Are DOs "backups" on your rank list?

[WalterDonnie]

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This question is directed at @OldPsychDoc @MacDonaldTriad and anyone else who participates in ranking candidates once all the interviews have been completed. I'm wondering if DOs are ranked below MDs as a rule, or if the field is even between interviewees? thank you.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

No, not as a rule. For interviews, we start with regional schools, which includes a couple of DO schools which have given us excellent residents--these are on a par with regional MD schools for us. Then MD and DO schools further out, but with a priority on those who appear to have a local connection (permanent address or undergrad institution in the region, or someone has called them to our attention), along with Carib grads with known local connections. Then the next 1100...

But once we've interviewed, everyone is on a level playing field, and we "rank 'em like we want 'em". We've frequently had DO grads in our top 10, or left AMGs off the list completely if they looked to have major issues, and have FMGs throughout the rank list.

 

[eli20]

No, not as a rule. We start with regional schools, which includes a couple of DO schools which have given us excellent residents--these are on a par with regional MD schools for us. Then MD and DO schools further out, but with a priority on those who appear to have a local connection (permanent address or undergrad institution in the region), along with Carib grads with known local connections. Then the next 1100...

This makes it really hard if you're genuinely interested in leaving somewhere. Maybe I'll finally move for fellowship or a real job.

 

[kirkirkir]

@OldPsychDoc @MacDonaldTriad What would your advice be for someone who lives in, is from, & goes to school in LA/SF but wants to move to NYC for example with no family/personal ties currently there?

 

[OldPsychDoc]

@OldPsychDoc @MacDonaldTriad What would your advice be for someone who lives in, is from, & goes to school in LA/SF but wants to move to NYC?

Don't do it?
I'm sure you have your reasons, but you're skipping over a whole lot of America, as well as leaving places that it seems everyone else wants to go.

 

[kirkirkir]

@OldPsychDoc Ouch. Ok, lets say I apply to other places as well...can anything be done to up the chances of landing a spot in a desired city with no ties?

 

[OldPsychDoc]

@OldPsychDoc Ouch. Ok, lets say I apply to other places as well...can anything be done to up the chances of landing a spot in a desired city with no ties?

With no ties? You've got to find a way to get noticed--some contact, some referral, some friend of a friend, some research or clinical experience, some well timed direct and personal correspondence with a coordinator or program director that makes your case.
But again, why? What's the draw for you, and how can you spin that out into a story that is intriguing enough to get invited for an interview? I don't know. I don't know what makes my colleagues in Megalopolis tick. If you knew the "hot button" issues of half a dozen different program directors and tailored your app to each one--that could help, I suppose. But frankly, the emails I get are basically parroting lines from our website and I've seen that same verbiage so many times I've come to discount it--especially when it's not backed up in LORs and CV activities, etc.

 

[kirkirkir]

With no ties? You've got to find a way to get noticed--some contact, some referral, some friend of a friend, some research or clinical experience, some well timed direct and personal correspondence with a coordinator or program director that makes your case.
But again, why? What's the draw for you, and how can you spin that out into a story that is intriguing enough to get invited for an interview? I don't know. I don't know what makes my colleagues in Megalopolis tick. If you knew the "hot button" issues of half a dozen different program directors and tailored your app to each one--that could help, I suppose. But frankly, the emails I get are basically parroting lines from our website and I've seen that same verbiage so many times I've come to discount it--especially when it's not backed up in LORs and CV activities, etc.

Thank you for the advice 🙂

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

I am very new to the whole local connections thing, but learning fast this year. Near as I can tell, if there were a place where local connections mattered the least, it would be NYC. Honestly this is the place with the best, worst, and everything in-between training exists and all of this by double.

As far as DO as backups, it doesn’t matter if you are DO or MD, it is all about the credibility of your training and the honesty of our ability to judge performance. Does your school control for reliability of grading among clinical core rotations, or are you sent out to find meaningful experiences where you can find them and hope that you get good grades? Do you have faculty that participate in meaningful research and advance knowledge in their field, or is your school driven by for profit pressures and view your tuition as the major pie to be cut up among the clinicians teaching you because there is very little grant support? Did you learn in an apprentice model with a series of validated mentors who are regularly reviewed by your school for performance, or did you attend didactics and then your Dean who writes your letters have almost no relationship to your mentors? It isn’t that hard to see whose schools know their students and which schools are completely Lake Woebegone (where everyone is above average). There are good and bad MD schools and good and bad DO schools. There is overlap enough to not generalize, but it is true that better students pick better schools and weaker students have less choice. Good students can fail and bad students can improve. This is true at the undergraduate level, the undergraduate medical school level, and trust me, the post graduate training level. I just need a crystal ball and then I will become truly irrelevant and retire. I’ll hold my breath now….

