Competitive residencies

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chenopods1

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Hi,

I'm a non-trad considering going the D.O. route interested in psychiatry. I'm curious: to what extent does a D.O. degree disadvantage applicant prospects for admission to psychiatry & child & adolescent psychiatry residencies? With board scores comparable M.D. student averages & strong grades, etc..., does acceptance to top (~) 10 psych residency programs remain unrealistic?

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Hi,

I'm a non-trad considering going the D.O. route interested in psychiatry. I'm curious: to what extent does a D.O. degree disadvantage applicant prospects for admission to psychiatry & child & adolescent psychiatry residencies? With board scores comparable M.D. student averages & strong grades, etc..., does acceptance to top (~) 10 psych residency programs remain unrealistic?

Little. Psychiatry is extremely D.O. friendly and not very competitive as is. Top 10??? It's possible as long as you do well.

If you are going the D.O. route, bust your a** in your classes, score well on boards, make some connections in psychiatry, and make sure to rotate at places during your 4th year that you want to apply for residency.
 
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Hi,

I'm a non-trad considering going the D.O. route interested in psychiatry. I'm curious: to what extent does a D.O. degree disadvantage applicant prospects for admission to psychiatry & child & adolescent psychiatry residencies? With board scores comparable M.D. student averages & strong grades, etc..., does acceptance to top (~) 10 psych residency programs remain unrealistic?

Psychiatry is on the DO friendly side. As to the question of landing in the top 10 psychiatry programs, you maybe locked out of a good portion of them. I know one of the top programs UCSF currently has two DOs on its roster. However, a large chunk of the top residency don't have DOs on their current roster (MGH/McLean, UCLA, Columbia, Yale). A lot of the lists for top programs are generated by psychiatry residents on the psychiatry threads, so you can get an general ideas which ones are the top. However, these lists can change with time and most are generated through word of mouth amongst the psychiatry community (so YMMV). Even if you don't land into one of these, you can still land into a solid academic program if you do well. We still need DOs at the top, so I hope you shoot for it!
 
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I know a number of DO psychiatrists and you shouldn't have a problem going that direction if you do well in med school.

Do you have any psych experience? Many many think psychiatry is something very different than it is. So get a job as a psych tech working in a public hospital psych unit and get to know the psychiatrists. It's a noble profession but can due to underfunding end up being 50 pts a day doing med management. a lot of people going that route end up disillusioned, so do your homework. The first step though is getting through premed.

Best of luck

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk
 
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