What should I do?

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Carbs99

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Hello all, I am a white male, Washington resident.
I have been accepted into an Optometry school this year but now I am deciding if I want to put off a year and go for a MD/DO acceptance. At this point, I am not sure if I want to do optometry or family medicine.

How hard is it to match for family medicine with a DO degree? Sorry for being so ignorant, I am very new to the med school path.

My stats are 3.59 cumulative/~3.45 science. Somewhat of an upward trend: 3.2 Fresh/3.78 Soph/3.83 Jr/ 3.6 Sr.
I have not taken the MCAT but I scored 80 percentile on the OAT studying for about 3 weeks.
I have fairly good ECs, 500+ hours of clinical work and patient care but no research.
I went to a state university. Took a couple of my prereqs at a CC.

So realistically, what are my chances at a MD/DO school? I know its hard to tell without an MCAT, but if I can score 28+, would I have a shot? And do Med schools account for trends in your grades?

I am not sure if putting off a year of Optometry school is smart either, so any advice on that would be helpful.

Thanks for reading.

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I know its hard to tell without an MCAT, but if I can score 28+, would I have a shot? And do Med schools account for trends in your grades?
Yes. Yes. I think your heart should tell you the answer. Do you really want to become a medical doctor? Or will you be happy being an OD, which is almost as good as being an ophthalmologist but without the longer, more stressful training? You can prescribe meds and treat patients as an OD in many states and make a very good living.
 
Matching into Family Medicine as a DO is no problem. I would suggest spending some time shadowing a family physician to see if it's really something in which you're interested. If you like it way more than optometry then I'd suggest giving it a shot.

That being said, it's impossible to predict your chances at acceptance to medical school without an MCAT. There are many people with stellar grades that take the MCAT and perform much more poorly than they anticipate. You should think long and hard about giving up an acceptance to optometry school - there's a chance that if you give it up now you may never be able to go back.

A common adage that I hear about medicine is that you should only go into it if you can't see yourself doing anything else. Medical training is long, expensive, stressful, and a laundry list of other things. If you honestly can't see yourself being happy as an OD then it makes for an easier decision. If that's not the case, well, I don't envy your position.
 
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