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This is premature, but this is one of my biggest worries about school. Because DO schools seem to historically have students go on less interviews for the AOA match, I fear they won't understand the need to go on more as the merger happens and students in general have to go on more interviews as things get more cramped (md and do). It's probably irrational, but I don't want to be unable to go on 10-15+ interviews because some old clerkship dean went on 3 in 1975 and matched fine.I applied at 9 programs within a 90 minute radius of my home. I interviewed at and ranked 3. I would have loved to have interviewed at more, but I was severely limited by my program with regard to how many days I could have to go on interviews. I spent a total of 70 hours driving during the month of November, going to 2 conferences, 2 board exams, 3 interviews, and returning to Erie between each adventure for my regularly scheduled clinical days.
One of my programs put only 2 of their spots into AOA, with the other several reserved for ACGME. Another put 3 of 6 spots into AOA. The final one was all AOA, no ACGME. So, it turns out that I wasn't competing for one of 18 seats, but 1 of 7 total across the 3 programs.
One of the programs that did not offer me an interview reached out today. They didn't fill any of their seats in the Match. I'd already signed, but no regrets. I'm delighted with where I landed.