Are there any new DO schools opening or accepting application this year?

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine is accepting its first class this year.

Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine is scheduled to open in 2013 and two more are proposed to open in 2013; Campbell University and Homer G. Phillips College of Osteopathic Medicine.

 

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This is great information - thanks for sharing. How did you learn of these new schools. Is there a particular place online to research or an organization to call to learn of new M.D. and D.O. schools that are opening over the next several years?

 

You know what I've always found odd? Most new MD schools give their first class a full ride as incentive to go to a school as a guinea pig. DO schools however rarely do this. Why?

 

Supply and demand. People are more than willing to pay to go to med school, even if they are the first class. Why turn charitable you know =)

 

Also, because some times the students tuition is the main form of support for that school.

 

Giving full rides will probably attract stronger applicants to consider going to that school.

 

This doesn't explain why MD schools do this and DO schools never do this. If the school were to fail or go on probation next year the students would be screwed, with MD at least they have no debt.

Sounds like a business then.

That's a good thing, new DO schools usually have pretty low first time pass rates for the COMLEX and USMLE. If they gave incentive to their students to go to their school, thus attracting stronger applicants, it would in turn make their school more attractive as they would at least have a high board pass rate.

 

B/c DO schools know that most of the students attending a DO school are there b/c they didn't get into an MD school or the school is in an area that the student wants to be in. Both of those reasons will have students willing to pay to attend an unknown/unproven school.

 

The other 2 DO schools where are they going to be located?

Campbell University and Homer G. Phillips College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Because I know Indiana is starting a DO school in 2013 or 2014

DO Schools have grown tremendously in the past 10 years from 20 to 29 schools as of now and growing to over 30 schools in a few years!

 

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Yes. 95% of higher education is ran like a business. If you're willing to take a gamble on a brand new school, you're probably out of options and tuition isn't a concern.

 

I kind of take offense to what you wrote... I chose a new (campus) school, yet had other options.

I don't get why you made the statement that it sounds like a business serenade. Business or not, people do have to get paid for their time.

 

I don't think anyone is claiming that people shouldn't be paid for their time. The main point is should students have to pay $30K+ to attend a school that has not proven that it is capable of producing competent DOs?

You chose to pay for the privilege of being a guinea pig. Most people choose to pay for a proven product.

 

William Carey Univ. is accepting their third class this year. The second class started two weeks ago.

 

This isn't a good thing. As a premed this might seem like something that's amazing, but the schools are flooding the GME openings. Competitive specialties will soon be near-impossible to obtain as a DO grad.

 

competitive specialties are hard always to obtain but I don't like the sound of them getting harder!

 

Depends on how you look at it. Right now, the existing DO schools are theoretically accepting the "best" of the applicant lot. Meaning new schools would just add more DOs not necessarily more "competitive" DOs. The DOs at the newer schools would in theory lower the admission standards statistics (as a whole) due to there being more of the applicant pool getting in that is not in the current lot of accepted students (meaning the next standard deviation downard).

While it might be a good thing for the nation and the utopian view of medicine. Many don't like the idea from a personal standpoint.

 

As long as DO's focus is "we want primary care physicians," they won't care if less graduates go into specialties.

The only thing I worry about these new schools is that DO is increasingly becoming dependent on the MD world residencies. It's only a matter of time until the MD world tries to again take over the DO profession. This time they will succeed with so many DOs depending on their residencies and being eager to change their degree to MD.

 

More schools?
If there are talks on increasing the pay of primary care physicians, then i am fine with this.
looks like i will be headed to rural west virginia to help pay off my debt

 

I'm not sure premeds get this. Let me explain. I SWORE that I wanted to be a pediatrician or a family physician until I did it 3rd and 4th year. Everyone I worked with thought I was going to be a great primary care doc. In fact, on rotations, the attendings on these services thought I was a great fit. What do I enjoy most and see myself doing for a career? Anesthesia. And it's not because of better hours or better pay, it's because it's the most interesting to me and I don't hate going to work everyday.

Premeds don't know that -- how could they? So the ego-defensive "it doesn't matter, I want to do primary care anyway" isn't all it's cracked up to be. The expansion of DO graduates without the expansion of GME to match in all specialties will surely put future grads in a severe bind. Peds, for example, was tremendously competitive this year.

 

Is there anything current med students can do to voice their concern(besides sdm)? any student organization that can help?
we can't ALL go into primary care. at this rate, perhaps even primary care areas will become competitive.

 

It's ironic that you provided great supporting evidence to the previous poster.

Anyways, I don't think it'll be incredibly more difficult to match into "competitive" residencies with these new schools taking in students. Why? Because their students will likely statistically have lower entering grades which leads to lower pass rates or scores which leads to very few actually being anywhere competitive for these residencies. Everyone else who had a high chance of high board scores or etc. by correlation, will still be likely first pick.

 

This post makes me kinda lol. Sorry, but PC won't directly be getting more competitive because people all want to go into it. But rather that applicants with lower board scores will be pushed out of their competitive residencies and forced into primary care. But even then, within residency programs there is a hierarchy, so just getting into any program for IM or Ped's won't be harder, but mid ranked or higher ranked will become more competitive.