DO vs MD

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
HueySmith said:
If you go to a DO school, youre doomed to fill one of the lower paying specialties (eg. fam med, psych, internal med, peds)
Click to expand...


Disagree. As a D.O. Finishing his pulm/cc fellowship and seeing the offers I am getting this is a pretty misinformed comment. I would also beg to differ from my D.O. friends who are in neurosurgery, ortho, optho and rads.
 
Soccer171983 said:
Disagree. As a D.O. Finishing his pulm/cc fellowship and seeing the offers I am getting this is a pretty misinformed comment. I would also beg to differ from my D.O. friends who are in neurosurgery, ortho, optho and rads.
Click to expand...
Exceptional students do go to DO schools (and I mean EXCEPTIONAL), and those students can get into those specialties. But for your average DO students, I am correct in my statement. Oh by the way, for DO students of my generation, we won't have those DO protected super specialty residencies anymore.
 
Its all about your work ethic, desire, connections you make a long the way and a bit of luck. MD or DO does not define you in any way shape or form. I know tons of DO students who make it into prestigious allopathic residencies and Fellowships and I know MD students who have trouble getting into "specialties". It's not always about the numbers either. In the fellowship I am in we have turned away people who are top 1% in just about everything because they do not make the right impression and have taken people who would say are above average on paper but nothing spectacular because of what we see from them. Some of it is right place right time kind of situation as well. Also regarding "DO's of my generation" its way to early to say how things will shake up. There may be some programs who have never taken DO that may jump at the cream of the crop and will take them into ultra-competitive specialties.
 
HueySmith said:
I mean...the chances are high. If you're a super duper hardworking intelligent student (which all students think they are before they start med school), you wouldn't even be in DO schools in the first place. For the average DO students, you're more likely to be limited to those fields I mentioned. MAYBE general surg, anesthesiology if you improve your study habits a little.
Click to expand...
There have been DOs who have gone on to become astronauts. What does that tell you about their limits?

And you're saying it like being a primary care doc is some horrible thing. It's not. If you become a specialist you're going to be kissing their feet for patient referrals. And even if DOs were confined to it they could always get around it by doing IM ----> heme/onc, gastro, cardio, ID, nephro, etc.
 
I find it ironic how every bleeding heart premed will recite that medicine is their passion and its not about money - but then turn around and **** on primary care specialties because of the low pay, and equate that with lack of prestige.
If everyone became ortho or derm for the money ( is program slots permitted) where would you take your child when they got sick


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
So many flaws, so many comebacks, but I don't want to turn this thread into a flamefest.
 
I've worked in healthcare for many years. Seen smart MDs, dumb MDs, smart DOs, dumb DOs... At the end of the day I want the *best* physician, regardless of if he went to school at Harvard or some place in Europe I've never heard of.

The *reality* is that the DO track is an uphill battle in specialty match, but for many of us overcoming long odds has been a way of life, and is therefore less scary. 🙂
(fwiw I'm a current applicant who's already interviewed at allopathic and osteopathic schools)
 
RNthenDoc said:
I've worked in healthcare for many years. Seen smart MDs, dumb MDs, smart DOs, dumb DOs... At the end of the day I want the *best* physician, regardless of if he went to school at Harvard or some place in Europe I've never heard of.

The *reality* is that the DO track is an uphill battle in specialty match, but for many of us overcoming long odds has been a way of life, and is therefore less scary. 🙂
(fwiw I'm a current applicant who's already interviewed at allopathic and osteopathic schools)
Click to expand...

To what extent though? Do you believe Caribbeans is a decent choice?

I'm an advocate for any and every U.S.A. medical school. Not a fan of international choices.
 
Robin-jay said:
To what extent though? Do you believe Caribbeans is a decent choice?

I'm an advocate for any and every U.S.A. medical school. Not a fan of international choices.
Click to expand...

If they are a board certified doc then it doesn’t matter where they went to school. The Caribbean schools are iffy because of their attrition and scrupulous admissions practices, anyone who gets a residency and becomes board certified deserves respect and is fully qualified.
 
