Considering Osteopathic School

[HopefulReapp]

Way too many people are on the you can't know anything until you know your official MCAT score bandwagon. But honestly you can judge the range you will score on the MCAT with practice tests. I am sure many people have been surprised by the fact that their MCAT scores did not generally line up with their practice tests, but they are most likely the exception not the rule. Furthermore, an applicant knows their past and how they perform on standardized tests. If you have had trouble with the SAT, ACT, GRE you will probably have trouble with the MCAT as well. If you have performed very well on standardized tests, you have a better idea of how you are going to score on the MCAT.

My confidence arises from the fact that I know I can get an MCAT score that will be good enough. I have a GPA that is good enough to convince admissions committees that I can survive medical school. I will most likely not have amazing stats that are going to wow admissions committees, but they will convince admissions committees that I can make it through med school. The reason why I am so confident about an acceptance comes from the quality of the rest of my application.

The application process is not really that mysterious or unpredictable. The AAMC publishes great statistics that show you where you stand as an applicant https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/2013factstable24.pdf. Obviously if you score lower on the MCAT or have a lower GPA you don't have as good a chance. But if you have a GPA>3.6 and a MCAT>30 you are sitting pretty good. With theses stats you have a 67.7% chance of acceptance. Now if you are well prepared, write quality essays, get great LORs, apply early, and apply broadly (to schools you actually match well) this percentage is going to go up. If you practice for interviews, work through common questions and have good answers, and have a decent personality your chances will go up.

I have all these things in my favor and thus my confidence.

Now if you have a GPA<3.6, and a MCAT<30, the process does become more unpredictable and you could end up needing some luck.

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[CSqueed]

Way too many people are on the you can't know anything until you know your official MCAT score bandwagon. But honestly you can judge the range you will score on the MCAT with practice tests. I am sure many people have been surprised by the fact that their MCAT scores did not generally line up with their practice tests, but they are most likely the exception not the rule. Furthermore, an applicant knows their past and how they perform on standardized tests. If you have had trouble with the SAT, ACT, GRE you will probably have trouble with the MCAT as well. If you have performed very well on standardized tests, you have a better idea of how you are going to score on the MCAT.

My confidence arises from the fact that I know I can get an MCAT score that will be good enough. I have a GPA that is good enough to convince admissions committees that I can survive medical school. I will most likely not have amazing stats that are going to wow admissions committees, but they will convince admissions committees that I can make it through med school. The reason why I am so confident about an acceptance comes from the quality of the rest of my application.

The application process is not really that mysterious or unpredictable. The AAMC publishes great statistics that show you where you stand as an applicant https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/2013factstable24.pdf. Obviously if you score lower on the MCAT or have a lower GPA you don't have as good a chance. But if you have a GPA>3.6 and a MCAT>30 you are sitting pretty good. With theses stats you have a 67.7% chance of acceptance. Now if you are well prepared, write quality essays, get great LORs, apply early, and apply broadly (to schools you actually match well) this percentage is going to go up. If you practice for interviews, work through common questions and have good answers, and have a decent personality your chances will go up.

I have all these things in my favor and thus my confidence.

Now if you have a GPA<3.6, and a MCAT<30, the process does become more unpredictable and you could end up needing some luck.

He's right in that if you get <22 on the MCAT you shouldn't be confident in DO. If you get >23 you are a Shoe-In at getting into DO.

MD on the other hand is a whole other beast. You're going to want a >32 to be at least confident in getting an acceptance.

 

[WaterIsGood]

He's right in that if you get <22 on the MCAT you shouldn't be confident in DO. If you get >23 you are a Shoe-In at getting into DO.

MD on the other hand is a whole other beast. You're going to want a >32 to be at least confident in getting an acceptance.

A shoe in with a 24? Disagree.

Aim for a 26-28, the very least. Schools, and for that matter entry stats, get more competitive each cycle.

 

[CSqueed]

A shoe in with a 24? Disagree.

Aim for a 26-28, the very least. Schools, and for that matter entry stats, get more competitive each cycle.

He would be a shoe in at the newer schools with a 24.

 

[superdoc2.0]

.

