School consideration.

[schindler57]

I feel like I am a fairly good candidate for Podiatry school, If not then correct me.
Overall gpa is 3.55 and sgpa is 3.3. I have not taken the mcat yet. I have over 1000 hours of laboratory experience and only one semester left in my undergrad. I also have been working in a podiatry clinic part time for 6 months now. I am a registered EMT-B and a 3 time all-conference football player in college D2 too. I want to do sports medicine and surgeries primarily. I was wondering what the best school to go for those two things. I would really like some help deciding what school is the best for them.

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[HappyHobPod]

I feel like I am a fairly good candidate for Podiatry school, If not then correct me.
Overall gpa is 3.55 and sgpa is 3.3. I have not taken the mcat yet. I have over 1000 hours of laboratory experience and only one semester left in my undergrad. I also have been working in a podiatry clinic part time for 6 months now. I am a registered EMT-B and a 3 time all-conference football player in college D2 too. I want to do sports medicine and surgeries primarily. I was wondering what the best school to go for those two things. I would really like some help deciding.

I don't think you will have much of a problem being accepted into any of the schools provided you have an MCAT that isn't just absolutely terrible. Also, doing well on your MCAT puts you in a better position to receive a scholarship to accompany your acceptance, so I would definitely aim high. If you want to compare your stats to what is a small sample size of other individuals who have been accepted check out this thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/acceptance-stats-class-of-2020.1173723/
Also sifting through this thread http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/aacpmas-2015-2016-cycle.1154114/ can hopefully help to draw a clearer picture for you and answer some questions you might have.

As far as your interest in sports medicine and surgery, you can be sure that you will have ample opportunity for surgery in most of the specializations you have the option to pursue. However, the sports medicine aspect of it will surely be found during your residency after Podiatry school, and then in how you choose to cater yourself and further your education post-residency. Many if not all of the schools should also have clubs that involve these interests and work actively in the community. I don't honestly know if any of the schools specifically have greater ties to the sports medicine aspect of podiatry, so hopefully someone else can answer this if one does

 

[schindler57]

I don't think you will have much of a problem being accepted into any of the schools provided you have an MCAT that isn't just absolutely terrible. Also, doing well on your MCAT puts you in a better position to receive a scholarship to accompany your acceptance, so I would definitely aim high. If you want to compare your stats to what is a small sample size of other individuals who have been accepted check out this thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/acceptance-stats-class-of-2020.1173723/
Also sifting through this thread http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/aacpmas-2015-2016-cycle.1154114/ can hopefully help to draw a clearer picture for you and answer some questions you might have.

Thanks for the ample response. That helps and I will be sifting through the forums to find more info. Much appreciated.

 

[bobtheweazel]

I feel like I am a fairly good candidate for Podiatry school, If not then correct me.
Overall gpa is 3.55 and sgpa is 3.3. I have not taken the mcat yet. I have over 1000 hours of laboratory experience and only one semester left in my undergrad. I also have been working in a podiatry clinic part time for 6 months now. I am a registered EMT-B and a 3 time all-conference football player in college D2 too. I want to do sports medicine and surgeries primarily. I was wondering what the best school to go for those two things. I would really like some help deciding what school is the best for them.

You'll get good surgical training anywhere, you should focus on where to go for better sports medicine training. Also, there isn't too much that you'll get at any of the schools since they have so many other general podiatry and medical topics to cover as well. Next step after school is residency, pretty much all of which are hospital based and good luck finding a hospital with a "Sports Medicine Department". Although something like that might be available, I wouldn't hold my breath. If you want Sports Medicine training, stay in Sports Medicine clubs, attend Sports Medicine conferences, stay up to date on Sports Medicine literature, and then go through a Sports Medicine Fellowship after residency. If you complete a Sports Medicine Fellowship and stay active in the field then you can join the American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine (AAPSM), which by the way has a student organization at each of the schools except NYCPM and Western I believe.

My school choices would be:
(1) Barry University
Barry's Sports Medicine professor (Dr James Losito) is the team podiatrist for the Miami Heat, which is cool, but the main reason I would go to Barry is that they host a Sports Medicine Fellowship. I would assume they would show preference towards Barry alumni.
(2) Kent State University
You would potentially get to work with the Kent State sports teams and there should also be Sports Medicine research opportunities at Kent, which would likely be key to getting into a Sports Medicine Fellowship.

Here's a link to the AAPSM website where you can find more information on the organization and the fellowships that would qualify you to become a member or eventually a fellow. Then you can put that fancy alphabet soup behind your name: schindler57, DPM, FAAPSM (Fellow of the American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine)
http://www.aapsm.org/index.html

 

[FootAndAnkle]

I feel like I am a fairly good candidate for Podiatry school, If not then correct me.
Overall gpa is 3.55 and sgpa is 3.3. I have not taken the mcat yet. I have over 1000 hours of laboratory experience and only one semester left in my undergrad. I also have been working in a podiatry clinic part time for 6 months now. I am a registered EMT-B and a 3 time all-conference football player in college D2 too. I want to do sports medicine and surgeries primarily. I was wondering what the best school to go for those two things. I would really like some help deciding what school is the best for them.

Just do all right on the MCAT and you'll be in and back to fishing in no time. Any school will work - just go where you think the training is the best (from statistics and working with other students and residents on rotations, I'd say MWU and DMU seem to produce consistently good results).

 

[heybrother]

If you want *sports medicine you need to do the following (you can replace sports medicine with the particular cutting edge thing of your choice - what I'm trying to say is if you want something cool you are going to have to fight for it)

(1) Do awesome in school - great grades, no board fails, perhaps get some research, impress your own professors so they write nice things about you, do all the right things in the right order without pissing anyone off or creating unnecessary blemishes
(2) Know a lot about football and basketball because programs with more sports related stuff seem to eat that sort of thing up *this advice is given tongue-in-cheek*
(3) Find out what residency programs have sports medicine as a focus. I'll give you one right now- brand new program in Lake Charles Louisiana - Christus St. Patrick. The program director is a partner in an orthopedic group and they are team doctors for McNeese State. I thought their director was pretty damn cool.
(4) Extern at programs with that focus and be awesome.

Ignore all the marketing crap above where certain schools claim to be awesome at something because they have 1 doctor in it. Whatever they have - however cool it may be, you're still a student (you won't be holding the scalpel and you probably won't be guiding the needle). Also, your classmates will be fighting you for anything cool that comes in the door. If you want to do this stuff you need to do it in residency. As a rule, programs with cooler things ie. sports medicine, trauma, reconstruction are competitive. We all want to do these things. Forget all the junk above about clubs. Everyone at every school joins most of the club so they can get free meals. That's just an empty line on a resume. Perhaps being the president of the club might be worth something, but I have my doubts. We had some club presidents who worked their asses off and we had some who got their resume line and never had meetings. Ignore all the crap above about fellowships. If you attend a great program you don't need a fellowship. I'm not saying a fellowship wouldn't look good or be nice, but this isn't the place to talk about them - they are a complicated subject. Aim for a residency program that can give you everything you need and then aim for a fellowship if you want more. I visited programs where nothing was happening, I visited a program that rotated through an active military base with non-stop Brostroms (lateral ankle ligament stabilization), and I rotated at a program where one attending alone did 100+ ankle scopes a year. All programs are not equal - there is a full spectrum from junk through good enough to good and great and excellent. I wish everything out there could supply anyone with anything they wanted, but it isn't the case. If you want it you need to work for it.