Agreed, I am not in pod school so I am looking for opinions from those are are in the trenches of the profession currently!
Probably has good and bad sides to it. You mentioned some of the good things, but I would argue that not filling the schools is more related to a lack of interest as opposed to screening out bad applicants. It probably means that more students with low GPAs are being admitted than when there were plenty of applicants and competition was high (relatively).
Someone a couple of days ago that attends NYCPM said their school had not filled their seats in part because they lost students to Temple (due to NYCPM not putting money back into their facilities) and also because their applicant pool was down from what it usually is and they decided to be selective rather than fill the seats with people with low stats. Their post was deleted immediately somehow, I only saw it because it was a reply to one of my posts. Anyway, I repeated him and then OP repeated me on the selectivity aspect.
Not that I wouldn't trust NYCPM, but it sounds a lot like a good story to tell your students if enrollment suddenly went in the tank. Most of the schools, especially large stand-alone schools, have a less than stellar track record when it comes to being selective with filling their classes. All of the schools got hit hard with the decrease in applicants
You go to temple right? Have you been satisfied with the experience/curriculum so far?
Agreed. That along with the new merger of the MD/DO residencies is going to lead to more pod applicants. However, the real reason many don't apply to pod school, in my opinion, is because they don't even know its an option!
I agree with this. They either don't realize that podiatry school exists or they don't know what podiatry school is, what podiatrists learn, or what they do. It can't be because "feet are gross" like some people say. Like a proctologist digging around in rectums or a gynecologist or other doctor peeping some fresh genital warts is supposed to be sexy? Nah brah, nah. Any doctor is gonna see people at their worst, so if someone can't handle feet because "they're gross", I hope that person doesn't make it into any kinda of medical school.
I only learned about it from my cousin, who's in residency right now. And even when he was telling me about it, I just assumed it was a medical school specialty. It wasn't until further down the road that I learned it was a completely separate school and what the curriculum and the career of a podiatrist really entailed haha. Its still crazy to me that no one ever hears about it in undergrad, or knows about it when its such a great career.
Personally, I wouldn't say it will necessarily send floods of applicants our way, but I do think that it will shunt some people in the direction of podiatry.
There are people in my class who did this exactly. They were in the DO applicant pool but weren't quite competitive enough and so they settled for podiatry. Dropping grade replacement is going to increase the number of people who aren't competitive enough for the DO application process and a certain percentage of those people will be just like the ones in my class and settle for podiatry. I'm certainly not saying that 100% of people who are turned away from DO will go towards DPM, but I'm saying that those people are out there and they will come. Whether that will be 10, 100, or 1000 people, who could say. If its fewer than 100 people shunted towards podiatry then it may not even be noticeable since there are year to year fluctuations in the applicant pool of nearly that much anyway. Of course it could be the opposite since there are yearly fluctuations. Perhaps even without this turn of events next year would have been a particularly large applicant pool, then people being shunted towards podiatry could make the situation much worse (or better, depending on your viewpoints). But again, who's to say.
@bobtheweazel I agree with you. Especially knowing that if one program, like Touro-NY received more than 10K applications for their DO programs, then from next year, some students will enter other professions you have stated, including Podiatry. Also, I did not know that DPT was that competitive
I can see your point for sure. I think one major thing that could potentially bring aspiring DOs to podiatry is that they will, usually, have already taken the mcat and so they would simply apply to podiatry without any major changes. If i were pre DO and shadowed, got good grades, volunteered, took the MCAT and didnt do so well on it, then i imagine id start wondering what next. Im sure Id look at PA and while some elect that route, it has always been my dream to be a doctor. (Not to mention the fact that PA schools are verrrry competitive now and require a lot more HCE). I am sure i would consider dental or other doctoral fields, but would realize id have to study for another beast of a test. I imagine that when i found out podiatry existed and that its the same pre reqs, an MCAT is required, and basically very similar requirements then i would jump at it. In fact, this may going on as we speak. Right now, some poor pre DO that retook a bunch of classes may be researching potential career paths after finding out theyre doin away with grade replacement haha. Anyway, my point is I think podiatry will continue to draw more and more pre DOs because 1. they will still be doctors and 2. that it is essentially the exact same requirements to go to DO schools, admission test and all.
