Unfortunately there is still some bias against DOs.
Read this post from a radiology PD with dismay:
6. Our residency essentially filters out applicants who are IMGs—to be honest, I think there are some outstanding candidates in this group particularly from those individuals who are not from the US, but the problem is that it is really difficult to find those for me because we don’t use test scores as much in our ranking process. Communication skills are very important to us, and that can be a sticking point for some IMGs who did not grow up in the US that we don’t understand until the interview, and I don’t want to waste people’s time with interviews if there is a low chance of success. On the other hand, we understand there are some life circumstances and other legitimate reasons why some applicants who are US based ended up doing medical school internationally. So I download these into my spreadsheet, dig deeper at maybe the candidates with board scores above 250 to see if I recognize the school, review publications, special experiences, special circumstances, etc. Sometimes a colleague will ask me to look carefully at a person that someone in their field has highlighted for them. We do interview a few IMGs every year (< 5), and some are quite good. However, they face hurdles all along the way in our ranking process—just being honest.
7. We do the same as #6 for DO candidates. We do interview a few every year (< 3), but we believe there is a penalty for our program in future applicants if we have a number of DO residents, mainly because there is the perception that we couldn’t attract the best MD candidates. It’s unfortunate for some DO students who are going to be great, but it is reality.
Trying to be as honest as possible. Here are the problems for our program with respect to most DO applicants and certainly all IMG applicants:
1. The perception (again, perception) that we struggled to fill the program if a number of our residents are DO/IMG. Without trying to give away too much, I'm not at Mallinckrodt--my program isn't one of those 15+ residents/year beasts that can have an IMG or DO and everyone decides "dang, that person must be awesome"--instead, for us, because we have a smaller program, the impression will be, "why couldn't they fill with AMGs". Realize that this is not just a perception among applicants--I'd have explain to all my faculty (none of whom are DOs) that we really wanted this DO--they are going to think we had a bad Match.
2. More importantly (seriously)--the DO schools do a terrible job stratifying their medical students. This is the real problem I have with understanding how to asses my DO applicants. Even worse for the IMGs. More than 50% of a typical DO class (sometimes 80%, it seems to me) get "straight A's" in the clinical years. The written commentaries on performance are woefully short (one sentence, maybe two). I don't know the radiologists that have worked with them, so I don't get any familiar letters that would boost an applicant. Many of the radiology departments that the DOs have worked in aren't particularly academic, so they haven't impressed in research. Since I really don't care if you get a 240 or a 270 on your USMLE, it becomes that much harder for me to be impressed by a DO student who got 270 on their boards (by the way, I do care if you get less than 240, so please do as well as possible on your USMLE). Even though we purposefully "overinterview", I have far more applicants than individuals I can invite. If you are a DO, your best bet to get into my residency would be to have an advocate that I'm familiar with call me and tell me you walk on water. I'd happily go to bat for you then, with my faculty and with future applicants.
Radiology Faculty--Answering Questions/"AMA"
