I want to become a Psychiatrist ; Trouble getting into medical school

[Johnny38]

I am convinced that I want to become a psychiatrist - the issue is that I've been having considerable trouble gaining admission to a US medical school - here is the background information:

- undergrad science GPA: 3.1 (at a top university)
two C-'s in Organic Chemistry
- Masters in physiology program GPA: 3.0 (at a top university)
- MCAT: 29

I took the MCAT prior to completing the Masters in physiology program, and I'm pretty sure that if I were to retake it (which would be my 3rd time), I could probably do better. The Masters program was one of those "improve your credentials" type of programs to make you a more competitive applicant to medical school - not sure if it had quite that effect on my application though


What do you guys think? Should I try to retake the MCAT another time and see how it goes? I've applied 2 times to U.S. medical schools and have not had any luck. I just don't want to waste another two years in the process if my chances of getting into a US MD school are slim.
Should I just apply the DO route? Or go to the Caribbean? Are there a lot of DO psychiatrists out there? Would it be easy to land a psychiatry residency as a DO or a Caribbean applicant?

I would really be interested to hear anyone's thoughts & knowledge about this issue. Much thanks!!

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[digitlnoize]

I am convinced that I want to become a psychiatrist - the issue is that I've been having considerable trouble gaining admission to a US medical school - here is the background information:

- undergrad science GPA: 3.1 (at a top university)
two C-'s in Organic Chemistry
- Masters in physiology program GPA: 3.0 (at a top university)
- MCAT: 29

I took the MCAT prior to completing the Masters in physiology program, and I'm pretty sure that if I were to retake it (which would be my 3rd time), I could probably do better. The Masters program was one of those "improve your credentials" type of programs to make you a more competitive applicant to medical school - not sure if it had quite that effect on my application though


What do you guys think? Should I try to retake the MCAT another time and see how it goes? I've applied 2 times to U.S. medical schools and have not had any luck. I just don't want to waste another two years in the process if my chances of getting into a US MD school are slim.
Should I just apply the DO route? Or go to the Caribbean? Are there a lot of DO psychiatrists out there? Would it be easy to land a psychiatry residency as a DO or a Caribbean applicant?

I would really be interested to hear anyone's thoughts & knowledge about this issue. Much thanks!!

Definitely DO > Caribbean...at least from what I've been seeing on the interview trail. I've been to about 9 interviews now, and It's been a 2 or 3:1 ratio of DO:MD at my interviews, so going DO psych does not hurt you at all.

There are certain programs, ECU springs to mind, which have a high rate of acceptance of car rib. students from certain Carrib schools (i.e. Ross).

The big advantage of DO school is that it's in the states. I had a friend who went to a carib vet school and living there is not the paradise you might think. They lack modern conveniences that we take for granted, being 2nd or 3rd world countries depending on the island or the city on the island.

I would try talking to some of the schools you've applied to and ask what you can do to improve your chances.

What is your non-academic medical experience like? Get more. Get new, better letters. Volunteer heavily both medical and non-medical. What is interesting about you (hobbies, etc)? Get something good if you don't have it.

Your GPAs aren't great (which is silly really, I'm sure you're a fine student), and a better MCAT (say...>32) would probably help...but you MIGHT not need to retake it for DO schools, it depends...Competition is getting stronger every year, unfortunately.

One last thing to think about: If you retake classes (i.e. Orgo), the DO application service asks you to list both attempts, but will only count the 2nd one toward your GPA. The MD application service averages them. In this way, the DO app service is MUCH more forgiving to us non-trad students who might have screwed up prior to deciding to pursue medicine (like myself).

For comparison, I'm now a 4th year, so I was admitted during the 2007-2008 application cycle to a top DO school. I think my overall GPA was a 3.3 on the MD service, and a 3.6 on the DO. My science was a 3.75 on both (hadn't screwed up any science classes, didn't take any before I wanted to be a doctor), 28R MCAT. I had A's in both Orgo's, and was an Orgo TA the following year (I had a GREAT teacher and LOVED it). Worked as an ER scribe for a couple years during undergrad, and am a non-trad with a family, past career, etc.

Regardless of what you hear on SDN, do not be afraid of going to DO school. I've been working in many strong academic and community MD programs during my clinical years, with many DO's and have yet to encounter ANY "discrimination." It does exist, but I would estimate that you'd encounter it in medicine about as often as you'd encounter overt racism. At least, that's been my experience. Also, the training is NO different. Anything the AOA or anyone else says about being more "holistic" is a load of crap. That is more up to each doctor than the letters after their name. OMM actually surprised me, my school doesn't emphasize it a lot, but I learned it, and some of the techniques have been very useful...although I'm still not comfortable using it on patients...and will NOT be using it on psych patients, but other wise, no difference.

It is minimally harder, statistically, to match as a DO at an MD program, although it's much less of a problem in psych than say, Ortho surg. And really, I think this only applies to a couple of programs that don't give much DO love.

I applied to ~30 places (average student, average board scores, was worried about DO-bias). Got >20 interviews, at some GREAT places, have had to turn many down.

Hope all that helps!

I should match some

 

[Bartelby]

DO appears to be a much better route than going to the Carribean, and a DO who wants and is willing to work for a career in psychiatry can certainly make it into residency. I would recommend studying the Kaplan MCAT books (I knew them cold for the MCAT and it really helped) and taking a third shot at the MCAT, then next application cycle send out applications to all of your state schools, less competitive MD schools, and a large sampling of DO schools. Carrib schools in my opinion should be a very distant third option if nothing else works out.