I've worked with Caribbean docs. My PARTICULAR sampling hasn't left me with a good taste in my mouth, but I'm sure they graduate some stellar folks.
The reality of those programs shouldn't be ignored either. There may be some that give a good education and produce decent residents, but I'm not knowledgable enough about medical education to say one way or another.

You have to zoom out, look at your career, and try to find a path that will fulfill your goals. I'm sure there are cases where international school is an okay choice, but obviously it's going to put up HUGE barriers.

To a MUCH lesser extent, D.O. schools put up barriers if you want to match certain specialties. That's just the reality. If you enter into it with eyes wide open I think it's silly to talk about "ranking," unless there is concrete data that the care received from a D.O. is somehow lesser than an M.D.

We know that D.O. schools accept lower GPAs and lower MCATs on average, but does that correlate with a difference in board-certified physician practice? I'd have to see better data to even build an inkling.

Again, I'm not an expert by any means, but I've seen D.O.s earn Chief Residency at an ACGME program ahead of school alumni allopaths. The medical chief of NASA is a D.O., and taught at Des Moines. There's a D.O. faculty at Hopkins.

I think being informed and knowing the consequences of each decision is what's important. Resources like SDN can be helpful (or harmful), but getting out into the real world helps with perspective a LOT.
 
The argument of an uphill battle for DOs to competitive residencies is becoming less and less valid, especially with the merger of residencies and standardized scoring. The real truth will come when DOs and MDs have equal opportunity to all residencies, then we can see if the scores match up with the matching. If they don't, there's prejudice. If they do, then DO shouldn't be considered a disadvantaged route to any medical field, but just a DIFFERENT route.
 
Xavieous said:
The argument of an uphill battle for DOs to competitive residencies is becoming less and less valid, especially with the merger of residencies and standardized scoring. The real truth will come when DOs and MDs have equal opportunity to all residencies, then we can see if the scores match up with the matching. If they don't, there's prejudice. If they do, then DO shouldn't be considered a disadvantaged route to any medical field, but just a DIFFERENT route.
Click to expand...

It's all of the above.... the thing with residencies are it's too hard to generalize something. Each residency program is run by a different program director, with different interactions, connections, interests, etc. Yea, there will be some who are anti-DO, there will be some who don't care, there will be some who are DO's but the person has a spouse who's an MD at that hospital so they just take them in, etc. etc. Residency PD's have the ability to be more biased/prejudiced on what they want b/c there's so many programs, and most accept so few students, so it's very hard to regulate it.
 
Xavieous said:
The argument of an uphill battle for DOs to competitive residencies is becoming less and less valid,
Click to expand...

Lol no. It’s beccoming more and more valid.

Xavieous said:
especially with the merger of residencies and standardized scoring
Click to expand...

No. First, DOs could always take the USMLE and have always performed worse than their MD counterparts there is no “standardized scoring.” COMLEX is still the DO licensing exam.
Xavieous said:
The real truth will come when DOs and MDs have equal opportunity to all residencies,
Click to expand...

This will NEVER happen unless the schools were merged into LCME accred and effectively became MD schools.
 
Xavieous said:
The argument of an uphill battle for DOs to competitive residencies is becoming less and less valid, especially with the merger of residencies and standardized scoring. The real truth will come when DOs and MDs have equal opportunity to all residencies, then we can see if the scores match up with the matching. If they don't, there's prejudice. If they do, then DO shouldn't be considered a disadvantaged route to any medical field, but just a DIFFERENT route.
Click to expand...

False equivalency. If they don't (that is, if DOs and MDs don't match identically all other factors being equal including USMLE score), sure there may be prejudice. But if they do (they won't, for reasons AnatomyGrey12 mentioned) then it doesn't necessarily speak to whether or not DOs should be considered disadvantaged because it ignores the average USMLE scores for all DOs compared to MDs.

I.e., there are two points to this that I see:
1) DOs with equivalent USMLE scores to MDs match to less competitive residencies due to bias (but also probably some at least partially legitimate concerns of PDs, like consistency in clinical education quality and how used to the residency hierarchy DOs are)
2) DOs will be disadvantaged for specialty placement as a whole, independent of DO vs MD bias, as long as average USMLE scores for DOs are lower than for MDs, because USMLE is the greatest determinant of residency placement.