 

[AlbinoHawk DO]

He's right in that if you get <22 on the MCAT you shouldn't be confident in DO. If you get >23 you are a Shoe-In at getting into DO.

MD on the other hand is a whole other beast. You're going to want a >32 to be at least confident in getting an acceptance.

There is no such thing as shoe-in unless you surpass the averages. 24 is too low for many campuses, and the others are no guarantee.

 

[jcakes]

My two cents if anyone still reads this thread...

I was a below average applicant. 6 years removed from undergrad, two cracks at the MCAT (23, 25) and an undergrad gpa <3.0 with my science classes closer to 2.0 than 3.0. I took some extra science courses the year before applying and ended up with a 3.0ish gpa. I also had a masters degree in an unrelated field and spent time abroad but those were mostly conversation starters. So for those of you with poor scores, here is a success story that you can cherry-pick and hang your hat on.

I got accepted to two schools, one MD and one DO and chose DO. I didn't do it for the "DO philosophy" but I was/am interested in manipulative medicine. I chose the school because I felt it was a better road to my career goal which is to be a great clinician. The main reasoning for this is the experience third and fourth year on rotation. I am in a rural area and am the only student working with my attending physician. There are no residents, no interns, no M4s or M3s. Just myself and Dr. X. I am able to assist and/or perform procedures (within reason of course) that I do not believe I would have the opportunity to perform until my first year in residency. At the MD school I was accepted to I would not have this opportunity since my clinical years would be spent at larger hospitals that have residents, interns and auditioning M4s. The downside to this is that I do not have didactic lectures given at a large university hospital which requires more disciplined on-my-own reading, and I do not have the opportunity to rotate under a recognizable name that would help me when it comes time to get a letter or rec unless I do an away rotation (which I am doing). The latter point is debatable, however, since I have doctors that are well-known in my state/region.

My advice is to disregard the first two years since the classes are the same (yes, I am generalizing) wherever you go. You have access to the same textbooks and the same board exam prep materials whether you are at a top 10 MD school or bottom 10 DO school. Your success in the first two years and usmle/comlex is completely reliant upon your effort. If you want straight As and a >90% board score, then put in the effort to achieve that goal. MD or DO will not give you any noticeable advantage. While choosing between MD and DO, focus on the third/fourth years and what opportunities you have during your rotations. Ask questions during your interviews about these experiences. Where are the rotations? Do I have access to didactic lectures? Am I lumped in with other students/residents? And ask yourself how important is it to you to have more hands-on experience.

However, an important question to ask about the first year curriculum is the anatomy lab. Some schools, even those with great reputations, have a high student:cadaver ratio or use pre-dissected cadavers. My school had four students per cadaver and we did all the dissections.

Then consider what you want your career to be. I am not interested in academic medicine or research, so a large university school w/great research opportunities wouldn't be very beneficial.

Lastly, if you start at a DO school after 2015, then you will be matching for residencies in 2019/2020 or later and at that point all the DO residencies will be ACGME and therefore not any different than an MD program. The fellowship opportunities will be much easier to grab as a DO 5-10 years from now.

 

[SLC]

A caveat to the post above, which I generally agree with.

I don't think cadaver to student ratio is important at all. Dissection will not teach you surgery (as many pre-meds seem to think), and it will not teach you anything else in terms of clinician skills. It will take time, valuable time that could be spent studying, rather than scraping fat, sawing skulls, and painstakingly exposing structures.

I actually appreciated a variety of carefully prosected cadavers, ones that I was able to spend valuable time with actually studying/memorizing structures, on different bodies. I got a chance to see some of the natural variant anatomy too. As a result, I aced anatomy (as the highest scorer in the class), and was an anatomy TA during 1st year.

YMMV of course, but I (and my professors) find well done prosections to be far more useful for learning anatomy in an efficient manner. Of course, that isn't to say that a dissection course is automatically inferior, just that I don't find it anywhere near as efficient.

 

[AlteredScale]

Just ONE example. I had a student who turned down Northwestern for us. She just liked the DO philosophy better.

Because DO programs are more willing to believe that good doctors and medical students don't need both high MCAT scores AND high GPAs to succeed. We're also more willing to reward reinvention. A number of DO programs have acceptee stats equal to or better than some state MD or low-tier private schools.