 

[psychphan]

You have a good chance of getting into a DO school on this cycle without having to retake anything. That would be the route I would choose, but then again I am a DO student who was accepted MD and choose DO due to a number of factors, so I may be biased. As far as it hurting your chances for a residency in psychiatry, wel theshort answer is it will not. As long as you maintain a decent GPA and board scorees you will get plenty of interviews. And just as if you took the traditional MD route, the better you do in the preclinical years and on boards the better your chance of matching into a top/prestigious place if that's your cup of tea. I was fortunate enough to do very well on my boards and am interviewing at some of the best psych programs in the coutry. In terms of psych very few places will NOT take DOs (MGH, Columbia/Cornell,Emory, I believe a couple Cali places), but other than that being a DO will be almost no hindrance to you becoming a psychiatrist. The choice is obviously yours to make, but if it were me I'd stop messing with the MCAT and course retakes and get started on accomplishing your dream.

 

[peppy]

DO psych resident here. I definitely think you should apply to DO schools.

My opinion is that Caribbean schools are not a good gamble anymore. There is a bottleneck situation coming where there will be more med school grads than US residency spots, and I think that people from foreign schools will be squeezed out before DOs are (at least DOs do have the DO residencies as an option).

You absolutely can get into a psych residency as a DO without much trouble. Will being a DO mean you can't get into certain very snobby psych programs? Yeah, the reality is that some places do look down on DOs - but you also probably would have had trouble getting into programs like that coming from a lower tier MD school too. Overall I feel that more places are accepting of DOs than Carib grads.

In the end, I've come to realize that the only thing that matters is completing *A* residency, not really so much which residency. If I were in your shoes, I'd apply DO and move on with my life rather than worrying about getting into a MD program anymore.

 

[notdeadyet]

Should I just apply the DO route? Or go to the Caribbean? Are there a lot of DO psychiatrists out there? Would it be easy to land a psychiatry residency as a DO or a Caribbean applicant?

If you're not fussy where you do your residency, it can be accomplished by going any route. But keep in mind that USMD med schools have been increasing enrollments and DO schools have been popping up all over, with no increase in allopathic residency slots, so even non-competitive residency slots are likely to get slightly more so and you'll feel that pinch among international MD grads before you will domestic DO grads.

If you go to a good DO program and rock it, you'll be competitive for matching at a majority of psychiatric residencies. The ones you won't be tend to be discriminatory in the sense that while being a DO may hamper your acceptance, it's not an anti-DO bias as much as a brand bias and the Caribbean programs aren't going to kick open any doors that DO might close.

If you haven't researched DO programs, you should do so. One thing you'll likely find is that while all USMD programs are pretty much the same flavor due to tight restrictions, there's a lot more variation among DO programs. There are some bad ones that throw you to the wolves in 3rd and 4th year to be a visiting student for your clinical training and there are others that are very good and practically have their own hospital. And the DO vs. MD thing is mostly an issue only when you're on SDN or sometimes in academia. At the end of the day, I wouldn't know where my colleagues and supervisors trained and I wouldn't even think to ask. The proof's in the pudding.

Good luck with the process...

 

[DrAwsome]

I am convinced that I want to become a psychiatrist - the issue is that I've been having considerable trouble gaining admission to a US medical school - here is the background information:

- undergrad science GPA: 3.1 (at a top university)
two C-'s in Organic Chemistry
- Masters in physiology program GPA: 3.0 (at a top university)
- MCAT: 29

I took the MCAT prior to completing the Masters in physiology program, and I'm pretty sure that if I were to retake it (which would be my 3rd time), I could probably do better. The Masters program was one of those "improve your credentials" type of programs to make you a more competitive applicant to medical school - not sure if it had quite that effect on my application though


What do you guys think? Should I try to retake the MCAT another time and see how it goes? I've applied 2 times to U.S. medical schools and have not had any luck. I just don't want to waste another two years in the process if my chances of getting into a US MD school are slim.
Should I just apply the DO route? Or go to the Caribbean? Are there a lot of DO psychiatrists out there? Would it be easy to land a psychiatry residency as a DO or a Caribbean applicant?

I would really be interested to hear anyone's thoughts & knowledge about this issue. Much thanks!!

I think that it's important for you to apply more broadly. I think applying to only 2 schools is not an adequate amount of schools. I would say apply to 30-40 and then see how it goes. I echo what others have said, do not go to the Caribbean! More and more it's becoming huge gamble, and given the changes that are coming, I don't think it will be easy for Caribbean grads, US citizens or not, to get spots. I think you likely can get in a DO school now, potentially could have gotten into an MD school if you had applied more broadly.

Psych is not hard to get into, so you should do fine.

 

[Johnny38]

Everyone:

Thanks for all the input and advice! I really do appreciate it! It seems the overwhelming consensus is to go the DO route over the Caribbean.

I do have one other question - I would like to go into private practice as a psychiatrist eventually - do you guys know if DO's generally do go the private practice route? Or the answer to this question more based on individual preference? - that is, MD and DO psychiatrists are likely to be in private practice to an equal extent?

I'm just curious because I haven't seen many DO psychiatrists in private practice, but I do know that there are many out there. Perhaps DO psychiatry is a recent trend, predominated up to date by MD psychiatrists??

I would really appreciate to hear more of your insights. Thanks!!

 

[psychphan]

I would say the reason you haven't seen many DO private practice psychiatrist is mainly because there are so few DO psychiatrist relative to MD ones. Remember until relatively recently there was a huge discrepancy in terms of sheer numbers of DOs vs MD. Likewise, until relatively recently DOs tended to trend towards primary care, FM and IM. Those two facts alone would make it that much more likely that if you came across a psychiatrist in private practice ( or any psychiatrist really) they would statistically be much more likely to be an MD. That being said, I think that trend will end due to the increase in the number of new DO schools popping up and the fact that going into primary care isn't emphasized nearly as much as it used to be. I had a PD recently tell me that at least 20% of his applicants for the upcoming year are DOs, and keep in mind that the vast majority of psychiatrists will go into private practice.