 

[Dharma]

I am very new to the whole local connections thing, but learning fast this year. Near as I can tell, if there were a place where local connections mattered the least, it would be NYC. Honestly this is the place with the best, worst, and everything in-between training exists and all of this by double.

As far as DO as backups, it doesn’t matter if you are DO or MD, it is all about the credibility of your training and the honesty of our ability to judge performance. Does your school control for reliability of grading among clinical core rotations, or are you sent out to find meaningful experiences where you can find them and hope that you get good grades? Do you have faculty that participate in meaningful research and advance knowledge in their field, or is your school driven by for profit pressures and view your tuition as the major pie to be cut up among the clinicians teaching you because there is very little grant support? Did you learn in an apprentice model with a series of validated mentors who are regularly reviewed by your school for performance, or did you attend didactics and then your Dean who writes your letters have almost no relationship to your mentors? It isn’t that hard to see whose schools know their students and which schools are completely Lake Woebegone (where everyone is above average). There are good and bad MD schools and good and bad DO schools. There is overlap enough to not generalize, but it is true that better students pick better schools and weaker students have less choice. Good students can fail and bad students can improve. This is true at the undergraduate level, the undergraduate medical school level, and trust me, the post graduate training level. I just need a crystal ball and then I will become truly irrelevant and retire. I’ll hold my breath now….

I'm surprised some type of local tie isn't as important in NYC bc let's face it... some people aren't cut out for life in the Big Apple and it will chew em up and spit em out. Problem is you can't really tell if you're one of those folks until you actually live there. A few visits during interviews or those trips you took with your parents to Times Square as a kid just ain't gonna give a glimpse into the what's really real about NYC.

As far as the DO school reputation thing... I get the generalization. I'm not at one of the best DO schools but my clinical experience has provided ample amounts of hands on training. I've ran circles around some of these kids from better rep DO and MD schools. After hearing about how a good deal of their rotations are spent with large groups of residents where the student is basically relegated to role of glorified shadow experience, I'm not surprised.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Who knows about anything this year -- from reports I'm reading here, it sounds entirely different from when I applied and from even just a few years ago. But, no, DOs were not backups at my program. If you got an interview, you got an interview -- DOs weren't automatically put somewhere lower not on the rank list.

 

[qqw]

For interviews, we start with regional schools, which includes a couple of DO schools which have given us excellent residents--these are on a par with regional MD schools for us.

Just curious, what if an applicant is from your region, but attending a school further away? Do you only look at the region they graduate from, or do you consider their hometown as well?

just curious how that is determined in general. is there any place on the application that shows where the applicant is from?

this is a concern for me as im looking to get into residency in the northeast, close to where im from, but am attending a school outside of that region. i want them to know im from the area when i apply.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Just curious, what if an applicant is from your region, but attending a school further away? Do you only look at the region they graduate from, or do you consider their hometown as well?

just curious how that is determined in general. is there any place on the application that shows where the applicant is from?

this is a concern for me as im looking to get into residency in the northeast, close to where im from, but am attending a school outside of that region. i want them to know im from the area when i apply.

Unless it's changed, ERAS shows where you were born, both your permanent and current residence and of course where you went to school/worked/whatever. So if any of those things show a connection to a region, your application will reflect that.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

Just curious, what if an applicant is from your region, but attending a school further away? Do you only look at the region they graduate from, or do you consider their hometown as well?

just curious how that is determined in general. is there any place on the application that shows where the applicant is from?

this is a concern for me as im looking to get into residency in the northeast, close to where im from, but am attending a school outside of that region. i want them to know im from the area when i apply.

No, actually, and it's a problem sometimes--say a kid grew up in town, has all their relatives in town, and is marrying their high school sweetheart here at Christmas, but went to a large Coastal Name-Brand University and got into The US News Top 10 Medical School of their choice on another coast--if the address they put as "Permanent Address" on their app is their med school apartment (because they're an adult now, and wouldn't be putting their parents' address there like they might have in undergrad)-- there really is nothing in any searchable field in ERAS that will lead us to them. I scan the "Experience" field, hoping to see some local summer college job or volunteer connection in the state, but that's iffy, even if they did bother to list it.

