Perhaps this is just a personal bias/philosophy but I believe the holistic approach DO schools take in there education process is beneficial to an Orthopedic education when it comes to treating people. I have not heard, however, of certain specialities being more suited to an MD/DO degree.
I saw a thread somewhat recently that had residency interview statistics and what percentage of programs reported interviewing DO students vs MD, and Ortho was one of the very lowest iirc. Again, not trying to dissuade you, but you might want to look more into it before applying to schools, it would suck to go into a program and end up finding out the odds are greatly stacked against you to do what you want to do. But, like I said, I don't really know for sure as I never looked deeply into the DO matching Ortho area, I'm sure there are at least some occurrences.
First off, thank you for the quick response. I have done odd volunteering jobs throughout school but nothing regular or continuous. I believe my shadow experience (with a DO ortho surgeon) will count towards clinical experience in the eyes of admission committees. Research, however, is a top priority for me right now.
Unfortunately I have been at 2 different schools and have accumulated roughly 160 credits so my cumulative GPA is rather inelastic, to the point that straight A's for the remainder of my classes will not increase my GPA to a 3.5, however it would be extremely beneficial for my science GPA.
Is thee a specific MCAT range you could recommend that would compensate for the lack of a strong GPA?
40 hours shadowing is generally considered okish, some will recommend you get more than that, and maybe more importantly, shadow different types of doctors so you have more experience than with 1 doctor, in 1 particular specialty and situation.
You may want to find one of the ask an adcom member threads and see if someone has already asked (likely), or ask yourself, specifically about the number of hours and what they like to see, but from my reading, it generally seems like they want much more than 40 hours of clinical experience. You should also try to find some volunteering you are passionate about, and really look to make a bigger, more continuous commitment to them if you would like to make your application as competitive as possible. I don't mean to tell you that you have to conform to the cookie cutter method, but there is good, established reason to believe adcoms desire to see these experiences, and for significant amounts of time, and thus trying to fulfill them doing something you enjoy would likely be very beneficial to you.
I definitely can relate to it being difficult to raise your cgpa as an upperclassman, but definitely do your best since not only will it help your cgpa and sgpa, but you can also work to show a good upward trend - which adcoms do recognize.
MCAT is really hard to predict unless you have set schools you are trying to get into, but most people like to say 30+, but obviously the better you do, the better your situation. I would recommend just trying your absolute best in preparing for the mcat, a lot of people set expectations of wanting to get a 35+ or something, but with something as variable as taking the mcat for a few hours, one day, it is really hard to count on getting a certain score.
You can't compensate for a lower GPA unless you have like a 40... MD schools can get people with high GPAs AND high MCAT scores AND tthose who have well balanced ECs.
40+ is a bit extreme, a 38 or so is already like 99th percentile, really anything 35+ is a very strong mcat score unless you are applying to the very top schools