I keep hearing over and over that both schools make you a qualified doctor, but why do D.O. schools have such lower acceptance stats?

I am not trying to ruffle any feathers, I am just a pre-med trying to figure it all out. Thanks for your help.

Much applause for this statement!

 

[superdoc2.0]

First off, I said i hope you aren't humbled, not that I think you will be. Good luck on your VR section.

Don't carry that entitled attitude with you on the interview trail. You've checked a lot of boxes, but that only gets you in the door. Good luck.

I don't think that any applicant should be confident about their chances to MD OR DO before taking the MCAT. It really just depends on how you do that one day that you are setting in the prometric seat and push the start button.

I imagine that you should not go into medical school with your mind set on one specialty, especially a sub-specialty. It seems to me that it is similar to choosing an undergrad major even though you think you will go to medical school. If you don't make it to medical school then you should at least be happy with your major and the post-grad opportunities with it. Likewise, hopefully you enjoy medicine and longterm treatment if you go into IM in the unfortunate situation that you don't get into the fellowship you think you might enjoy.

Yeah don't invest everything in practice exams. I took all the AAMC exams as well as some others and averaged high 30s and scored a 40 on one. Come test day I scored a 30 which was my lowest score on a FL. I ran with it btw, because I'm one of those who could have probably gotten into a MD program but had planned on DO all along.

At the end of the day there are a lot of variables with the actual test day that practice exams may not prepare you well for. It's good to be confident, but don't make future plans with a nonexistent MCAT score.

UPDATE: Scored an 11 in VR (10/11/10 overall) and I received 7 interview invites (Western COMP/NW, LUCOM, PNWU, AZCOM, CCOM, University of Washington, University of Texas) before I withdrew my application. Of the four interviews I went to I got accepted to 3 out of 4, including a M.D. school.

Although I am sure a lot of premeds come on here and blow smoke when they have no idea what they are talking about, I wasn't just some premed. I knew what I was talking about.

 

[brawnkowsky]

UPDATE: Scored an 11 in VR (10/11/10 overall) and I received 7 interview invites (Western COMP/NW, LUCOM, PNWU, AZCOM, CCOM, University of Washington, University of Texas) before I withdrew my application. Of the four interviews I went to I got accepted to 3 out of 4, including a M.D. school.

Although I am sure a lot of premeds come on here and blow smoke when they have no idea what they are talking about, I wasn't just some premed. I knew what I was talking about.

bruh no one gives a damn about your MCAT

 

[superdoc2.0]

bruh no one gives a damn about your MCAT

Neither do I. I didn't get some special MCAT score or anything, a 31 impresses no one. But is in line with what I predicted I would get, which is what the whole debate was about. You obviously didn't understand the conversation, but thanks for your input anyway.

 

[HappyFeet14]

Neither do I. I didn't get some special MCAT score or anything, a 31 impresses no one. But is in line with what I predicted I would get, which is what the whole debate was about. You obviously didn't understand the conversation, but thanks for your input anyway.

Don't be bitter. You necro-update your own thread to brag to the individuals who were just advising you to be cautious with your own assumptions about the application process. This is obvious with your statement about smoke-blowing premeds, though the majority of individuals who were giving their advice were matriculated medical students. The debate was about the ambiguous nature of the application process, not what you could accomplish. Good for you, though.

Congratulations on your MD acceptance; get off these forums and celebrate with individuals who actually care about you and your accomplishments before you have no life come the fall.

 

[superdoc2.0]

Don't be bitter. You necro-update your own thread to brag to the individuals who were just advising you to be cautious with your own assumptions about the application process. This is obvious with your statement about smoke-blowing premeds, though the majority of individuals who were giving their advice were matriculated medical students. The debate was about the ambiguous nature of the application process, not what you could accomplish. Good for you, though.

Congratulations on your MD acceptance; get off these forums and celebrate with individuals who actually care about you and your accomplishments before you have no life come the fall.

The smoke blowing premed comment was not directed at the posters on this thread, I don't think you understood my post. You too obviously do not know the conversation, but thanks for you unsolicited advice.

