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OP might have a different culture than you do. Is good to keep that in mind.
DO vs Carib vs reapplying MD
- Thread starter Kisangani
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OP might have a different culture than you do. Is good to keep that in mind.
It's part of an American's culture to believe that everyone wants to be here because it's just better here. Land of the free.
1. As an adult (I'm assuming you are), you don't have to list your parents' financial information. So unless you are making a lot of money right now, you could quality for federal loans. Or you can even apply for private loans. If you want go be a doctor, there are many ways to get the money.
2. With the residency merger, the stigma will become less of an issue.
3. You could retake the MCAT and do really well (thinking positively), however due to your low GPA, you will be pre-screened and will not even get a secondary. This is usually done by the computer, so you won't even have the change to explain why your MCAT is so high but your GPA is so low. However, since this will be your 3rd time..and you have to relearn everything and study for the new portions, I really don't think you'll do as well as your're hoping to. I have also heard that some schools won't even take a look at your score past a certain number of tests.
4. You can either go to the US DO school and become a doctor and take out loans (if you really can't convince your parents to help you pay), but pay it back later (like most people who don't have rich parents). Or, you can go to the Caribbean school and maybe not even match and can't become a doctor. You'll be debt free... but with no job and 4 years of your life wasted... If that happens, do you think you'll have your parents' support?? Especially since they paid for everything and now expects you to become a doctor. Caribbean schools are not known to really provide all the resources for you to succeed, so it is a big possibility (like many other posts have already mentioned) for you to graduate and not even become a practicing physician.
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OP the good news is if you fail out or don't match in four years(or five or six etc.) you won't have a pile of debt. You can move forward without any financial encumbrances. That will be nice for you.
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Tough love time. You're an average DO applicant. You're not a borderline MD candidate that could easily waltz into any DO school in the country. There are in fact DO schools that would not interview you based on your stats. You also have two physician parents. That means that from a socioeconomic standpoint, you've had more advantages than most and you're still just a middle-of-the-road applicant. Most of us had to work full time and couldn't afford prep courses, let alone two of them. You're not special, you're lucky.
Despite that, you feel you're entitled to more than you've earned even though you probably had to work less than most of the people on this forum have that have achieved similar results. So yeah, you seem like the typical future Caribbean dropout.
There are wonderful success stories from the Caribbean schools just like there's awesome matches into top programs in competitive fields from DO schools (there's of course more of the latter). Those people are all special snowflakes and there is currently ZERO evidence that you are in their league.
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Anecdotally, I find the current MDs I've shadowed have no discernible bias against DOs. They talk just as well about their DO colleagues as their MDs. The title doesn't even pop up. Simply "Dr. this" or "Dr. that".
My family and I were forcibly exiled from our home country and had nearly all of our assets seized in the process (less than 10 years ago). I also grew up in one of the poorest (if not THE poorest nation) on Earth where the average person does not even live to the age of 40 and 1/4 of the population has HIV. I really do not think I am very entitled or have any unfair advantages in this process. I respect the opinions of people who write on this forum, but I honestly believe that you do not have any idea what you are talking about.
A
AnatomyGrey12
If you talked about this at all of in your app and all you got was a DO acceptance off a wait list then I think that shows we know more than you think we do when it comes to the topic of this thread. Even as immigrants your parents have practiced as physicians in the US, which does give you advantages over a lot of people regardless of your original roots. You may have been disadvantaged originally but you have now swung to the other end of the pendulum.
He was probably going based off the fact that your parents will be paying for your education, which isn't a possibility for the vast majority of people in this country.
But I do agree that you need to be your own person. Sit down with your parents and explain to them how things work here and how going DO would open more doors for you than Carib MD. Why not look into South African med schools if you really don't want DO? Because, in all honesty, with your gpa you would need a 34+ MCAT to be a borderline US MD applicant (assuming your sGPA is also 3.3).