Right now, both are the case. You were wrong to suggest that if MD/DO scores match up evenly with matching then there is prejudice, because legitimate PD concerns from 1 could still exist. Also, if they do match up, and 1 is no longer true (hooray!) then DOs would still be at a disadvantage as long as 2 existed and USMLE mattered for residency placement.
 
Last edited:
If you're a competitive applicant go MD

If you're not a competitive applicant go DO

if you're in between apply for both
 
Eghhh you can't generalize anything.... I have a few classmates who chose my school over MD schools. Location is big for us... being in a major city DO school vs. an MD school in the middle of nowhere (like Creighton in Nebraska or TCMC in Scranton). Actually come to think of it, most ppl I know who turned down MD for DO did so b/c of location. Again, just gotta see what works for you. BTW the ones who turned down the MD accepts tend to be the stronger students in our class so that's all I've got for now.
 
AnatomyGrey12 said:
If they are a board certified doc then it doesn’t matter where they went to school. The Caribbean schools are iffy because of their attrition and scrupulous admissions practices, anyone who gets a residency and becomes board certified deserves respect and is fully qualified.
Click to expand...

Under those circumstance, they deserve respect, but do they always get it? That's one issue.
 
MADD!!! said:
Eghhh you can't generalize anything.... I have a few classmates who chose my school over MD schools. Location is big for us... being in a major city DO school vs. an MD school in the middle of nowhere (like Creighton in Nebraska or TCMC in Scranton). Actually come to think of it, most ppl I know who turned down MD for DO did so b/c of location. Again, just gotta see what works for you. BTW the ones who turned down the MD accepts tend to be the stronger students in our class so that's all I've got for now.
Click to expand...
This is true for some of my students as well. Location is everything.
 
MADD!!! said:
Eghhh you can't generalize anything.... I have a few classmates who chose my school over MD schools. Location is big for us... being in a major city DO school vs. an MD school in the middle of nowhere (like Creighton in Nebraska or TCMC in Scranton). Actually come to think of it, most ppl I know who turned down MD for DO did so b/c of location. Again, just gotta see what works for you. BTW the ones who turned down the MD accepts tend to be the stronger students in our class so that's all I've got for now.
Click to expand...

But this is the issue: an average student at creighton or Nebraska will have a more opportunities open to them than an above average students at PCOM. Now if you really don’t care about that then sure choose location, but don’t complain come match day that you don’t get the same opportunities.
 
Part of it can be living situation. Cost of living vs. staying with family can make a HUGE financial difference for some people.
Obviously that's front end vs. back end expenses and opportunity cost, but a lot of people make decisions based on how it's going to impact their perceived finances *now.*
 
YoloSwaggins#JarlBallin said:
Why is that? Where is this doom built into the system?
Click to expand...

To give you and everyone the most accurate picture, take a look at this:

http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NRMP-2016-Program-Director-Survey.pdf

At the last page for each specialty, there's a bar that shows the percentage of each applicant type (MD, prev. MD, DO, IMG, etc.) that each specialty usually, seldomly, and never ranks.

And @AnatomyGrey12 you always say that MD>DO, but check out the stats for PM&R.
 
The way I like to think about it is (not sure if this is correct), but if you have a solid step 1 score ( >240), publications/research in the field, and solid LORs, you can get into whatever you want. Obviously you have to be an above average student, but its shown on every single schools match list that its possible. Just have to bust your a** harder than the MD student going against you!
 
MADD!!! said:
but check out the stats for PM&R
Click to expand...

This is because PMR is not a field that is heavily applied to by USMDs. Ask anyone that is seriously considering PM&R, you still have to be better than your MD counterparts. However, PM&R is one of the rare fields where the top programs will take a qualified DO candidate
 
AnatomyGrey12 said:
This is because PMR is not a field that is heavily applied to by USMDs. Ask anyone that is seriously considering PM&R, you still have to be better than your MD counterparts. However, PM&R is one of the rare fields where the top programs will take a qualified DO candidate
Click to expand...

