Increase in applicants this year

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So I got an email from PCOM-GA informing me that apparently they got over 12% more applicants coming in this year as compared to the last and that in general there was a major increase overall for all aacom schools.

Looks like DO is getting popular.
 
Same at my school (don't know the actual % increase, though).
serenade said:
So I got an email from PCOM-GA informing me that apparently they got over 12% more applicants coming in this year as compared to the last and that in general there was a major increase overall for all aacom schools.

Looks like DO is getting popular.
Click to expand...
 
serenade said:
So I got an email from PCOM-GA informing me that apparently they got over 12% more applicants coming in this year as compared to the last and that in general there was a major increase overall for all aacom schools.

Looks like DO is getting popular.
Click to expand...
Yup, just got the same email from them. Very thankful to (finally) be holding a DO acceptance :luck:
 
More MD people applying DO, and international students! Taking away our seats 🙁
 
Overall, I do feel like people are getting fewer ii's and acceptances than in years past with the same stats. But as long as you don't have horrible numbers and zero EC's and apply to enough schools, getting in is still very manageable.

As of right now, the danger area (risk for getting no interviews) seems to be around 3.2/24 or less.
 
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There is a big increase in applicants, but I think it will start plateauing in the next few years. With so much change to the system, saturation in certain fields, and increase in tuition (both undergrad and med) it will lead to students thinking twice about medicine. This goes for the overall medical community not DO vs MD.
 
ph7 said:
There is a big increase in applicants, but I think it will start plateauing in the next few years. With so much change to the system, saturation in certain fields, and increase in tuition (both undergrad and med) it will lead to students thinking twice about medicine. This goes for the overall medical community not DO vs MD.
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Seriously doubt that because there are so many ways to defer payment and physicians have a guaranteed job. The only thing to stop this monster is a good economy.
 
ph7 said:
There is a big increase in applicants, but I think it will start plateauing in the next few years. With so much change to the system, saturation in certain fields, and increase in tuition (both undergrad and med) it will lead to students thinking twice about medicine. This goes for the overall medical community not DO vs MD.
Click to expand...
But for DO schools the possible future pool of applicants is HUGE. 25-30K people do not get into MD schools each year, nevermind those with decent stats that, either being unaware or uninformed of the DO option, do not apply US MD or go caribbean. As people become more aware of the benefits of DO over IMG (or DO over no medical school), competitiveness will only continue to grow.
 
user3 said:
But for DO schools the possible future pool of applicants is HUGE. 25-30K people do not get into MD schools each year, nevermind those with decent stats that, either being unaware or uninformed of the DO option, do not apply US MD or go caribbean. As people become more aware of the benefits of DO over IMG (or DO over no medical school), competitiveness will only continue to grow.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think SDN and other sources may be the primary driver for this. I'm sure thousands of premeds peruse this site and realize how DO is becoming a very attractive option vs carrib and how dumb it is to look away from DO because "ZOMG D.O. instead of MD". Especially with the merger coming soon and everything being ACGME certified, I also expect a large increase from our Canadian brothers and other international students.
 
Why couldn't this happen in like 3 years...? :<
 
Every year is more and more competitive. A school would never send out a letter saying, "This year our applications are down! This means that your 18 MCAT score is just fine with us! We'll take what we can get!"

MD applications are up. DO applications are up. Just like they were last year. Medical school application follows the path of the economy: when the economy is bad, more people go to med school. When jobs are superfluous and well-paying, less people go to med school.
 
MedicineMan99 said:
Every year is more and more competitive. A school would never send out a letter saying, "This year our applications are down! This means that your 18 MCAT score is just fine with us! We'll take what we can get!"

MD applications are up. DO applications are up. Just like they were last year. Medical school application follows the path of the economy: when the economy is bad, more people go to med school. When jobs are superfluous and well-paying, less people go to med school.
Click to expand...

Recently someone posted a newsletter from MSUCOM. Applications and stats went down from 1983 to 1988.
 
chizledfrmstone said:
I don't know what you're worried about. From what I remember, your stats are competitive.
Click to expand...

It's in the nature of neurotic premeds that frequent these forums to have a healthy dose of paranoia and take nothing for granted.
But thanks.

This place actually helps me be less neurotic because I'm neurotic on these forums and thus I have less neuroticism for the rest of my life.
 
polylux said:
It's in the nature of neurotic premeds that frequent these forums to have a healthy dose of paranoia and take nothing for granted.
But thanks.

This place actually helps me be less neurotic because I'm neurotic on these forums and thus I have less neuroticism for the rest of my life.
Click to expand...

I like the cookie part of oreos.
 