I also get the feeling that your anti-DO sentiment is coming as much from you as it is from your parents. If you really don't think you'll be able to get over having a DO, then go Carib and just take responsibility for it being your decision and take ownership of any consequences that may or may not result from your choices.
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Fair enough. But you still attended a "top university", you admit that you're parents will fund your medical education so one can only assume they've already done so with your undergraduate studies and that you've likely not had to worry about much financially through this process. Feel free to correct me here if I'm wrong as I'm only going off of the information you've provided.
I'm not trying to be a jerk here. You've just provided no evidence that growing up poor has in any way affected your college education as you seem to have more advantages than most. If you actually experienced any hardship during undergrad, financial or otherwise, you have not indicated it.
You can scoff at what I'm saying and feel free to be offended. But I have slightly better stats than you and didn't bother applying MD because I'm not competitive. You applied to 40 MD schools and got 1 interview.
But I don't know what I'm talking about...
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Medical school works a little bit differently in SA. You complete 5-6 years of training immediately after high school. In nearly all cases you must be a citizen of South Africa. Zimbabwe is similar and the university there is highly questionable. I also lost my Zimbabwean citizenship so that isn't even an option.
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I know going against your parents is a huge no-no for many cultures out there.
OP do you have any mentors? Maybe if an American physician can side with you... your parents will be more willing to hear the advice.
OP do you have any mentors? Maybe if an American physician can side with you... your parents will be more willing to hear the advice.
S
Sardinia
.
This was during European colonialism in Africa and before the AIDS/HIV epidemic. Everyone's quality of life was better at that time. (Prior to the wars)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Zimbabwe
My research is in ID, so I collaborate with a lot of South African labs. I've talked to people about going to med school in SA and they said that the international students are mostly from bordering countries. Email some med schools there and explain your situation and see what they say. Being in school for a couple extra years is worth avoiding the Carib. Or stick with DO
Edit: I actually went to a talk recently from a big vaccine researcher from SA. He discussed all the new buildings and research programs that have been starting up in SA and the cool developments they have been making. SA seems to have a lot of good academic resources (definitely more than Carib schools)
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That is a good idea. I'll consider trying that.....and yes I've noticed that many Americans have issues with respecting their elders/superiors.
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Go US MD/US DO or not at all.
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Circumstances do not make you immune to entitlement. This case seems to be less about entitlement and more about you realizing what numbers you need to get in and where you stand compared to other applicants.
Do you have any idea what I'd be willing to do to have parents who could pay off my undergrad/grad/professional health school loans? That is a privilege (I mean this in the strictest sense financially) and a very heavy burden off your shoulders.
You went through those circumstances but did not manage to cinch a USMD invite even with 40+ applications. Clearly it was not a variable to why you did not get in. You might not be entitled, but it is relevant when others bring up the fact that your numbers aren't competitive enough for a shoe-in with USMD programs.
So now you've got 2 (realistic) options:
1) Caribbean
2) South America
I say "realistic" because even with the support of a US physician, your heart is not in it to become a DO. Convincing your parents is easy. Convincing yourself - not so much.
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This thread is ridiculous. OP ain't gonna be swayed. Everyone here has done enough in giving you their viewpoints on why DO is the absolute better option than the Caribbean but it seems OP already has made his/her mind. There are plenty of people who would love the DO spot so drop it and head to the Caribbean. If not the other option is to do an SMP and retake the MCAT but you're gonna face 2 very uphill battles.
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Caribbean medical schools make a lot of their money on first and second year students. It's not expensive to lease a building and hire some talking heads. The profit margin per student is decent, and with nearly fixed overhead more students = more $$$.
This changes dramatically when students progress to years three and four, when they come back to the US and have to be placed in clinical rotations. The number of rotation slots is finite, and there is an endless turf war between medical schools to win the favor of training sites. The profit margin per student is lower, possibly even negative at times.
Hence, the business model of Caribbean medical schools does not accommodate high attrition, it requires it. If every student admitted to Ross made it to third year there would be calamity. With that in mind please ask yourself: would you send your kid to one of these places?