That's the thing, I don't think you need to be better in this field. I think it's equal.
 
AnatomyGrey12 said:
But even if it is, one field does not make the statement MD>DO false.
Click to expand...

haha I know man, just saying it's not ALWAYS the case. (Also as a side note, I think DO>MD for a low-tier student. Having DO residencies as backup options for ppl who barely pass is better than being an MD who's struggling and expected more out of them.) Thoughts? I'm thinking a student who got a 410 on COMLEX is more likely to match than an MD student who got <200. (For let's say FM, a general IM or whatever "easy" specialties there are).
 
MADD!!! said:
Thoughts? I'm thinking a student who got a 410 on COMLEX is more likely to match than an MD student who got <200.
Click to expand...

The match statistics would hint otherwise, especially now with the merger.
 
CyrusHabs7695 said:
The way I like to think about it is (not sure if this is correct), but if you have a solid step 1 score ( >240), publications/research in the field, and solid LORs, you can get into whatever you want. Obviously you have to be an above average student, but its shown on every single schools match list that its possible. Just have to bust your a** harder than the MD student going against you!
Click to expand...

I wish this is true but unfortunately, the program directors at super top places (even in academic IM) are so addicted to prestige that many well qualified MD and DO students are weeded out simply because they aren't from a top school. It's annoying but it's a sad reality of the situation.
 
Lawper said:
I wish this is true but unfortunately, the program directors at super top places (even in academic IM) are so addicted to prestige that many well qualified MD and DO students are weeded out simply because they aren't from a top school. It's annoying but it's a sad reality of the situation.
Click to expand...

Yeah I dont think that a top-tier DO student will be able to match a Yale surgical residency, but with a high score and other qualifications I think they will be able to at least match in their desired field.
 
USMDs matched to family med at a rate of 10/13 wth Step scores between 181-190..... let that sink in...

There is literally not a scenario where being a DO student in the match is more advantageous than a US MD.
 
AnatomyGrey12 said:
It’s a constant struggle lol, there is always someone new who comes in to tout how equal everything is.
Click to expand...

I get it, but I also think a lot of these posts (not specifically yours) seem to 'lower' the degree and give uninformed individuals the wrong idea.
 
Natural Killer Cell said:
I get it, but I also think a lot of these posts (not specifically yours) seem to 'lower' the degree and give uninformed individuals the wrong idea.
Click to expand...
I mean, what AnatomyGrey is talking about is true. Please take a look at the pdf that MADD posted just a few post above.
 
Natural Killer Cell said:
Lol, I haven't even been on SDN for very long, and I swear I've seen a dozen other iterations of this same post from you.
Click to expand...

He is obviously better than all DO students as a MD student. I mean, why advance the status of all physicians (MD or DO or MBBS) when you can rip on your counterparts instead? Who cares about midlevel encroachment and their vying for freedom of practice? Simply criticize your future coworkers, that's obviously the way to go. :bored::dead:
 
UserUnidentified420 said:
He is obviously better than all DO students as a MD student. I mean, why advance the status of all physicians (MD or DO or MBBS) when you can rip on your counterparts instead? Who cares about midlevel encroachment and their vying for freedom of practice? Simply criticize your future coworkers, that's obviously the way to go. :bored::dead:
Click to expand...

Nice straw man, I’ve never “ripped my counterparts.” Also anyone who has spent even the tiniest amount of time on here knows I am a DO student.
 
I wonder if all these posters saying that you can get equal residency placement if your stats match that of an MD know what they are talking about. Oh wait. I am in the pre-medical section, nevermind.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

S
Interesting Take - Canadian MD vs US DO
Replies
2
Views
1K
sky778
S
A
New DO school vs reapplying
Replies
11
Views
1K
CBass2288
CBass2288
Meganerd2012
  • Question Question
DO acceptance or Conditional MD SMP acceptance
Replies
26
Views
2K
Angus Avagadro
Angus Avagadro
I
MD waitlist vs. DO commit to enroll?
Replies
32
Views
6K
deleted1188118
D
M
Apply DO or wait a year to apply DO + MD
Replies
5
Views
2K
Mr.Smile12
Mr.Smile12
Top