 

[peppy]

I'm just curious because I haven't seen many DO psychiatrists in private practice, but I do know that there are many out there. Perhaps DO psychiatry is a recent trend, predominated up to date by MD psychiatrists??

There isn't any reason you can't do private practice as a DO psychiatrist. Every so often you MIGHT encounter a patient who doesn't want to see you because they don't like DOs or don't know a DO is a physician (but then again a lot of patients don't know psychiatrists are "real doctors" either ). The vast, vast majority of patients don't seem to notice or care so I don't see how it would hurt anyone to be a DO in private practice.

I think the main reason you don't see a lot of DO psychiatrists out there is because, up until recently, DOs were a pretty small minority of doctors, plus most DOs go into primary care. A lot of DO schools think of it as their mission to produce the next generation of family medicine doctors for the area the school is in. Though you certainly CAN specialize in something else coming from any of the DO schools, the culture of the DO world tends to assume that everyone is interested in family medicine, even though I would argue that "treating the whole person" is very much in line with how you can approach things from psychiatry.

Plus there's the emphasis on OMM in DO schools, which probably tends to select against people who like psychiatry. You don't have to like OMM to do well in DO school, but the kind of person who does like OMM and touching patients might not be the kind of person who would be interested in psychiatry where the emphasis is very much on NOT touching patients.

Nonetheless, I definitely strongly encourage you to apply for DO school. Start shadowing some DOs as soon as possible so you can get some letters of rec from DOs and then go for it. I think you would have a pretty good shot at getting into a DO school.

 

[heyjack70]

Go DO. But try to get some tuition assistance or go to one of the state schools.

 

[digitlnoize]

Go DO. But try to get some tuition assistance or go to one of the state schools.

Or go to the cheaper DO schools. I think the 3 LECOM campuses (Erie, Seton Hill, and Bradenton) are amongst the lowest priced DO schools. One of the schools with a T in it (TCOM??? not sure) is THE lowest.

Start with those.

 

[TexasPhysician]

Or go to the cheaper DO schools. I think the 3 LECOM campuses (Erie, Seton Hill, and Bradenton) are amongst the lowest priced DO schools. One of the schools with a T in it (TCOM??? not sure) is THE lowest.

Start with those.

Yes but TCOM is a TX state school. 90%+ of each entering class is required to have residency in TX. That's why it is so cheap.

Definitely apply DO though. That gpa is really hurting you when it comes to MD applications. Numbers matter over the tier of your university. For instance, a 4.0 at McMurray College is more likely to land an acceptance in TX than a 3.1 from Stanford assuming most all else is equal. DO schools seem to be more accepting of lower numbers in exchange for being more well-rounded.

 

[whopper]

I went to a Caribbean school-SGU and that one has the rep for being the best one. It got me where I wanted to be but I hated being there. Is it better than a D.O.? Only in the respect that I got an M.D. by my name.

Personally I have nothing against a D.O., but people do, and you won't have to face that stigma. Yes, there is the stigma of having gone to a foreign school, but you can avoid it from the people that simply see the D.O. and immediately have a problem. Again, I don't have a problem, and I know several good D.O.s.

What I didn't like about SGU was that the school, while beautiful and with great facilities were maintained by employees (natives of the country) that were slow, inept, and incompetent. I'm not exaggerating in this statement. The country has an emigration rate > 50%, and the people that leave are the ones that want to work. For example, it was not out of the ordinary to get a haircut and be there for 5 hours, or be in line at the bank and have only one person in front of me and being there for over an hour. Life there is extremely slow.

As simple as that sounds, when everything is like that...everything, including vomitting from food because no one was washing their hands (on the order of about once every few months or getting funky diarrhea on the order of every day), waiting 2 hours for a cab so you call up another place, and then the cab driver that never showed up now calls you demanding an apology for why you did that and when you hang up on him he keeps calling you for weeks (you start getting it when you realize that these people don't have anything else to do), and being in a room that is 99 degrees F and the air conditioner is broken and the repairman who you see everyday drinking beer won't repair it but tells the maintenance manager he did.....

Several SGU students will only say good things of their experience because they don't want the school to sound bad because of the stigma. Say it blew, it makes the school sound bad. The actual schooling itself was IMHO on par with an American school, with USMLE scores on par with American schools, and most classes taught by American, Canadian, or British professors. A complaint I got with the schooling was on occasion we'd get a professor saying "don't worry, it's not going to be on the exam" and then it was. Turned out some of the visiting professors gave questions, and then the head professor decided not to use them and use his own not considering what was taught or not taught by the visiting prof because he didn't sit in the lecture. For that reason, often times students had major anxiety that they'd fail a class even though they studied their tail off and knew what was taught. I don't know if this was ever fixed and while I was there as a student rep, I kept bringing up that this was a problem but it continued on and on and on. In PE classes, one professor would say do it one way, but if you did it that way during the oral exam, if you didn't have the same guy, that guy would say you did it wrong. Those PE profs never seemed to care that one guy taught it differently than the other guy. Another problem I brought several several times and it went on and on and on.

Certainly the poor maintenance issue is one you won't see in the U.S. The exam issues, I'd bet you'd see once in awhile but not to the degree you saw it at SGU. Several of the professors were visiting...it wasn't out of the ordinary to have more than 1/2 of a class taught by a visiting professor. If anything IMHO that made the education regimen more difficult but not in a manner that demanded better knowledge for the students. It was more on the order of being taught something in lecture and then being tested on something very different on the exam and the exam having a lower validity/reliability than it should have.

