Before Starting a Thread About MD vs DO...

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I know people are gunna say "who cares if it's a top tier program" but seriously, it's like getting a 41 on the MCAT, having great ECs and LORs, and not getting a single ii from a top and some mid tier MD schools simply on the basis that your degree was a B.A. I cannot imagine how hard that must be to score that high on the USMLE and STILL be discounted and discredited.
Yeah it must be so hard knowing you are going to match into a solid radiology program leading to a high attending salary. For the record, a friend of mine from an MD school with a 265+ step 1 was rejected from plenty of his top choices for Ortho. It happens to everyone applying to competetive specialties.

This residency "tier" system pedaling like it's the be-all and end-all is officially sending SDN down a path where all perspective will be lost. It's truly getting ridiculous.
 
Yeah it must be so hard knowing you are going to match into a solid radiology program leading to a high attending salary. For the record, a friend of mine from an MD school with a 265+ step 1 was rejected from plenty of his top choices for Ortho. It happens to everyone applying to competetive specialties.

This residency "tier" system pedaling like it's the be-all and end-all is officially sending SDN down a path where all perspective will be lost. It's truly getting ridiculous.
Thats NOT what I was emphasizing. Obv Im sure they are happy matching period (and yes having a job and yes mking a high attending salary).. What I am getting at is the fact that with those SAME scores and with an MD degree all of a sudden the top rads programs are open arms. Its very much an bias that is overlooked and in many ways hidden beyond the ignorant remarks of saying "oh well! it is what it is!". That will never settle well with me.

I am not naive to the fact that people with top scores still get rejected from time to time. But again, that isn't the problem I am adressing here. What's also ridiculous is when people shoot down people for wanting to reach something above and beyond in medicine with "you should be happy to just be a doctor period".
 
SDN is full of people that don't know how to be content and thankful. These are bad traits that I don't want people around me to have let alone a future practitioner.
 
Can a DO use the force?
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Yes, yes we can.
 
But will I be able to get into a competitive Jedi Dermatology Residency? Because I feel like my calling in medicine is either a super specialized Jedi residency or bust. There is literally nothing else I would want in this world and I don't know if DO or DO not school can give me that opportunity.

5FP8RaA.gif

Yes, yes we can.
 
SDN is full of people that don't know how to be content and thankful. These are bad traits that I don't want people around me to have let alone a future practitioner.
Being content and thankful leads one to stagnation. Being content with where we were on this planet didn't get us to the moon and being thankful didn't bring us nuclear fission. Restlessness and malcontentedness is what moves mankind forward, rather than settling for a life lesser lived because we were too content to shake things up. Discontent with the status quo and the way things are brings change and progress toward a better world, and is hardly a "bad trait" for one to possess.
 
But will I be able to get into a competitive Jedi Dermatology Residency? Because I feel like my calling in medicine is either a super specialized Jedi residency or bust. There is literally nothing else I would want in this world and I don't know if DO or DO not school can give me that opportunity.
It's hard to get into derm without turning to the dark side. Last guy I knew that did it ended up cooked damn near to death on a lava planet somewhere.
 
Being content and thankful leads one to stagnation. Being content with where we were on this planet didn't get us to the moon and being thankful didn't bring us nuclear fission. Restlessness and malcontentedness is what moves mankind forward, rather than settling for a life lesser lived because we were too content to shake things up. Discontent with the status quo and the way things are brings change and progress toward a better world, and is hardly a "bad trait" for one to possess.
There are extremes to everything, just remember that.
 
There are extremes to everything, just remember that.
I'm just sayin, the attitude of "be thankful for what you've got, it's better than what a lot of other people have, enjoy it" isn't the sort of thing thinking that would have gotten the civil rights movement to pass, that would have gotten DOs full medical practice rights in all 50 states, etc etc. Ordinary levels of discontent like those seen on SDN are the driving force of incremental progress.
 
Thats NOT what I was emphasizing. Obv Im sure they are happy matching period (and yes having a job and yes mking a high attending salary).. What I am getting at is the fact that with those SAME scores and with an MD degree all of a sudden the top rads programs are open arms. Its very much an bias that is overlooked and in many ways hidden beyond the ignorant remarks of saying "oh well! it is what it is!". That will never settle well with me.

