Regarding scores and scholarships at Podiatry schools

[Nwin1994]

Hello all,

I have a few questions about podiatry schools that I really, really need help with. Please take a moment to look through my long thread. I appreciate any advice/comments.

I am an international student; this is currently my senior year and for the past four year I have been a Pre-Dental. Now my situation is a bit different. I have never shadowed podiatrists in my undergrad years(mainly because there is no podiatric clubs at my school that motivated my attendance; for me the profession was relatively unknown - sorry if this offended anyone). However, it all changed when I started shadowing a podiatrist for the first time...

And now I really, really wanted to be a podiatrist(let's just leave it at that no ranting hahah). Don't get me wrong; I still like dentistry. However, I myself understands that I had average if not minimal hand skills. I love the aspects and community involvement of dentistry, but I can't seem to see myself excel in the field in the future. I don't know if I would be happy with a career i'm not good at.

A little specs about myself :
International student F1 - Asian
Senior majoring in Biology/ minoring in Chemistry
GPA: 4.0
Dental Admission Score(DAT) : 22 Total Science/21 Academic Average/ 21 Perceptual Skills (this put me among 90-94% for each section)
Involvement in various clubs: VP for Student Government Association, VP for International Club, Treasurer for Biological Honor Society and Secretary for Pre-Dental Society. All clubs I have been involved in 2 years or more.
I work part-time as tutor/teaching assistant for chems/ Peer-leader/Freshman and International Student Councilors. In the summer, I mainly worked as Theater Usher+Manager and Tutoring. All my work history has consistency each with more than 2 years. All works were on campus as international students are not allowed to work off campus.

My questions:
1. What school will accept my DAT scores? I know Temple and NYCPM will. But other schools clearly state they will accept MCAT. Will there be any exceptions? I really don't want to focus my last semester on MCAT because I want to spend more time figuring out what I like and more time with friends in the last semester.

2. Will the scholarships named on the schools website be applicable to international students? I know a lot of school require students to be permanent residence to receive those scholarships. I wonder if there are any restrictions for me here as well. Also if you don't mind, how much are they willing to assist ???(Just for a record I want to keep ahead and plan my future education).

3. My aunt is a Texas dentist and she would like to help me with co-signing any loans. Does anyone know if the schools they are in have a program to lend money to international students with co-signer. I don't want to borrow shark loans at all. I do have enough money for the first 2-3 years but everything after that is a blur. My dad passed away in my freshman year(yep that's right it happened when I was 9000~ miles away) made it all the more difficult. I was very motivated in my undergrad life because of his passing.

4. IS IT TOO LATE? I don't see any days for application early/late submission on any websites at all. This confuses me greatly. Medical and dental applications always open in June 1 and the deadline for podiatry school is somewhere like APRIL>>????? I just started shadowing the podiatrist too. I need more shadowing time. This is nerve-wracking. Also, does the application/interview process also take a year like dental/med school's ?

Please leave any advice or inbox me if you can. I greatly appreciate any helps from your guys.

Have a blessed day!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[HappyHobPod]

Hi Nwin1994. I know a lot of what may be going through your head at this time in terms of changing professions. I will be attending Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine in the Fall of 2016. But before this, I graduated in 4 1/2 years at my undergrad as pre-dental before I switched over to podiatry. I spent ~200 hours in dental practices and dental labs. I can wax a crown like clockwork (kind of), I brush my teeth, and I floss occasionally. So I think you know that I know that you know that I know I can maybe give you some perspective. Your GPA is okay. If you had a 4.1 you may have had a little bit of a better chance to get into podiatry school. Your DAT score is what 99% of pre-dents wish they could have scored on their DAT. And your extracurriculars.....wow...maybe if you had done 3+ years of each then we could have some sort of conversation....But seeing as how you are the perfect candidate for most medical professions, here's some more serious talk about some of the questions you have asked:

1. Based on the recent update to the AACPMAS (Basically TMDSAS or AADSAS, but for Podiatry) there will be no Podiatry school that will accept your DAT scores. Check via http://www.aacpm.org/html/careerzone/require.asp and also please check the school's website to make sure. Or call them.

2.If you want to know if they will deliver the same standards for scholarship to international students, I would get in contact with the schools. There's only 9, which makes it pretty easy.

3. First 2-3 years of podiatry school paid is......without using profanity........very.......extremely......good. On a serious note, I am terribly sorry that your father passed away to make this possible. It's great that you are pursuing a medical career that will allow you to really help people in ways you may not (or may!) understand just yet. You haven't chosen one that doesn't change, or even save, lives. The fact that your aunt is willing to help you with this endeavor is amazing. I am not sure what the loan procedures for international students are, so I cannot comment on this. However, it may help to again, contact the individual schools or AACPMAS.

4. Podiatry school applications open the first Wednesday in August and last until July. Depending on the school, spots may fill up in very late winter/early spring (~30 per class), or almost all the way to July (~100 per class). As far as shadowing time goes, I did ~140 hours of shadowing and was accepted. Some people had much less than this and were accepted. Don't sweat it.

5. You are going to be accepted.

The biggest thing at this point is you getting some shadowing experience and taking your MCAT. Since you have started shadowing already then you are in good position to get the experience you need as well as setting yourself up to secure a Letter of Recommendation. Your MCAT is your biggest obstacle right now from what I can see. The new MCAT is pretty intense. It is a very different mindset of studying compared to the DAT. I studied for the DAT quite a bit before I switched and noticed a stark difference in style. I highly recommend using https://www.reddit.com/r/Mcat/ to plan your studying accordingly. It helped me quite a bit.