Two courses that were very terribly taught were Immunology and Microbiology. The Immunology course was taught by someone that didn't have a background in it and she made a book full of grammatical errors. The darned book was even panned on Amazon by her own students in SGU. Reading it was difficult. One could've simply learned that course better had they just bought a board review series book and just read it on their own and skipped class completely. It's been years since I graduated so I figure she might not be there anymore (and as terrible a professor as she was she was a very nice person so I feel bad writing this but I'm writing the truth). The microbio course was dreadful with straight A students getting Bs and Cs in it and students not being able to make heads or tails of it. In the end the course was pretty much graded on a curve but due to the difficulty of the exam, the scores likely had no validity and for the entire semester you felt like it was just a nightmare with your studying efforts really not doing anything.

A few buddies of mine went to AUC and told me they were very happy there, but their board pass rate isn't as high.

 

[Johnny38]

I went to a Caribbean school-SGU and that one has the rep for being the best one. It got me where I wanted to be but I hated being there. Is it better than a D.O.? Only in the respect that I got an M.D. by my name.

Personally I have nothing against a D.O., but people do, and you won't have to face that stigma. Yes, there is the stigma of having gone to a foreign school, but you can avoid it from the people that simply see the D.O. and immediately have a problem. Again, I don't have a problem, and I know several good D.O.s.

What I didn't like about SGU was that the school, while beautiful and with great facilities were maintained by employees (natives of the country) that were slow, inept, and incompetent. I'm not exaggerating in this statement. The country has an emigration rate > 50%, and the people that leave are the ones that want to work. For example, it was not out of the ordinary to get a haircut and be there for 5 hours, or be in line at the bank and have only one person in front of me and being there for over an hour. Life there is extremely slow.

As simple as that sounds, when everything is like that...everything, including vomitting from food because no one was washing their hands (on the order of about once every few months or getting funky diarrhea on the order of every day), waiting 2 hours for a cab so you call up another place, and then the cab driver that never showed up now calls you demanding an apology for why you did that and when you hang up on him he keeps calling you for weeks (you start getting it when you realize that these people don't have anything else to do), and being in a room that is 99 degrees F and the air conditioner is broken and the repairman who you see everyday drinking beer won't repair it but tells the maintenance manager he did.....

Several SGU students will only say good things of their experience because they don't want the school to sound bad because of the stigma. Say it blew, it makes the school sound bad. The actual schooling itself was IMHO on par with an American school, with USMLE scores on par with American schools, and most classes taught by American, Canadian, or British professors. A complaint I got with the schooling was on occasion we'd get a professor saying "don't worry, it's not going to be on the exam" and then it was. Turned out some of the visiting professors gave questions, and then the head professor decided not to use them and use his own not considering what was taught or not taught by the visiting prof because he didn't sit in the lecture. For that reason, often times students had major anxiety that they'd fail a class even though they studied their tail off and knew what was taught. I don't know if this was ever fixed and while I was there as a student rep, I kept bringing up that this was a problem but it continued on and on and on. In PE classes, one professor would say do it one way, but if you did it that way during the oral exam, if you didn't have the same guy, that guy would say you did it wrong. Those PE profs never seemed to care that one guy taught it differently than the other guy. Another problem I brought several several times and it went on and on and on.

Certainly the poor maintenance issue is one you won't see in the U.S. The exam issues, I'd bet you'd see once in awhile but not to the degree you saw it at SGU. Several of the professors were visiting...it wasn't out of the ordinary to have more than 1/2 of a class taught by a visiting professor. If anything IMHO that made the education regimen more difficult but not in a manner that demanded better knowledge for the students. It was more on the order of being taught something in lecture and then being tested on something very different on the exam and the exam having a lower validity/reliability than it should have.

Two courses that were very terribly taught were Immunology and Microbiology. The Immunology course was taught by someone that didn't have a background in it and she made a book full of grammatical errors. The darned book was even panned on Amazon by her own students in SGU. Reading it was difficult. One could've simply learned that course better had they just bought a board review series book and just read it on their own and skipped class completely. It's been years since I graduated so I figure she might not be there anymore (and as terrible a professor as she was she was a very nice person so I feel bad writing this but I'm writing the truth). The microbio course was dreadful with straight A students getting Bs and Cs in it and students not being able to make heads or tails of it. In the end the course was pretty much graded on a curve but due to the difficulty of the exam, the scores likely had no validity and for the entire semester you felt like it was just a nightmare with your studying efforts really not doing anything.

A few buddies of mine went to AUC and told me they were very happy there, but their board pass rate isn't as high.

Hi Thanks for your reply. I do appreciate the input. If I may ask, did you do your residency in psychiatry? I know traditionally psychiatry isn't one of the most competitive residencies out there, so I'm wondering what the stats are for caribbean graduates placing into US psychiatry residencies.

Any thoughts??

 

[Leo Aquarius]

Are you looking to get into any ol program, or one with decent training? That makes a huge difference. Personally, I would rather get DO training than Caribbean training, but for some maybe Caribbean is the better route.

As for your MCAT prep, which sections are giving you the most trouble? If its physics then pick up a high-school physics book and read that. If it's verbal reasoning, I know several classmates who had trouble with it and testify to Ivyhall Review books which is what they specialize in. If it's Bio, then pick up a good Kaplan or Princeton Rev book.

Hope this helps!