ERAS has nothing about birthplace or high school location anywhere. The best we get is a regional undergrad institution--but that will still miss quite a few.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

No, actually, and it's a problem sometimes--say a kid grew up in town, has all their relatives in town, and is marrying their high school sweetheart here at Christmas, but went to a large Coastal Name-Brand University and got into The US News Top 10 Medical School of their choice on another coast--if the address they put as "Permanent Address" on their app is their med school apartment (because they're an adult now, and wouldn't be putting their parents' address there like they might have in undergrad)-- there really is nothing in any searchable field in ERAS that will lead us to them. I scan the "Experience" field, hoping to see some local summer college job or volunteer connection in the state, but that's iffy, even if they did bother to list it.

ERAS has nothing about birthplace or high school location anywhere. The best we get is a regional undergrad institution--but that will still miss quite a few.

They removed birthplace? It was on -- perhaps you're overlooking it. I specifically had someone comment on my birthplace when I interviewed (it's a place that I have no other ties to as my family moved when I was one). I also always looked at the birthplace when I looked at the ERAS for applicants I met.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

They removed birthplace? It was on -- perhaps you're overlooking it. I specifically had someone comment on my birthplace when I interviewed (it's a place that I have no other ties to as my family moved when I was one). I also always looked at the birthplace when I looked at the ERAS for applicants I met.

Ah, I see...we have gender, birthplace, and birthdate screened (also the picture) so we can't see them. We probably do get that unscreened at the time of interview--but it doesn't help much by then. I'm doubtful that birthplace would mean too much in this day and age, as mobile as people are. I mean, everyone knows that James T. Kirk was actually born on a shuttle craft in space, but raised in Iowa, then went to Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. How would he ever get an interview at U of IA if just his birthplace and undergrad institution are listed?

 

[masterofmonkeys]

1) MD vs. DO as others have stated is based on quality of training experience, letters, and scores. It helps if a DO student takes USMLE. While not strictly necessary it does help judge you on an 'even footing' to MD candidates in one, simplistic, flawed, but still useful, measure. It also helps if your DO school is a known quantity to the place you're applying to. If your school has a reputation for good training, that virtually eliminates any sort of 'bias'. As others have said, if you get the interview, you're good to go.

2) Regionality. So 1st thing is, big cities with big draws are less concerned with 'regional ties' as it's not as much of a concern for them. EVERYONE wants to move to Seattle/LA/SF/NYC/Boston, etc. You don't need strong ties to the region to make a case for wanting to go there. If you're applying for a residency in Tulsa, Oklahoma (for example), they don't want to waste an invite on you if you don't have a reason to be in the city. Nothing wrong with the city per se, but no one wakes up one day and says 'I'm moving halfway across the country to live there, it's where I've always wanted to be!'.

2a) Regionality and You. I was actually in the hypothesized position that's been mentioned in the thread when it came time for fellowship. There is nothing obvious tying me to the South-east via ERAS. Except, you know, fiancee who demanded I had to follow her there. So I mentioned in my personal statement and a brief email to the coordinator of relevant programs that, you know, I was moving there one way or the other, either as an attending or as a fellow. It seemed to have worked. On the other hand, if I were allowed to have applied in the PNW and the NE like I wanted to (evil evil woman), I wouldn't have worried about establishing that regional tie.

2b) We prescreened roughly by board scores before delving into personal statements to pull out these regional ties. It never even occurred to me that we could accurately get an appreciation for ties to location without doing so. We had ~600 applications to wade through so it did have some suck elements to it.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Ah, I see...we have gender, birthplace, and birthdate screened (also the picture) so we can't see them. We probably do get that unscreened at the time of interview--but it doesn't help much by then. I'm doubtful that birthplace would mean too much in this day and age, as mobile as people are. I mean, everyone knows that James T. Kirk was actually born on a shuttle craft in space, but raised in Iowa, then went to Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. How would he ever get an interview at U of IA if just his birthplace and undergrad institution are listed?

Interesting. I always thought it was a bit odd that they included it ... but then I also paid more attention to it than lots of the other parts of ERAS.

 

[qqw]

Thanks for the info... much appreciated.
I guess I'll have to just put my mom's address down as my permanent address so they'll be aware of ties to the region

 

[Wilf]

There are good and bad MD schools and good and bad DO schools. There is overlap enough to not generalize, but it is true that better students pick better schools and weaker students have less choice.

This first statement has me curious. The general sentiment I have heard is that if you go to a US MD school, they are all pretty good. Could you give an example of a bad MD school? If you don't want to give a specific school, could you give the state it is located in?

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

I'm really not going to insult medical schools, but in general some of the weaker state schools with less of a reputation have a direction of the compass associated with them "The University of Eastern (name a state)", or the university of central (name a state). Buckeyes are particularly sensitive to this and insist on being referred to as "The Ohio State". Kind of infers that the rest of them are "an Ohio State".