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Why do some US medical schools sell rotation sites to Caribbean schools?
It is the hospital selling the spots and it is for $$
http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yor...in-looking-for-clinical-clerkships-1461705483
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But why? It's wasting resources.
And besides, incentives for more $$ run counter to goals of medical education that teaching hospitals strive to follow.
According to the article I posted after you responded, med schools don't pay the hospitals their students rotate in. So they go from making no money for US med students rotating to now getting paid for each student there
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I don't know of any medical schools who "sell" their rotation sites, perhaps you could enlighten me? I am aware of clinical sites that take students from both domestic and offshore schools.
For a lot of hospitals, particularly smaller ones, income from rotating IMG's has provided a steady revenue stream. Given how quickly the reimbursement landscape is changing, if you find something reliable you tend to hold onto it.
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Oh, they sure do pay for rotation slots! Sometimes they get into bidding wars. UCSF and our school lost a site to Dartmouth, and CN"U" took some sites from UCD.
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And that is completely unnecessary because the monetary benefits are trivial compared to all the other economic benefits involved in training US students (like prestige, donations, lots of technology resources etc. affiliated directly with the US medical school). Plus these teaching hospitals that sell these spots are very likely prioritizing money over medical education.
My bad. I was referring to the US teaching hospitals selling their sites to Caribbean students for their clinical years. It didn't make much sense.
Couldn't the smaller hospitals benefit from the prestiges/resources/status involved in training only US students and being an affiliate for the US medical school? So the financial status of the hospitals would be protected.
Mhmm. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/2...-smaller.html?referer=https://www.google.com/
Now even Beth Israel is scaling down, so NYC might lose some more rotating sites (and residencies?)
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/05/umc_warns_lsu_tulane_medical_s.html And Ochsner, which works mostly with international med students, is the most (or only) financially sound hospital in NOLA
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The issue with Caribbean programmes is that they aren't invested in you graduating & matching. They're invested in their bottom line, and you failing out before Step 1 actually makes them money.
USMD & DO schools actually give a crap about their reputation since 1) they're not for profit and 2) high rates of attrition diminishes their prestige and makes it harder to attract good faculty who can bring in research & donation $$, as well as makes their students less attractive to PDs during the match. As a result, a US MD or DO school will actually invest in making sure you're educated well and making sure you graduate, given you do the work.
Meanwhile, Caribbean schools generally leave you out to dry at the first sign of struggle. So someone like yourself who is already a marginal applicant to begin with, is much less likely to do well in a fundamentally more cutthroat and unsupportive environment. Not matching is a problem, but your problems start even earlier than that.
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This is true, but the downside to this is that many of those hospitals are not academic, and their attendings aren't teachers, so the educational quality is much much poorer
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Why did your parents pay for your DO applications? (assuming they paid for all your applications because they're paying for your tuition - could be a bad assumption though)
@AzizImSorry
I paid for the few DO schools that I applied to. I only applied to 3.
I paid for the few DO schools that I applied to. I only applied to 3.
Why aren't the attendings for those students teachers? Don't they supervise and teach the students?
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Are you still holding the DO acceptance? If so, you should withdraw by this week and avoid delaying things further. It is clear that your heart's not into being a DO so there is no reason to keep holding onto the acceptance.
For one, I missed that you got into a DO school so that is entirely my bad. You should definitely go there no questions asked. However...
It wasn't sarcastic. I was actually having that conversation with my friend like an hour before I saw this thread and we got in depth about it. We are both about to apply, and she was applying Early Decision. I was surprised and was asking (though much more politely than this) what if she didn't get in? Academics wise she's an incredible student, but any kind of student applying to only one school has got to be thinking about the chance of getting in moreso than students who apply to 30 schools. She said that she is more than fine with becoming something else, as being a physician is far from the only valuable position in the medical field, and far from being the only high paying one. When applying to be a physician, yes you must be fully dedicated to the career but I don't think it's unhealthy to think about other options. This is especially true since it seems like your reasoning behind wanting to enter medicine feel somewhat dubious, but again we don't know you nor have we seen your application so we can't say for sure. I understand this is a stressful situation, but if you make a thread asking for help and people are trying to help you then you need to be more open for results to occur.