 

[osteohack10]

UPDATE: Scored an 11 in VR (10/11/10 overall) and I received 7 interview invites (Western COMP/NW, LUCOM, PNWU, AZCOM, CCOM, University of Washington, University of Texas) before I withdrew my application. Of the four interviews I went to I got accepted to 3 out of 4, including a M.D. school.

Although I am sure a lot of premeds come on here and blow smoke when they have no idea what they are talking about, I wasn't just some premed. I knew what I was talking about.

Only an 11 in VR?

Is english your second language?

Congrats on the acceptances. Better get to allo and give 'em hell.

 

[samac]

UPDATE: Scored an 11 in VR (10/11/10 overall) and I received 7 interview invites (Western COMP/NW, LUCOM, PNWU, AZCOM, CCOM, University of Washington, University of Texas) before I withdrew my application. Of the four interviews I went to I got accepted to 3 out of 4, including a M.D. school.

Although I am sure a lot of premeds come on here and blow smoke when they have no idea what they are talking about, I wasn't just some premed. I knew what I was talking about.

Wow. Thanks for that riveting update and the necro bump, where I read all of your comments through replies because you cleared them. Just had to stick it to them didn't you?

 

[superdoc2.0]

Wow. Thanks for that riveting update and the necro bump, where I read all of your comments through replies because you cleared them. Just had to stick it to them didn't you?

Yeah, at the time I was a little paranoid about admissions folks seeing my online immaturity and dropping my app. Not that deleting my comments actually deleted my comments which were quoted, haha.

I had a pretty big chip on my shoulder this application cycle and just had to update the thread. Now that I am going to be a doctor I had better gain some maturity and start acting like one

 

[samac]

Yeah, at the time I was a little paranoid about admissions folks seeing my online immaturity and dropping my app. Not that deleting my comments actually deleted my comments which were quoted, haha.

I had a pretty big chip on my shoulder this application cycle and just had to update the thread. Now that I am going to be a doctor I had better gain some maturity and start acting like one

So. The million dollar question. Are you going MD or DO?

 

[superdoc2.0]

I really don't have an option in the matter, UW's tuitition is 30k and I qualify for a 50% tuition waiver as a veteran. So I can pay 15k a year or 50k, I think you can guess my decision. I also won't pretend that the match advantage of attending UW is not heavy on my mind.

But at some level I kind of regret that I am not going to a D.O. school. I think that I would fit in better at an Osteopathic school and I was impressed during this cycle with the quality of D.O. schools in general.

 

[AlteredScale]

I really don't have an option in the matter, UW's tuitition is 30k and I qualify for a 50% tuition waiver as a veteran. So I can pay 15k a year or 50k, I think you can guess my decision. I also won't pretend that the match advantage of attending UW is not heavy on my mind.

But at some level I kind of regret that I am not going to a D.O. school. I think that I would fit in better at an Osteopathic school and I was impressed during this cycle with the quality of D.O. schools in general.

UW is a great school, congratulations! Are you attending the main campus or one of the other sites around the WAMI area?

 

[superdoc2.0]

UW is a great school, congratulations! Are you attending the main campus or one of the other sites around the WAMI area?

I haven't been assigned a campus yet, but I would be happy with Seattle or spokane.

 

[The_Sunny_Doc]

Would I pay $30k extra per year to attend an MD school over a DO school? .

The finances would affect my decision as well. That's why I mostly applied to the newer and more Southern DO schools - tuition is cheaper there than the more established schools and COL is lower in these smaller towns than in big cities.

I also picked my DO school for location (located near major research universities and medical centers, and in a desirable area of the country in which to put down roots) and for the "vibe" I got from the buildings, the faculty and staff, and the students. You might not care about how your classmates conduct themselves, but for me, it's important. My friend at an MD school which will remain nameless is not very happy with the social atmosphere, as most of the students at her school went straight from undergrad into med school. They still have keg parties on the weekends and try to the shirk the rules of the dress code, lol. There's an advantage to being around others who have more life experience and a greater level of maturity if you're a nontrad yourself.

Finally, I want to do primary care (preventive medicine and nutrition counseling), and DO schools excel at providing training in that realm.

In short, if an MD school were more expensive, and if the atmosphere wasn't conducive to my success, I'd pick a DO school over it.