What in the hell does that have to do with anything? I had a 3.1/30 in undergrad, and I have a 3.91 in medical school, and I'm our top quintile. nvm, I guess that only 4.0/40's ever end up in a surgery residency.. lol.
I'd re-read what I posted as the statement directly after the one you're responding to stated that there are exceptions. Many a medical student have changed from a mediocre or below-par undergraduate performance (relatively) to being stellar, top-of-the-class students. There is no doubt that this (as well as the opposite) has, does, and will continue to happen. The question is how often this happens. 5% of the time? 10% of the time? 30%? 50%? 75%? I think this is precisely why I said:
...if the past is any indication of the future...
The past doesn't have to be an indication of the future and isn't set in stone or a hard and fast rule. I'm not implying that. What I
am challenging is that
every time this subject comes up there are, invariably, two schools of thought with little room in between. They are, in no particular order:
1. If you want to do something competitive you're better off going MD.
2. "I talked to a guy who was a DO that matched ortho at Hopkins" or "there's this guy that works at the hospital I'm at who did derm at NYU after getting his DO" or "my uncle is a DO and he's the chief of neurosurgery at Mayfield General, the largest hospital in 5 counties"... this is always followed by "sure, why not go DO? As long as you work really hard you can do anything. If you want it bad enough you'll match allopathic derm as a DO."
Both of these scenarios have elements of truth, but both are the most simplistic, black-and-white reasoning that, for some odd reason, never gets challenged.
Yes, if somebody wants to do something competitive and only wants to do an allopathic residency then they should
absolutely attend an MD school, because despite being able to "work hard" (see scenario 2) it's not making things any easier on them. But if on the other hand someone simply wants to do derm and they know this because of some extensive reason, yet they have the previously mentioned 3.2 with a 27, then they may want to evaluate how well their medical school performance will be a reflection of their undergraduate academic performance. Yeah, by numbers
a lot of people have done a 180 in medical school (for better or worse) but
by proportion how often is this happening? The other problem that never gets mentioned is that everyone keeps superimposing the notion that residency at a big academic university is the end-all-be-all of medical education and that
everyone wants to train at these places, rather than considering that perhaps someone is mroe concerned with
what they will be doing rather than
where they did it. Now to add a qualifier (which people seem to be ignoring anyway) I understand that many people have different values and reasons why they may feel a university residency provides better training than a community program (and there are multiple reasons and not every community program has the same drawbacks nor does every university residency possess all the pros that get assumed by it being university -- in any case I'm not advocating one above the other). Just because the bias on SDN is for medical education in the stereotypical big city, big academic center with a big hospital, does not necessarily imply that everyone is looking for that or that when someone says they want derm, or ortho, or neurosurgery, or radiology means that they, like everyone else, are desiring to be at "the big allo programs".
I think it's time we found out more about the individual and gave some better, more direct answers than the standard pat "oh yeah, go MD for competitive specialties" or "man, if you go DO and work hard you can do anything."