And some more things to consider:
1) Yes, having a DO will make the fact that you didn't get into a US MD school more obvious, but where you do your residency can influence how skilled of a doctor you are. A DO is far more likely to get into a solid mid-tier IM program than a Carib MD and a DO is much more likely to be in a solid residency with good resources. Being a DO will get you access to better clinical training
2) More and more people are staying away from primary care and doing fellowships--> fellowships are getting more competitive. Coming from a solid residency program with connections will greatly assist you in landing a fellowship spot. Even if you are the top of your Carib class and manage to be in the percent that match, the battle won't be over. You would likely be in a less desirable IM program with less resources than your DO colleagues and fellowship programs may still hold an anti-Carib stance
Yes. I am still holding it. I only got off the waitlist a few days ago (like the day before I created this thread). I do not know how/why it is so clear that I have decided against going the DO route. I have not decided on what to do at this point (despite people assuming I have already made up my mind). I will drop the DO acceptance if/when I make a final decision on which path to pursue. (It will certainly not be in the next week).
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I feel bad for the people on the waitlist below you......they really want this and you're just like "ugh mommy and daddy don't want me to go but I like medicine"
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I feel bad for the people on the waitlist below you......they really want this and you're just like "ugh mommy and daddy don't want me to go but I like medicine"
OP, since you are prioritizing your family desires and finances, you should not pursue the DO route (from what you have stated so far). And for that, it is better to drop the DO acceptance at the earliest opportunity (i.e. early this week, ideally Monday).
Well, while I'm sure that would be beneficial to someone other than me, considering that I am still on a waitlist for an MD program, I would much rather hold onto the DO waitlist acceptance as long as I can to keep my options open in the event that I am accepted off another waitlist. Especially considering the things said on this thread regarding the Caribbean being essentially suicide towards a career in medicine in the USA, I don't think that dropping my one non-international acceptance at my earliest convenience really makes sense.
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A
AnatomyGrey12
Honest question here, how are you (i.e. Who is) paying for your expensive DO deposit? At this point in the game you usually only have a number of days to save your seat
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So you have rejected the Caribbean route? Well done and good work. I thought the Caribbean route was still being considered which is why it didn't make much sense to keep the DO acceptance around with the reasons you mentioned.
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Felt a bit guilty for liking this. Ouch.
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You can succeed at a Carribbean school, it is just very risky, and with a DO acceptance, a very dumb decision. Consider by the time you match there will no longer be a separate DO match. This likely means less overall spots. This likely means the 54% match rate for US citizen IMGs will be worse, perhaps far worse. Now I am definitely not saying that is right, but thats how its looking.
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Dude just stfu. His family is rich. Should he prostrate himself in front of the self important worms of pre-allo and apologize for that?
If you mention how poor you are in this thread then theres a good chance you are a troll or just trying to stir the pot for no reason.
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1. Medical schools and hospitals (especially non-profit teaching hospitals) are run by some of the greediest bastards on the planet.
2. The U.S.A. is facing an enormous physician shortage, and as such, it is not a "waste of resources" to import and train more physicians. Especially when in the absence of doing so, the profession will be replaced by much lesser trained mid levels.
3. Your statement about incentives for more money running "counter" to the goals of medical schools and teaching hospitals is hilariously naive.
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[QUOTE="Lexdiamondz]
USMD & DO schools actually give a crap about their reputation since 1) they're not for profit[/QUOTE]
Oh they are very much for profit for my friend. They just dont have share holders.
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USMD & DO schools actually give a crap about their reputation since 1) they're not for profit[/QUOTE]
Oh they are very much for profit for my friend. They just dont have share holders.
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