DO student applying MD

[Accumex]

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So I just currently finished OMS-1 (yayy!!) at a top-rated DO school in the mid-west. Now, I thought about OMM and I loved the idea, but now that I went through it first-hand I realize its ummm....not my thing. I don't think I will ever use it. Yes some things like muscle energy is useful, but other things are just questionable.

Then we have upper classmen saying that they expected more out of their clinical rotations....and they seem stuck at community places :-(

Honestly, I'm disenchanted with OMM and after doing some clinical research, I realized I might be very interested in a competitive specialty...which I swore to myself originally that I wanted to do primary care.

Since it's just OMS-1 that I completed, I was considering two options:

1. Apply MD (especially my state school) as a standard applicant and repeat MS-1 ( I seriously don't mind it considering I'll be ahead of my class and the residency effect being an allopathic student).

2. Apply MD as a transfer.

What do you guys feel? And no, I have no intentions of lying about being in DO school. I just disenchanted with OMM after experiencing it first hand.

 

[Psai]

No one's forcing you to use it

 

[Accumex]

No one's forcing you to use it

Yeah but I still gotta deal with COMLEX 1, 2, + 3 which has OMT.

 

[Beth_W737]

Nobody will take a transfer, it's almost impossible especially DO to MD. And if you have no success reapplying you would never be able to be a doctor, so think hard about that possibility. You can always do an allopathic residency. Less than 8% of practicing DOs use OMM, so do what everyone else does - learn it for the boards.

 

[DrMidlife]

If you get what you want in the short term, you'll pay in the long term. When you go into residency interviews you'll have to explain why you started as DO and restarted as MD, and it won't go well. You'll find there are DO's on faculty at plenty of competitive "MD" residencies.

Start looking for the DO's who are doing what you want to do. They aren't hard to find in any specialty. And look at the match data for DO's in the "MD" match at nrmp.org.

Meanwhile, there will never be a shortage of things you'd rather not have to deal with.

 

[Sublimazing]

If you get what you want in the short term, you'll pay in the long term. When you go into residency interviews you'll have to explain why you started as DO and restarted as MD, and it won't go well. You'll find there are DO's on faculty at plenty of competitive "MD" residencies.

Start looking for the DO's who are doing what you want to do. They aren't hard to find in any specialty. And look at the match data for DO's in the "MD" match at nrmp.org.

Meanwhile, there will never be a shortage of things you'd rather not have to deal with.

Aren't there a lot of residencies that don't accept DOs? Isn't it hypothesized that these PDs don't take DOs because they think it is inferior education?

Doesn't seem like they would consider it a bad thing that this OP loved medicine so much that when she realized that her education wasn't as strong as she'd hoped she actually sacrificed a year or two to get a proper education.

Transferring school types based solely on not wanting to do OMM though seems a little absurd.

 

[DrMidlife]

Aren't there a lot of residencies that don't accept DOs? Isn't it hypothesized that these PDs don't take DOs because they think it is inferior education?

Yep. As a DO you'd have to either a) not apply to residencies that have never taken a DO or b) compete without mercy. Horrible odds if you want NYC neurosurg, for instance, but decent odds at most IM programs. The overall DO match rate into "MD" residencies is about 77%. nbme.org.

Doesn't seem like they would consider it a bad thing that this OP loved medicine so much that when she realized that her education wasn't as strong as she'd hoped she actually sacrificed a year or two to get a proper education.

Good luck trying to sell the idea that DO educations, as a whole, are substandard, since there are DO's on faculty and on staff pretty much everywhere. You'll have DO's teaching you, at some point in med school, most likely. (Edit: my mistake, looks like you're not a med student.)

Regardless, I think the riskiness argument is the strongest here - realistically, the OP would have to drop out of DO school, be ready to apply MD in about 3 days, and see what happens. Managing MD apps during OMSII would be a massive and transparent hedging of bets. If the OP is going to do it, then he/she needs to drop out and regroup, or the story doesn't work. That might mean doing the SMP or GPA repair, and MCAT retake, that were deferred to get a DO acceptance in the first place.

 

[DrMidlife]

delete

 

[cbrons]

You wont get in so don't waste your time

 

[buccsmf1]

Idiotic idea on many levels.

First. You said you just finished OMS1. So you'd be applying to MD medical schools while attending your second year. You wouldn't find out whether you were accepted well into your second year. 2nd year of medical school is brutal, how are you going to balance your coursework with primary app, secondaries, personal statement, interviews.... Also, how the f are you going to get time off to interview?

Second. And most important, absolutely no MD school would take you as a new applicant or transfer. I'm going to assume your undergrad grades were borderline to begin with, or you would have applied MD first time around. So you still have the same undergrad GPA, MCAT etc.... They're going to see that you're already currently enrolled in a DO school, and you more than likely won't even get secondaries.

Third. Who gives a **** about OMM? Once you make it past OMS2 you only have to be tested on it 3 more times in your entire life (the steps). I'm going MD gas, I'll never use OMM ever again and it'll never affect the way I practice.

Fourth. $$$$$ Just going off averages you'll spend 100-150K on your first 2 years. If you do go MD, youre going to have to repeat those years and accrue another 100-150k, + the loss in potential income for those years. So youre talking about 600-700 THOUSAND DOLLARS.

Suck it up princess.

EDIT: Stupid threads like this remind me why I dont bother with any forum other than the anesthesia residency forum. Pre med and med forums are just garbage.

 

[hoopie]

From a time standpoint alone it sounds like a really bad idea. Let's say you drop out of DO school. Probably will have to take a year at least getting your application up to snuff if at all possible. Then another year going through the interview process. IF you managed to get into an MD school, by the time you would repeat your first year and catch up to where you are now, you otherwise could have been graduating and starting residency. Not to mention the money wasted on your first year DO plus the opportunity cost of those other wasted years pushing the start of your career back. Just a really bad idea.