Maybe things like DO letters of rec and/or shadowing will be viewed much more importantly as the number of apps increase to ensure peeps with high stats aren't just applying as backups. Also, they most likely PROBABLY send in their MD apps first and then DO apps later on in the cycle. Us pre-DOs have a chance! Hopefully...
 
hv92 said:
Maybe things like DO letters of rec and/or shadowing will be viewed much more importantly as the number of apps increase to ensure peeps with high stats aren't just applying as backups. Also, they most likely PROBABLY send in their MD apps first and then DO apps later on in the cycle. Us pre-DOs have a chance! Hopefully...
Click to expand...

Definitely! It's very important to apply early for DO just like MD. Quite a few people realize by January that they don't have interviews into any MD schools and decide to throw in a DO app so that they don't have to wait another year.
 
user3 said:
Overall, I do feel like people are getting fewer ii's and acceptances than in years past with the same stats. But as long as you don't have horrible numbers and zero EC's and apply to enough schools, getting in is still very manageable.

As of right now, the danger area (risk for getting no interviews) seems to be around 3.2/24 or less.
Click to expand...

Woah, woah, woah, did I just see this coming from user3???
 
user3 said:
That is mostly consistent with what I've said in the past.
Click to expand...

User3, do you think 10 DO schools for me is enough given my 3.55-3.6 cGPA, 3.25-3.3 sGPA, and 33 MCAT?

I would prefer to apply to 15 schools, but the amount of time and money (and the fact that i'll be applying to MD schools as well) it will take probably means that I have to cap out at 10 DOs.

And I will be sending out both my MD and DO primaries in June, to maximize my chances for both.
 
Sean Lee said:
User3, do you think 10 DO schools for me is enough given my 3.55-3.6 cGPA, 3.25-3.3 sGPA, and 33 MCAT?

I would prefer to apply to 15 schools, but the amount of time and money (and the fact that i'll be applying to MD schools as well) it will take probably means that I have to cap out at 10 DOs.

And I will be sending out both my MD and DO primaries in June, to maximize my chances for both.
Click to expand...
5-10 DO and 15-20 MD would be my target. Choose your MD schools carefully.
 
The era of 3.2 GPA and 24 MCAT for a DO acceptance is over. I am glad that I don't have to go thru this process again.
 
The increase in applicants isn't really surprising, given the crappy job outlook of the economy and job market. The days of getting a high paying job right after getting a bachelors degree (other than engineering) are long gone. A lot of the other professional degrees like law and pharmacy are over saturated. The medical field is the only professional field that isn't over saturated yet. If someone wants a guaranteed high paying job after getting their professional degree, medicine is the only field that can still offer that, so it's going to be lucrative to more people.
 
gocougs339 said:
The increase in applicants isn't really surprising, given the crappy job outlook of the economy and job market. The days of getting a high paying job right after getting a bachelors degree (other than engineering) are long gone. A lot of the other professional degrees like law and pharmacy are over saturated. The medical field is the only professional field that isn't over saturated yet. If someone wants a guaranteed high paying job after getting their professional degree, medicine is the only field that can still offer that, so it's going to be lucrative to more people.
Click to expand...
This is why medicine is a great investment. No matter if a good or bad economy is going on, you make money, and statistics show salaries very much keep up or exceed inflation. We should be very vigilant of our profession by not over saturating. This is why I believe the ACGME married in the osteopathic residencies. It's time to drive out IMG and keep our people succeeding.
 
AlbinoHawk DO said:
This is why medicine is a great investment. No matter if a good or bad economy is going on, you make money, and statistics show salaries very much keep up or exceed inflation. We should be very vigilant of our profession by not over saturating. This is why I believe the ACGME married in the osteopathic residencies. It's time to drive out IMG and keep our people succeeding.
Click to expand...
FMGs are incredibly valuable to the US medical system. The majority of providers for the underserved are FMGs, and the only study ever done to compare quality of care between FMGs and US grads concluded that they had significantly lower mortality rates than US grads, who had significantly lower mortality rates than USIMGs. We should cut off that Carib pipeline though via increased domestic competition.
 
Mad Jack said:
FMGs are incredibly valuable to the US medical system. The majority of providers for the underserved are FMGs, and the only study ever done to compare quality of care between FMGs and US grads concluded that they had significantly lower mortality rates than US grads, who had significantly lower mortality rates than USIMGs. We should cut off that Carib pipeline though via increased domestic competition.
Click to expand...

To clarify for some who may misunderstand your explanation, you mean statistically significant as opposed to the more standard use of the term significant. There was a statistically significant difference (slightly lower rates, but with statistical power), but they were not significantly different (i.e. it was a small difference, its not like mortality increased by like 20% under US MDs when compared to foreign grads, etc.).
 
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/29/8/1461.full

US-trained physicians have CHF mortality rates 9% higher when compared to FMGs, while USIMGs have a 16% increased mortality rate when compared to FMGs. I would consider that significant, and not just statistically so. Thus was a strong study with a huge sample size (>250,000 admissions) and excellent p values, so this is no anomaly.
 
