Curious lacking in Allopathic interest????

[Satellite]

I would like to tell a short story about two brothers in their early 30's and both are MD's. I will name them Fred and Bill so as to keep this anonymous.

Both brothers attended a well known high school in California. Fred, who was a couple years older than Bill, took the SAT's and scored a perfect Math score. He then applied and was accepted to Stanford.

Bill later took the SAT's and scored above average and was accepted to a UC school.

Fred soon graduated from Stanford with a triple major(Bio, Chem, Math) and a 3.9 gpa. (I am not making this up). He then took the MCAT's and scored in the 40's. Needless to say he was accepted to a very prestigious Medical school.

Bill on the other hand graduated with a degree in Science and a gpa of 3.4. Bill?s MCAT's scores were around 30. He applied to medical school and was shot down. A year later he re-applied was accepted at the University if Chicago. Not to bad ; )

Fast forward 8 years...both brothers have finished their residencies and have started a practice together. So what is the point?

The point is that even though Fred is brilliant, Bill is the better Doctor. His interaction with patients is incredible and he is genuinely liked by all. Fred on the other hand is a very competent Dr. but his inflated ego and cold demeanor is disliked by many. Fred lost (or never had) what Bill has and that is compassion and common sense. So the truth is grades are just a hoop you have to jump through to get into Medical School. The better the grades the lower the hoop, but prefect grades have little to do with becoming a good Doc.

Thanks for letting me ramble.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[turtleboard]

Originally posted by Gregory Gulick:
•What's allopathic medicine? Are M.D.s real doctors? Can they prescribe medicine and perform surgery like D.O.s?
•

Oh gosh, here comes the osteopathic cheerleader...

GREG! It's been years! How's it hanging? Drop me a line!

 

[hermanshermits]

Originally posted by DOPhD student:
•Randy brought up a critical point with which I tend to agree. Since the educational provisions for medical schools are virtually identical at MD and DO institutions, it's a moot point to try to argue which type will produce better physicians in regards to competency and compassion. On the surface, realize that medical school matriculation, in the mind of the general public, is almost a holy, sacred, deified event, and those who succeed to gain admission to a more selective institution is deemed more worthy of being a doctor than, say, one who gains admission to a less selective school. Clearly, even within the allopathic community, John Hopkins' reputation carries more weight than some backwood MD medical school's, but both schools will ultimately graduate some brilliant doctors and some not so brilliant. How will the lay public know the who make and who do not make good doctors? The answer is most often the public is too dumbfounded by godlike physicians to objectively evaluate each physician's merits and flaws. The only way that they have to compare physicians is to rely on the admission stats of the schools to arrive at some very crude and inaccurate judgement. That's where the DO delimma comes in to play. As a DO student, I admit that more often than not, a student with less than stellar academic background will have a better chance at gaining admission to a DO school than an MD school. How the admission committee can see through the obvious flaws in the stats to select these individuals because of their other potentials, I don't know. But ultimately they turn out to be successful students and very knowledgable physicians. However, by "seeing past the number", the DO schools open themselves up for groundless attacks by people such as Randy. The only way to really reverse this unfortunate trend is to raise the standards of admission to DO schools to a higher level than those implemented at MD schools. I'm quite sure there are many current DO students with very good GPA and MCAT that apply only to DO schools. Take those students only and you artificially raise the reputation of DO schools, but by doing this, you're destroying the dreams of too many students who would otherwise become great compassionate physicians if only given a chance. Now, do I really care what people like Randy think? Definitively not. I don't think we should or could morally sacrifice our patients' welfare to please Looloo or Randy or Jack MD, Joe MD, and Jane pre-med. Let's remember why we choose medicine in the first place. It's a field intertwined with human components that cannot be adequately mapped out by mere hard numbers. •

We are not godlike people. Some of my friends have never been to college and EVEN THEY DON'T THINK doctors are godlike. It is only pre-meds/medstudents and doctors that think they are godlike.

If we were godlike we'd be good at everything. My physician didn't get his ph.d in physics because he could not pass his comprehensive exams. He would not be my doc today if he did pass them.

I have a classmate in medical school who did not make it in meterology after seriously trying.