I'd say suck it up and just work extremely hard to get what you want. There are some doors that are closed by virtue of being a DO but ultimately you'd likely be able to get to your end goal if you really work at it.

 

[235009]

Horrible odds if you want NYC neurosurg, for instance, but decent odds at most IM programs.

If you want IM at a university program in NYC that's not downstate (notoriously malignant) then you have equally horrible odds

 

[cbrons]

If you get what you want in the short term, you'll pay in the long term. When you go into residency interviews you'll have to explain why you started as DO and restarted as MD, and it won't go well. You'll find there are DO's on faculty at plenty of competitive "MD" residencies.

Start looking for the DO's who are doing what you want to do. They aren't hard to find in any specialty. And look at the match data for DO's in the "MD" match at nrmp.org.

Meanwhile, there will never be a shortage of things you'd rather not have to deal with.

If the guy drops out of a U.S. med school where he is already enrolled (and completed a full year) just to start over & apply to a different U.S. med school he won't get in, hence there won't ever be any residency interview for that person.

 

[Elisabeth Kate]

Aren't there a lot of residencies that don't accept DOs? Isn't it hypothesized that these PDs don't take DOs because they think it is inferior education

This is only true in a few fields. In the majority of fields, the majority of residency programs are open to DOs.

Yep. As a DO you'd have to either a) not apply to residencies that have never taken a DO

I agree with most of what you're saying. I just want to add that not applying to a place you want to go to just because they've never taken a DO isn't the best idea. If you understand that you most likely won't match and you have the money to spend, you should apply regardless. Mayo never took DO in their derm program until a few years ago. Didn't a DO just match neurosurg at Loma Linda this year? I bet that's never happened before. A DO matched allo integrated plastics a few years ago, which was also a first. Again, understand that if a place has never taken a DO in a particular field, chances are they won't take you, but if it was me and I had the money, I'd apply anyway and hope I could blaze the trail.

Good luck trying to sell the idea that DO educations, as a whole, are substandard, since there are DO's on faculty and on staff pretty much everywhere. You'll have DO's teaching you, at some point in med school, most likely. (Edit: my mistake, looks like you're not a med student.)

This.

 

[DrMidlife]

Yep. As a DO you'd have to either a) not apply to residencies that have never taken a DO or b) compete without mercy.

I agree with most of what you're saying. I just want to add that not applying to a place you want to go to just because they've never taken a DO isn't the best idea. If you understand that you most likely won't match and you have the money to spend, you should apply regardless. Mayo never took DO in their derm program until a few years ago. Didn't a DO just match neurosurg at Loma Linda this year? I bet that's never happened before. A DO matched allo integrated plastics a few years ago, which was also a first. Again, understand that if a place has never taken a DO in a particular field, chances are they won't take you, but if it was me and I had the money, I'd apply anyway and hope I could blaze the trail.

Yes those trailblazers would come under "compete without mercy" because that's what it takes to change minds.

 

[BestDoctorEver]

My answer to this post is: :troll:

 

[DermViser]

So I just currently finished OMS-1 (yayy!!) at a top-rated DO school in the mid-west. Now, I thought about OMM and I loved the idea, but now that I went through it first-hand I realize its ummm....not my thing. I don't think I will ever use it. Yes some things like muscle energy is useful, but other things are just questionable.

Then we have upper classmen saying that they expected more out of their clinical rotations....and they seem stuck at community places :-(

Honestly, I'm disenchanted with OMM and after doing some clinical research, I realized I might be very interested in a competitive specialty...which I swore to myself originally that I wanted to do primary care.

This is the definition of D.O. school and has been talked about ad nauseum here. Now that you're realizing that it was all true, you want to bail to an MD school with the hopes of transfer? Good luck. It might work and doesn't hurt to try: https://services.aamc.org/tsp_reports/

 

[DermViser]

Idiotic idea on many levels.

First. You said you just finished OMS1. So you'd be applying to MD medical schools while attending your second year. You wouldn't find out whether you were accepted well into your second year. 2nd year of medical school is brutal, how are you going to balance your coursework with primary app, secondaries, personal statement, interviews.... Also, how the f are you going to get time off to interview?

Second. And most important, absolutely no MD school would take you as a new applicant or transfer. I'm going to assume your undergrad grades were borderline to begin with, or you would have applied MD first time around. So you still have the same undergrad GPA, MCAT etc.... They're going to see that you're already currently enrolled in a DO school, and you more than likely won't even get secondaries.

Third. Who gives a **** about OMM? Once you make it past OMS2 you only have to be tested on it 3 more times in your entire life (the steps). I'm going MD gas, I'll never use OMM ever again and it'll never affect the way I practice.

Fourth. $$$$$ Just going off averages you'll spend 100-150K on your first 2 years. If you do go MD, youre going to have to repeat those years and accrue another 100-150k, + the loss in potential income for those years. So youre talking about 600-700 THOUSAND DOLLARS.

Suck it up princess.

EDIT: Stupid threads like this remind me why I dont bother with any forum other than the anesthesia residency forum. Pre med and med forums are just garbage.

To be fair, she wouldn't do all the primary app, secondaries, etc. process. The transfer process works differently. And there are ones that accept DO transfers although she would transfer after MS-2 and taking the USMLE: https://services.aamc.org/tsp_reports/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.search_policy

 

[atomi]

Anecdotally, I know a doc who did his M1 year in the carib, reapplied to MD schools that year, got accepted into a great MD school, and repeated M1, and went on to complete a very competitive residency.

It made sense in his case. Unless you are 100% set on one of the very few fields that DOs have almost no penetration into, it makes more sense to stay in DO school and focus on excelling on the USMLE.