I am not naive to the fact that people with top scores still get rejected from time to time. But again, that isn't the problem I am adressing here. What's also ridiculous is when people shoot down people for wanting to reach something above and beyond in medicine with "you should be happy to just be a doctor period".
That isn't necessarily true. Right now it is impossible to know just how prevalent the DO bias is on the ACGME side, because roughly half of 4th year DO students still apply through the AOA - including most of the tippy top students gunning for ROADS specialties. More realistically I think many ACGME programs simply do not receive many qualified DO applications currently - I work for a PD and this is exactly what he said. Come 2020 I suspect programs that were once thought to be DO unfriendly will 'miraculously' flip when the highest qualified DO applications start landing on the PDs desk.

And in the case of this one Rads applicant. It is easy to pick out one of the tiny handful of DO students applying to such a competetive specialty on the ACGME side and scream DO bias. You could pick one MD student with similar scores and find the same kind of interview/reject list. It doesn't mean anything until every DO is applying through the ACGME match.

Now I am not saying there is no DO bias, but SDN is making it out to be much worse than it is.
 
That isn't necessarily true. Right now it is impossible to know just how prevalent the DO bias is on the ACGME side, because roughly half of 4th year DO students still apply through the AOA - including most of the tippy top students gunning for ROADS specialties. More realistically I think many ACGME programs simply do not receive many qualified DO applications currently - I work for a PD and this is exactly what he said. Come 2020 I suspect programs that were once thought to be DO unfriendly will 'miraculously' flip when the highest qualified DO applications start landing on the PDs desk.

And in the case of this one Rads applicant. It is easy to pick out one of the tiny handful of DO students applying to such a competetive specialty on the ACGME side and scream DO bias. You could pick one MD student with similar scores and find the same kind of interview/reject list. It doesn't mean anything until every DO is applying through the ACGME match.

Now I am not saying there is no DO bias, but SDN is making it out to be much worse than it is.

I don't believe that caliber of students that apply to extremely competitive specialties will change. The ones who do risk applying to the ACGME side are the cream of the crop. All it will mean with a merged match is that more of these same level candidates will apply. DOs in general are not able to find research that easily and don't have the speciality department in the competitive fields they want. This is why the caliber of student won't rise even post merger.

However, what will happen is that students will start ranking more ACGME programs and this will cause them to match into ACGME residencies. The ones that were qualified in past matches could have matched into ACGME programs, but were pulled from it because of the AOA match. This is what you are referring to when the 'flip' occurs.

There will still be programs that discriminated at both top tier and mid tier institution. You can check the 2014 NRMP PD survey and see how many programs are even interviewing DOs (on average 30% of programs for competitive specialities interview DOs). People won't be matching into such place even with a merged match quickly, it is something that will take time.
 
That isn't necessarily true. Right now it is impossible to know just how prevalent the DO bias is on the ACGME side, because roughly half of 4th year DO students still apply through the AOA - including most of the tippy top students gunning for ROADS specialties. More realistically I think many ACGME programs simply do not receive many qualified DO applications currently - I work for a PD and this is exactly what he said. Come 2020 I suspect programs that were once thought to be DO unfriendly will 'miraculously' flip when the highest qualified DO applications start landing on the PDs desk.

And in the case of this one Rads applicant. It is easy to pick out one of the tiny handful of DO students applying to such a competetive specialty on the ACGME side and scream DO bias. You could pick one MD student with similar scores and find the same kind of interview/reject list. It doesn't mean anything until every DO is applying through the ACGME match.

Now I am not saying there is no DO bias, but SDN is making it out to be much worse than it is.

1. There are VERY few ROAD specialty spots in the AOA match. Radiology in particular. Most DOs apply ACGME to Rads especially now, when Radiology is at a nadir (although last year was probably the nadir). Therefore the merger won't make as much of a difference as you think.
2. I highly doubt competitive programs in competitive specialties will magically start to take DOs when the merger happens simply due to the "highest qualified DO applicants" applying. You guys don't get it. There will still be a surplus of highly qualified USMD applicants.
 
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