You wanting to spend time with your friends and figure out what you want is not a deal breaker...if you want to enter as part of the class of 2021. You can finish everything you want to by this point. However, if you want to start so that you are in the class of 2020, you need to get all of your stuff done before this next semester is over. The biggest part of this is taking your MCAT, getting interviews, and scheduling your interviews around everything else important going on in your life. This is going to take time...there is no doubt about that. The main obstacle is probably taking your MCAT though. It takes a lot of time to study for the MCAT if you want to do well on it. I took 6 months to study for it after I graduated last December. I studied for 6-8 hours a day after I got off of work at 6pm. I did this mainly out of necessity. Not everyone takes this long to study or has to subject themselves to such awkward hours. But it was what I was working with and it paid off. And thank the powers that be that my girlfriend put up with it! That's besides the point. But I got a pretty good scholarship, and scholarships for your first year are based off of merit at some schools, which takes your GPA and MCAT score into consideration. And your MCAT score can be as much as 2/3 of the deciding factor in your award package. You have a bit of a different situation, and you have amazing credentials already. All you need to do is figure out why you want to make this your career, and then do what you need to do to secure it. As far as the schools go, what is the best school? Well they all are good from what I can see. Certain schools may have advantages that others don't. I found it very different of an experience than it was pursuing dental school. Don't take any of the schools for granted. Get the interview, assess the situation, and then make your own decision based on the experience. I'm sure some people may be able to answer some of your question more thoroughly than mine, but if you have any other additional ones then feel free to pm me.

 

[bobtheweazel]

According to the current Podiatric Medical College Information Book, Temple (TUSPM) will accept DAT on a case-by-case basis.

However, I think you should reassess the whole situation. You cite "I myself understands that I had average if not minimal hand skills" as the main reason why you don't want to pursue dentistry. The problem is that you're now looking at podiatry, which is basically a surgical specialty. You'll be required to do a surgical residency and perform a certain number of surgeries on patients to get through residency and to get board certified and basically to get anywhere in the field, even if your end goal is non-surgical podiatry. So what you're considering (i.e., podiatry) will take you down a path that forces you to be hands on, operating on people, and potentially harming people if your hand skills are really that bad. You should probably reconsider dentistry...

http://www.aacpm.org/html/careerzone/pdfs/2015 CIB.pdf

 

[HappyHobPod]

According to the current Podiatric Medical College Information Book, Temple (TUSPM) will accept DAT on a case-by-case basis.

View attachment 198224

However, I think you should reassess the whole situation. You cite "I myself understands that I had average if not minimal hand skills" as the main reason why you don't want to pursue dentistry. The problem is that you're now looking at podiatry, which is basically a surgical specialty. You'll be required to do a surgical residency and perform a certain number of surgeries on patients to get through residency and to get board certified and basically to get anywhere in the field, even if your end goal is non-surgical podiatry. So what you're considering (i.e., podiatry) will take you down a path that forces you to be hands on, operating on people, and potentially harming people if your hand skills are really that bad. You should probably reconsider dentistry...

http://www.aacpm.org/html/careerzone/pdfs/2015 CIB.pdf

Do you think he could develop hand skills? That's not something everyone is necessarily comfortable with off the bat. Dentistry is no doubt subtle hand movements, but there's also a stark difference between having performed those movements needed in surgery and not.

 

[bobtheweazel]

Do you think he could develop hand skills? That's not something everyone is necessarily comfortable with off the bat. Dentistry is no doubt subtle hand movements, but there's also a stark difference between having performed those movements needed in surgery and not.

Who knows, but if he thought that were the case then why not stick with dentistry?

Perhaps just retaking the MCAT and heading the MD/DO route would be better because there would be plenty of specialty options that wouldn't require hand skills or he could switch to a more hands on field down the line if he thought he could. With Podiatry, he'd be kinda locking himself in to a field that will definitely require hand skills at some point

 

[HappyHobPod]

Who knows, but if he thought that were the case then why not stick with dentistry?

Perhaps just retaking the MCAT and heading the MD/DO route would be better because there would be plenty of specialty options that wouldn't require hand skills or he could switch to a more hands on field down the line if he thought he could. With Podiatry, he'd be kinda locking himself in to a field that will definitely require hand skills at some point

Well, there's no question that Podiatry requires hand skills. Exceptional hand skill at that when it comes to surgery, if you want to deliver the best care possible that is. However, from my experience I would say that dentistry does require as much, if not even more hand skill than a podiatrist. They certainly require hand skills from day 1. Dentist live up to their name as doctors of dental surgery for the amount of surgical procedures that they perform, which they perform very liberally compared to a podiatrist on any given day. Most days of the week are preoccupied with surgery with individuals that are in-patient and awake, which occupy an area of the body that elicits an excited psychological and physiological response in many individuals. The required hand skills for this are invaluable. And I don't intend to discount what will be needed to be performed in the ways of injections, abrasions, clippings, or anything of that sort, which are daily procedures for podiatrists. But I would venture to say that most daily occurrences for dentists would require a steadier hand than a podiatrist. So, I believe that this individual would need to acquire hand skills that are supremely effective, early, for his patients if he chose dentistry, at least if he wanted to be successful. But this could also result from years of training and practice and result in a slower patient build, which MAY not be so different from podiatrist at this point. Confidence and actual performance for hand skills are a hard thing to measure on over text, which is why I suggested that he get a feel for the profession. He may be better than he says and could improve on what his actual skills are.