 

[hermanshermits]

Originally posted by randy:
•Stillborn, as you cleverly call yourself, you are quite wrong about me. First of all, I am not "looloo", and the posting pattern you mention in support of your hypothesis is coincidental (though not even much of a coincidence, at that). But, enough of that, if you think I am looloo, so be it. Since you seem querolous, the reason I am posting here is quite simple: I am home over spring break working on my thesis, sitting in front of this damned desktop hours and hours each day, and killing the occasional odd half-hour posting on this (and other even less reputable) pre-med websites. Greg- Thank you for your most thoughtful post. You are quite right that I do not know or see the cross-section of the pre-med community that may comprise the bulk of DO matriculants. Hearing things from your perspective is very interesting. If DO schools ahve a very high % of students with advanced degrees, it may make sense that the academic profile of the entering classes at such schools is lower than that at MD schools. Students initially heading down a non-pre-med track might not feel the same compulsion to acheive high grades as their pre-med counterparts, and, realizing relatively late that they had medicinal aspirations, their ugrad GPA's may be low-ish. After graduate training, however, they have probably more than proven their academic merits, and then are quite qualified to attend medical school, assuming the committees will look past their less than sparkling ugrad performance. In this case, the lower "stats" are explained while also accounting for the generally high degree of acheivement and competence you (and other here) have asserted abounds in the DO med student community. The DO's I have encounterd are the ones who were pre-med all along, and plan to take advantage of the lower admissions criteria at DO schools right out of college. This, according to the expereinces you have related, could account for my admittedly somewhat dismissive view toward the DO student body, for these students you see as an unfortunate aberration, and not as the norm. This is all very interesting, indeed! Thanks for the insights. As for why I posted my "stats": I posted them in the first comment I made on this board, which, if you look back, you will see was not about the DO/MD issue at all. I was addressing the (I feel) mistaken belief that med school admsissions is a crapshoot. Using my case as an example, I wanted to argue that there was not a huge element of luck involved, and my "stats" and acceptances were intended to be illustrative of my point. I might have said "competetive stats" instead, and I assuredly would have had this been a less anonymous forum, but under the auspices of perfect anonymity, I feel sharing numbers is socially acceptable. If I posted with my real name (i.e. Gregory Gulick), I would not list my 3.9/42 as brazenly (or at all). But, as you know, there is always that temptation to brag about one's accomplishments in subtle ways, and I may have succumbed to that in posting my stats (I believe you did as well in talking about your "unfortunate" experiences at the head of your post-bacc class). I did post them for a purpose, but I'll admit it could have been avoided. I guess I just feel like I deserve some recognition for the scores, especially because so many schmucks post on sights like this claiming to have similar scores. In reality, there are probably fewer than 100 people in the country with scores of 42 or above (mine are 41-43, actually), and I've seen a larger number than that seriously claiming to have scored in this range. Not that I actually feel MCAT scores mean much at all, but I certainly can't tell my pre-med friends about them, so people on sites like this will just have to deal with it!

High grades and scores can pump up my pre-med ego, to be sure, but as soon as I arrive on campus to begin my medical studies next year, my med student ego will be at normal levels, I assure you. No real reason to be disgusted by those who want to enjoy their last few months at the top of the pre-med heap before being thrown to wolves next year! •

Many non-premed grad students ARE high achievers. I was a high achiever before I considered medicine as a career. Normally students in a doctorate program are good at the subject being studied. For instance, a person who finds pre-med physics difficult will not even attempt a doctorate in physics.

After I graduated with a B.A. in Biology, I took psychology classes to get into a psych doctorate program. I also did research and worked in the mental health field for several years. I did all this to get into psych. I got rejected twice and gave this up.

I took the mcat and applied to med school. I got in and I was lucky that all my work experience in the psych field helped my med school application.

By the way, at our state university the average overall gpa for entering clinical psych students in the year of 1999 was a 3.71 and the average overall gpa for entering med students in the same year was a 3.52. Out of 160 applicants only three people got accepted into psych. They were not all humanity majors either.

Our state ph.d geophysics program had a 3.85 average gpa for the matriculating class this past year. Our state matriculating med school class in the same year was a 3.52.