...plenty of DPMs that were smart enough to have gone MD or DO if they wanted...
...The top 10 percent of any school could’ve gotten into MD or DO school easily.
I don't know... I have never bought this. Not even when I started pod school. Still do not.
Some of the very top DPM students *might* have been able get DO consideration with a Mcat re-study/retake or a SMP degree or whatever. Might.
I simply don't believe the pod students who say they got into DO or MD school or whatever. It just doesn't make sense. Maybe they were
waitlisted? We did have a few in our class who had flunked out at Caribb MD schools (I think most of them flunked out or went to 5yr program in pod also). Personally, I didn't even apply to MD as I knew my Mcat was bottom end accept range yet I had no chance as my gpa was crap as I partied a ton in undergrad.
😉
...I think 95% of podiatry students are there as a backup (to med/dent/vet/etc). We see those people tearing through SDN all the time... pre med, then pre dent, then change to pharma or pod or whatever. And yes, maybe 4% of pod students are there because their parent is a pod and they have a lucrative practice to step into right after residency, yes. (but plenty of DPMs have kids who go to med school also... I know of more than a few DPM kids who are ortho, cardiologist, rad, onco, etc etc).
... No podiatry school has an MD/DO level MCAT average....
...Dr. Smith at DMU historically wrote about correlation of MCAT/GPA to measures of success in podiatry. ...
Yes, 100%. It's not a hard and fast rule, but the higher gpa/mcat people will generally do better in pod school, med school, etc. Specific to pod school, I'm sure people with higher Mcat tend to do better on boards/match/outcomes you mentioned. DMU does pretty often best on matric stats... and consequently well in match.
I was just saying above that DMU was the one that consistently did the "medical student" and "medical school" thing (AZ was brand new back then, but maybe they do it now also). I have no idea if they are told to do that by faculty or admins... or if it is/was just their pod student culture. It's inconsequential in the end, but it was a 'wtf' moment out on rotations as the other Temple, Scholl, etc students just say 'pod school' and 'podiatry' regularly.
...At the end of the day, we can call ourselves whatever we like. The things we need for podiatrists remain the same:
Lower tuition.
Fewer schools/grads.
Higher quality and more uniform residency experience for grads.
[better jobs or better insurance pays naturally follow if those things are in place]
This is a formula of demand+training+quality that works well for some professions, and other ones do a poor job of it.
As it sits now, we have some star podiatry grads from all of the schools (more from some than others), but we have a lot of DPMs out there with questionable surgical training, trouble finding/keeping good jobs, opting for rural or govt employ or even non-op due to the saturation, major career satisfaction, etc. It's a tough job market, the debt is huge, and the training/results are quite varied. Unless some things change, it'll stay that way regardless of "podiatrist" or "foot and ankle surgeon" or "med school" or "fellowship." 🤠