 

[NJWxMan]

Stigma with DO? and in Psychiatry? Whopper, you are joking, right? I'd say that 75% of my patients couldn't tell me A) the difference between a psychologist and psychiatrist and B) that ANY psychiatrist went to medical school, let alone care about the DO behind one's name. In terms of residency, I just don't see the DO being an issue unless you are applying to 10-15 specific schools (several of them not even being top tier programs) where that might be an issue. BTW, last year, DO's had a better rank% than US Allopathic grads in the Child and Adolescent Fellowship match. Yes, a higher % of US MD grads did not match when compared to DO's!

I went to a Caribbean school-SGU and that one has the rep for being the best one. It got me where I wanted to be but I hated being there. Is it better than a D.O.? Only in the respect that I got an M.D. by my name.

Personally I have nothing against a D.O., but people do, and you won't have to face that stigma. Yes, there is the stigma of having gone to a foreign school, but you can avoid it from the people that simply see the D.O. and immediately have a problem. Again, I don't have a problem, and I know several good D.O.s.

What I didn't like about SGU was that the school, while beautiful and with great facilities were maintained by employees (natives of the country) that were slow, inept, and incompetent. I'm not exaggerating in this statement. The country has an emigration rate > 50%, and the people that leave are the ones that want to work. For example, it was not out of the ordinary to get a haircut and be there for 5 hours, or be in line at the bank and have only one person in front of me and being there for over an hour. Life there is extremely slow.

As simple as that sounds, when everything is like that...everything, including vomitting from food because no one was washing their hands (on the order of about once every few months or getting funky diarrhea on the order of every day), waiting 2 hours for a cab so you call up another place, and then the cab driver that never showed up now calls you demanding an apology for why you did that and when you hang up on him he keeps calling you for weeks (you start getting it when you realize that these people don't have anything else to do), and being in a room that is 99 degrees F and the air conditioner is broken and the repairman who you see everyday drinking beer won't repair it but tells the maintenance manager he did.....

Several SGU students will only say good things of their experience because they don't want the school to sound bad because of the stigma. Say it blew, it makes the school sound bad. The actual schooling itself was IMHO on par with an American school, with USMLE scores on par with American schools, and most classes taught by American, Canadian, or British professors. A complaint I got with the schooling was on occasion we'd get a professor saying "don't worry, it's not going to be on the exam" and then it was. Turned out some of the visiting professors gave questions, and then the head professor decided not to use them and use his own not considering what was taught or not taught by the visiting prof because he didn't sit in the lecture. For that reason, often times students had major anxiety that they'd fail a class even though they studied their tail off and knew what was taught. I don't know if this was ever fixed and while I was there as a student rep, I kept bringing up that this was a problem but it continued on and on and on. In PE classes, one professor would say do it one way, but if you did it that way during the oral exam, if you didn't have the same guy, that guy would say you did it wrong. Those PE profs never seemed to care that one guy taught it differently than the other guy. Another problem I brought several several times and it went on and on and on.

Certainly the poor maintenance issue is one you won't see in the U.S. The exam issues, I'd bet you'd see once in awhile but not to the degree you saw it at SGU. Several of the professors were visiting...it wasn't out of the ordinary to have more than 1/2 of a class taught by a visiting professor. If anything IMHO that made the education regimen more difficult but not in a manner that demanded better knowledge for the students. It was more on the order of being taught something in lecture and then being tested on something very different on the exam and the exam having a lower validity/reliability than it should have.

Two courses that were very terribly taught were Immunology and Microbiology. The Immunology course was taught by someone that didn't have a background in it and she made a book full of grammatical errors. The darned book was even panned on Amazon by her own students in SGU. Reading it was difficult. One could've simply learned that course better had they just bought a board review series book and just read it on their own and skipped class completely. It's been years since I graduated so I figure she might not be there anymore (and as terrible a professor as she was she was a very nice person so I feel bad writing this but I'm writing the truth). The microbio course was dreadful with straight A students getting Bs and Cs in it and students not being able to make heads or tails of it. In the end the course was pretty much graded on a curve but due to the difficulty of the exam, the scores likely had no validity and for the entire semester you felt like it was just a nightmare with your studying efforts really not doing anything.

A few buddies of mine went to AUC and told me they were very happy there, but their board pass rate isn't as high.

 

[billypilgrim37]

Stigma with DO? and in Psychiatry?

Hey, my entire lower-middle class family refuses to go to a DO, including the ones with bipolar disorder. This opinion long pre-dated me going into medicine. My best friend is just finishing his DO surgery residency, and I think I've ALMOST convinced them that they wouldn't die if he did their appendectomy.

To be fair, they are scared to death of folks from Caribbean schools, because a very stupid auto-mechanic/overall scumbag in our town decided at age 40 to go to one. They figure if that's the sort of guy that goes to the Caribbean schools, they must be horrible. I think he got lost in the Bermuda Triangle, because I don't think anybody has heard from him since.

The fact that these biases are untrue doesn't make them go away.

It may be hard to estimate how many people care about DO vs MD because most of these folks will simply refuse to schedule an outpt appointment with a DO.

Fortunately, this subset of the population is a shrinking minority. But, like racists in the South, acting like it isn't there is probably incorrect.

 

[belle54321]

Hey, my entire lower-middle class family refuses to go to a DO, including the ones with bipolar disorder. This opinion long pre-dated me going into medicine. My best friend is just finishing his DO surgery residency, and I think I've ALMOST convinced them that they wouldn't die if he did their appendectomy.

To be fair, they are scared to death of folks from Caribbean schools, because a very stupid auto-mechanic/overall scumbag in our town decided at age 40 to go to one. They figure if that's the sort of guy that goes to the Caribbean schools, they must be horrible. I think he got lost in the Bermuda Triangle, because I don't think anybody has heard from him since.

