still predominantly take DOs.
You don't believe a school would choose to spin the metrics it gives out in the way that paints it in the most positive light possible?
5/90 is hardly a guarantee tho.. the match rates for Ortho specifically are the same for md and do’s… that’s the bottom line..
You are correct. The remaining 172 did not match uber competitive stuff. We had 32 IM matched to places like stanford, U Mich, UCLA, Emory, U Pen, U Wash, U Colorado, Beth isreal, etc.. All good U programs, except for 6 places. Also had a good number of matches in gen surg, nuero surg, ortho, thoracic, plastic, ent, optho, urology, IR/DR, Anes, etc... The nice thing is, lots matched to our home program with specialty in ALL the above mentioned specialties. That is the nice thing about it.
Man you must've had a rough time on CARS. Half the people in this thread are trying to explain exactly why that's not the bottom line. There are confounding variables here including but not limited to self selection out of applying.
Yea how many 220 step 2 USMD’s you know that are cakewalking into a ortho spot? Self selection also happens at USMD so by that logic you can’t take the USMD match rates at face value either…
Yeah... I didn't deny that. I said that the only way match rates would be comparable if the amount of self selection were equal between MD and DO which it is most definitely not.... self selection is higher at DO schools so their match rate is more inflated and thus not comparable. You really need to work on your reading comp, brother.
Actually, this is likely not true, for Ortho at least. Historical DO programs take students based on rotation performance. There were tons of students (probably half the applicants actually 4 years ago) who hoped to outwork high academic achievers on their rotations, with very average application.
Exactly my point, even in stuff like ent or optho DO programs, although there is less of them in the DO world.
“Inflated” the people who put in work, get decent scores and crush auditions often match surgical subs at former aoa programs, DO schools just attract more people interested in primary care
You 100% need to be realistic. Any surgical sub is hard and it is even more challenging coming from a DO school but 10%? Would love to see the data on that.
Not just some research, it has to be meaningful research with publication.
Boyyyy have I got some news for you about DO schools.
honestly schools in general lol
This just isn’t true. It’s basically implying that students at Harvard, JHU, UCSF put in more effort than students at say Wayne State, UCF, MCW etc. If matches reflect effort of students, then it implies the superior matches of top schools are all due to student effort. This can’t be true if one looks at USMLE scores for each school