The fact that these biases are untrue doesn't make them go away.

It may be hard to estimate how many people care about DO vs MD because most of these folks will simply refuse to schedule an outpt appointment with a DO.

Fortunately, this subset of the population is a shrinking minority. But, like racists in the South, acting like it isn't there is probably incorrect.

Most people I know really don't know the difference between a DO or a MD. I think most people are just happy to get good medical care from a doctor. And most people don't care or care to find out that you went to a Caribbean school. However, there are people who like to use the internet to shop for doctors. For these people (who often think they know more than the doctor) may pick a doctor based on where that doctor went to med school/residency. Frankly, you probably could without these patients anyway.

However, I can't speak about the disadvantage of going to D.O. or Caribbean school in terms of your chances of getting into a residency.

 

[digitlnoize]

Fortunately, this subset of the population is a shrinking minority. But, like racists in the South, acting like it isn't there is probably incorrect.

This is pretty much the situation as I see it. I've encountered DO-ism about as often during clinical work as I've encountered racism.

If the net result is that I get a few less narcissistic patients than my MD colleagues, then it's not the end of the world. They're only going to go to the Yale MD guy anyways. :roll eyes:

I wouldn't be too concerned about being a DO. There is some stigma out there, a ton of ignorance (which people are fine with once you educate them), and a zillion patients who need help.

The way the mental health shortage is shaping up, people are going to be lucky if they can even see ANY psychiatrist, and won't be able to care if they're from Nebraska, Hopkins, an Island, DO-land, or Zimbabwe.

As far as education of the existence of DO's goes, I usually just tell people that there are 2 medical degrees, just like there are 2 dental degrees (DDS and DMD), then I explain that it's more of a historical oddity than anything, but that a very small percentage of DOs do manipulation (and some MD's too). A few people have vaguely heard about the "we're more holistic" DO slogan, but I think it's a load of hogwash, and that the amount of holistic-ism is up to the individual person much more than the initials behind their name.

You will also encounter people who actively seek out DOs for this "holistic" approach. In fact, my city's weekly paper has voted (well people in town voted) the only DO doc in my southern city the #1 doc for the last 4 years or so.

Anyways, don't be too concerned about the DO thing. As someone in the middle of it, it's NOT a big deal. I've gotten interviews at tons of great places (you can check my list in the interview invite thread, if you want). I did NOT get any Ivy invites, but I didn't apply to any programs in large NE cities, so that explains that. Also didn't apply to NY or Chicago...but I got more invites than I could handle, and more than many of my MD counterparts...as a DO.

Also, FWIW, there's been basically a 3:1 ratio of DO's to MD's at ALL of my interviews.

 

[belle54321]

Also, FWIW, there's been basically a 3:1 ratio of DO's to MD's at ALL of my interviews.

Hi dig,
I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I was curious about this statement you made. I agree with you that DOs are really not treated that differently in most people's eyes. I also agree that one can do without those patients who are hung up about where their doctors are trained. Overall, I think OP should definitely apply to DO schools.


On my interview trail (mostly university programs in the NE), I actually haven't met any DO applicants. But I have met a few SGU applicants. I am wondering if this is just selection-bias on both of our parts. Obviously, there are some programs discussed on SDN that seem to be DO unfriendly. Do you think DO applicants tend to apply to programs that are historically DO-friendly? Is there a geographic preference-with people in NE behind the ball regarding DOs?

 

[notdeadyet]

On my interview trail (mostly university programs in the NE), I actually haven't met any DO applicants. But I have met a few SGU applicants. I am wondering if this is just selection-bias on both of our parts. Obviously, there are some programs discussed on SDN that seem to be DO unfriendly. Do you think DO applicants tend to apply to programs that are historically DO-friendly? Is there a geographic preference-with people in NE behind the ball regarding DOs?

DO's tend to apply (logically enough) to allopathic programs that have a history of taking DO's. While there are programs in the lower and mid-tiers that don't accept DO's, they seem to be rare and mostly based on the weird ideas of a particular PD here and there.

At the upper tier programs, most will accept DO's if they are really strong applicants. Some will not. Those that do not are the ones that are fussy about "appearances" and also tend to skew heavily towards applicants from top MD schools. DO's may not have much of a shot at these programs, but hey, most MD's don't either.

 

[Shufflin]

I haven't met ANY DO applicants on my interview trail, and only one Caribbean candidate and he was from SGU. The programs I've interviewed at have been in the Midwest and West, nearly all of the California programs.

From what digitlnoize says and reflecting on my and my colleagues experiences, I imagine it works something like this: MDs apply to the more famous or main-stream programs, without needing to include too many off-the-beaten-path programs. There are many more spots than there are MD applicants if I'm not mistaken. DOs, in an effort to maximize their chances, apply to some top-ranked programs (who wouldn't) and then to a wide panorama of non main-stream programs that MDs may have never heard of. In a sense, the "DO-friendly" concept is to some degree created by us, the applicants. However, some famous programs do interview DO applicants, and DO applicants do end up at some main-stream programs.

So we shouldn't be surprised that MDs and DOs have very different accounts of who appears on interviews, simply because the famous main-stream places tend to interview MDs, and MDs don't apply that much to the places DOs receive interviews. There are exceptions as this is a generalization.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

I'm on the west coast, and we have 2 DOs in our program right now. We interview a good number of DOs (I'd say maybe 1 out of 5 on most interview days). There might be some bias in that you have to be a relatively stronger applicant as a DO to match here, but I honestly don't know. Our current DOs are pretty awesome, but I don't know if that's just us being lucky or us being being picky about DOs.

Anyway, I'd definitely go the DO route if you really want to do medicine. Do well, take USMLE exams (seriously, we don't know what COMLEX scores mean), and you can wind up at a pretty good program in a good location. Some places won't take you, but that doesn't mean you can't still be a well-trained psychiatrist.

 

[peppy]

I'd say that 75% of my patients couldn't tell me A) the difference between a psychologist and psychiatrist and B) that ANY psychiatrist went to medical school, let alone care about the DO behind one's name. In terms of residency, I just don't see the DO being an issue unless you are applying to 10-15 specific schools (several of them not even being top tier programs) where that might be an issue.

Pretty much my thoughts as well. Some people and places do have a bias against DOs, but it's not such a big deal that it should keep anyone from going DO.

I also agree that most of the general public doesn't realize that psychiatrists are actual physicians, much less do they understand the nuances between DO vs. MD. If you want to impress the general public, you need to be a surgeon, ER doc, or maybe some old school cowboy family med doctor.
I don't care about being mistaken for a PhD. Hey, they're doctors too. At least that's more prestigious than when I've met lay people who thought that radiologists were techs with a 2 year college degree and were very surprised to find out that the guy who reads their x-rays is a real doctor.

 

[DocHolliday21]

Man I haven't looked back at all after going the DO route. I 100% recommend it. Got great interviews and got into a perfect program for me. Some of my friends from med school got into pretty good psych residencies including Mayo, WashU, and U of Cincinnati.

Outside of psych, we had people match into very good programs in plastics, derm, anesthesia, etc...

I guess it's a person to person thing thou. I don't waste my time with the whole MD vs. DO thing. I don't care. I have more important things to deal with like winning my fantasy football league. If it bothers you, then you shouldn't do it. I pretty much know a large percentage of the people at my medical school and not one said, "man I wish I didn't go the DO route". I learned a lot, students were chill, I was prepared well for residency, and I got the perfect residency for me.


And I wouldn't try to take the MCAT again and try to do more post-grad work to bump your science GPA to possibly get into an MD program. Medicine is a long process with a lot of debt. Just move on and don't look back.

 

[whopper]

If I may ask, did you do your residency in psychiatry?

Yes I did.

As for the anti-D.O. thing, it exists, but I also agree with the above, most people I've noticed don't care, though some do.

And again, I don't agree with it. I know a psychiatrist in a hospital I work at that blows, went to Exeter for high school, Ivies for college, top notch residencies (yes more than one) and a fellowship, and law school, and he's one of the worst doctors I've ever met. My former boss who just left his job told me he'd go through the computer lock records of the hospital and noticed there were days the guy was allegedly in the hospital for 13 hours a day and not one computer locked door (Which is almost all the doors in the hospital) were ever used. If it didn't click in your head as to what that means--he probably wasn't even in the hospital at all that day but clocked in and clocked out.

IMHO that is a far better predictor of a doctor's skill than what school they attended.

 

[deleted432032]

As for the anti-D.O. thing, it exists, but I also agree with the above, most people I've noticed don't care, though some do.

The whole D.O.'s want to be M.D.'s thing seems to be prominent around SDN for some reason. Before finding this site I never heard anything about some believing D.O.'s are inferior to or wanna be M.D.'s.

The saddest part is I see most of this hatred coming from residents and pre-meds on this forum, although most of the residents that take this stance don't post in this section. Scary knowing these people will become physicians with this type of attitude.

 

[whopper]

From my experience, most people don't become doctors for the right reasons. Family pressure, a desire for a high paying job with security, prestige, narcissism, an expectation to have to do a job that society puts in high regard without consideration of what the field is truly about, etc. tend to be more prevalent reasons.

 

[Johnny38]

what a great body of insight. thanks everyone for your comments. It's definitely helped me to find my path in this entire application process, which has taken me a fair amount of time to figure out.

Do you guys have, or know anyone who has, had the following experience: The applicant at first preferred to go the MD route, but upon realization that it may be difficult to attain a US MD education, and his reluctance to go to the Caribbean, opted to go the DO route and fell in love with it? I'm assuming this may be a common sentiment among many applicants.

I ask because I'm feeling like the above - I would prefer the MD over the DO, but reluctant to go the Caribbean route, and very open to trying the DO - I do think I may like the DO route and like other have said on this thread - I'll probably never look back. It just may help to hear from others who have gone through the same experience and what they found.

Thanks everyone.

j

 

[splik]

On my interview trail (mostly university programs in the NE), I actually haven't met any DO applicants. But I have met a few SGU applicants.

I have met a total of 0 DO applicants and 0 caribbean applicants on the interview trail so far so it is a selection bias and also who happens to be interviewing that day. Yale was the only place I've interviewed at so far where I wasn't the only FMG interviewing that day!

I didn't have a clue about the whole DO thing as we don't have them we're I'm from - the idea of osteopaths practising medicine would be criminal! But I have heard comments like 'you can tell how competitive a program is by the number of DO and IMG residents' and my partner (a non-medic) says he would be suspicious of a DO even though he knows there is no difference really. So I think there is some stigma.

Ultimately it is up to you what sort of doctor you are and how you practice medicine. This comes inspite of your education (where you learn all sorts of bad practices) and not because of it. DO, MD, MB BS, MB ChB, Dr. Med. - whatever the letters after your name - you must decide how you want to see your job and how you want to engage with and treat your patients. More important than where you go is who you are and what you do - make the most of the opportunities available to you.

 

[psychphan]

what a great body of insight. thanks everyone for your comments. It's definitely helped me to find my path in this entire application process, which has taken me a fair amount of time to figure out.

Do you guys have, or know anyone who has, had the following experience: The applicant at first preferred to go the MD route, but upon realization that it may be difficult to attain a US MD education, and his reluctance to go to the Caribbean, opted to go the DO route and fell in love with it? I'm assuming this may be a common sentiment among many applicants.

I ask because I'm feeling like the above - I would prefer the MD over the DO, but reluctant to go the Caribbean route, and very open to trying the DO - I do think I may like the DO route and like other have said on this thread - I'll probably never look back. It just may help to hear from others who have gone through the same experience and what they found.

Thanks everyone.

j

I was accepted into both US MD and DO schools, and chose the latter. I wouldn't say I necessarily "fell in love" with it, as I figured I'd be happy with the choice from the onset, but I'm certainly glad I made the choice I did. I choose DO based on a number of things, one being the assumption that the DO world is friendlier, less malignantly competitive, and more nurturing than the MD world. As I have found this to be the case with my DO experiences, I also have found that all those same qualities are present in many MD places as well, and that malignancy and general douchey-ness is much rarer and probably program or specialty specific. I'm happy with the choice I made, as I went to a place where I met some really great people, got the education I was looking for, and now am in the position to be interviewing at very high quality residency programs, some being "top tier". As far as it hurting my application as a psych resident, I will say that there were 2 programs that I am almost certain denied me interviews based solely on me being a DO (Miami and Emory). There are a couple other programs that did not offer me interviews, but I don't think that was based solely on the future letters after my name, but more so on my lack of research and rather average pre-clinical grades. Anyways, I got a little off track with my rant, but the bottom line is there are very few programs (and often not even the best programs) that will refuse to take DOs. So unless you have a specific program you want to be at, and it happens to be one of those, you will experience very little bias in the residency selection process.

 

[Shufflin]

I recommend that applicants do their own homework - look at the residents at programs of interest, and see where they hail from. (For the benefit of future applicants, let's guard against claims unless we are in the position to make them. Unless you have experience with a residency selection committee, you might want to be careful telling others that they will experience very little bias in the selection process.)

Pardon my digression, but I want to dispel a myth here: if you're a down-to-earth friendly person you fit better in a DO program than a MD program. My MD experience has been excellent. At the top 20 med schools, the competition to get in is so unbelievable that programs can find brilliant students who are also very friendly with a deep capacity and willingness to understand the human condition. Through a rigorous application process they weed out the cut-throat competitive students who probably end up at lower tier programs, IMG programs, or whatever else is available.

 

[psychphan]

I recommend that applicants do their own homework - look at the residents at programs of interest, and see where they hail from. (For the benefit of future applicants, let's guard against claims unless we are in the position to make them. Unless you have experience with a residency selection committee, you might want to be careful telling others that they will experience very little bias in the selection process.)

I guess I should clarify that they will experience very little bias in the INTERVIEW selection process, as that's as far as I've gotten. However, the concept of interviewing someone you have absolutely no chance of accepting seems futile and a waste of precise interview spots.

I would also like to dispel the rumor that you can only get accepted into programs that already have residents from your background. Sure it helps to do your homework and it doesn't hurt to apply to places that appear "DO friendly" or "IMG friendly" , but I've had multiple program directors tell me that just because they do not have DOs doesn't mean they are bias against them and that they receive fewer DO applications than they expect every year and they think that's because of their perceived "DO bias", which they claim they don't have. I would say a strong applicant limiting themselves to apply only to places that currently have non traditional residents would be a disservice to themselves.

 

[digitlnoize]

I will say that there were 2 programs that I am almost certain denied me interviews based solely on me being a DO (Miami and Emory).

I have met DO applicants who said they had interviews at both of these places. Two different people, and both had strong ties to that area, but Miami and Emory are interviewing at least some DOs...

 

[psychphan]

I have met DO applicants who said they had interviews at both of these places. Two different people, and both had strong ties to that area, but Miami and Emory are interviewing at least some DOs...

I digress.

Although I still believe the reason I didn't get an invite was because I was a DO. Those people may have been stronger applicants than me. But in my case, when I get interviews at a number of places I regard as much better programs (than certainly Miami, and IMO on par or better than Emory as well), then as I am not granted interviews at those places and notice they have no DOs, a bias is what pops into my mind.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

This thread (while still fairly friendly) has deteriorated into one of those threads that makes everyone hate these conversations on SDN. So here's the gist -- you can become a great psychiatrist from a DO school, and provided you don't entirely screw up medical school, you should be able to match into a decent psychiatry program from a DO school. You might not get interviews at some "reputable" programs because of your DO status, which is unfortunate. But if you only want to be a psychiatrist if you can train at Mass Gen, then maybe medical school isn't such a good idea anyway.

 

[Johnny38]

But if you only want to be a psychiatrist if you can train at Mass Gen, then maybe medical school isn't such a good idea anyway.

Thanks for the insight, Doctor Bagel. Sorry but can you explain what you mean by your above statement??

Thanks,
j

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Thanks for the insight, Doctor Bagel. Sorry but can you explain what you mean by your above statement??

Thanks,
j

Exactly what it says, I guess. If you only want to be a doctor if you can train at so-called "prestigious" top name places, then maybe you don't really want to be a doctor that much. As a DO, you could match at lots of really good programs, but some programs might not take you. Those programs might not take you if you train a no-name allopathic school, either, so there you go.

 

[Johnny38]

Exactly what it says, I guess. If you only want to be a doctor if you can train at so-called "prestigious" top name places, then maybe you don't really want to be a doctor that much. As a DO, you could match at lots of really good programs, but some programs might not take you. Those programs might not take you if you train a no-name allopathic school, either, so there you go.

thanks for the clarification