BestDoctorEver said:
The era of 3.2 GPA and 24 MCAT for a DO acceptance is over. I am glad that I don't have to go thru this process again.
Click to expand...
Well yes and no...it still wouldn't surprise me if someone with that applied to all the new schools on day 1 and got in somewhere. There were people with about that that got into schools like LMU LUCOM and WVSOM even this year. But yea, not as easily as in the past.
 
Mad Jack said:
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/29/8/1461.full

US-trained physicians have CHF mortality rates 9% higher when compared to FMGs, while USIMGs have a 16% increased mortality rate when compared to FMGs. I would consider that significant, and not just statistically so. Thus was a strong study with a huge sample size (>250,000 admissions) and excellent p values, so this is no anomaly.
Click to expand...

No one said it was an anomaly. In fact there are many reasons why this could be the case... [removed due to inconsistency]. Years since medical school was also found in the study to be well correlated with mortality as was specialty board certification (of which 83% of US grads, 81% of non-US IMGs and 67% of US-IMGs were in the study).

In any case, again, it isn't the whole truth to someone who doesn't know the study. A 9% increase in mortality doesn't mean say, if the mortality rate for non-US IMGs in the study was 5.4% (overall average mortality rate in the study) than the rate for US grads was say 14.4%. In reality again, if the rate were 5.4% for non-US IMGs, than it would be 5.9% for US grads and 6.3% for US-IMGs.

So again, for clarification for individuals who might misunderstand your post, the difference in mortality rates is on the order of ~0.5% between US grads and non-US citizen IMGs and ~0.9% between US-IMGs and non-US IMGs.

EDIT: Also to be clear that 9% & 16% that you stated wasn't just for CHF, but was for both CHF & acute MI cases combined.
 
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hallowmann said:
No one said it was an anomaly. In fact there are many reasons why this could be the case, the most glaring being that the average non-US IMG likely practiced prior to coming to the US or simply attended a school that had a higher level of clinical training built into medical school compared to US schools where the majority of clinical training occurs after medical school. Years since medical school was also found in the study to be well correlated with mortality (no big surprise there) as was specialty board certification (of which 83% of US grads, 81% of non-US IMGs and 67% of US-IMGs were in the study).

In any case, again, it isn't the whole truth to someone who doesn't know the study. A 9% increase in mortality doesn't mean say, if the mortality rate for non-US IMGs in the study was 5.4% (overall average mortality rate in the study) than the rate for US grads was say 14.4%. In reality again, if the rate were 5.4% for non-US IMGs, than it would be 5.9% for US grads and 6.3% for US-IMGs.

So again, for clarification for individuals who might misunderstand your post, the difference in mortality rates is on the order of ~0.5% between US grads and non-US citizen IMGs and ~0.9% between US-IMGs and non-US IMGs.
Click to expand...
Given that there are a million people admitted yearly for CHF exacerbations, and 500,00 acute MI patients, an increase in mortality of a mere 0.5% translates to 7,500 dead people. That's a lot of coffins in my opinion.

The difference in quality is very likely due not to additional time in practice, as the longer a physician had been out of medical school, the more likely their patients were to die. On the one hand, that is surprising because we would tend to believe that experience and continuing education would reduce mortality. But on the other, it seems that no amount of continuing education and experience can make up for the substantially improved amount of knowledge contained in an up-to-date medical school curriculum as compared to one from decades past. The more likely reason that they outperform US grads is that to even make it into a residency in the US they must be a superstar back home, then perform exceptionally on a test that isn't even in their primary language, then complete what is often a second residency. So our FMGs are, more often than not, world-class physicians that we acquire via their filtration by multiple training and certification processes. Losing them would certainly be a blow to our medical system, as they make up a disproportionate amount of our medical school educators, researchers, and the physicians that care for the underserved, in addition to their already excellent clinical skills.
 
Sean Lee said:
User3, do you think 10 DO schools for me is enough given my 3.55-3.6 cGPA, 3.25-3.3 sGPA, and 33 MCAT?

I would prefer to apply to 15 schools, but the amount of time and money (and the fact that i'll be applying to MD schools as well) it will take probably means that I have to cap out at 10 DOs.

And I will be sending out both my MD and DO primaries in June, to maximize my chances for both.
Click to expand...

Don't apply to any DO schools. Save your money for more MD secondaries.

Make sure the HBCUs, Wright State, and Rosalind Franklin are on your list regardless of your race and state of residence.
 
hallowmann said:
No one said it was an anomaly. In fact there are many reasons why this could be the case, the most glaring being that the average non-US IMG likely practiced prior to coming to the US or simply attended a school that had a higher level of clinical training built into medical school compared to US schools where the majority of clinical training occurs after medical school. Years since medical school was also found in the study to be well correlated with mortality (no big surprise there) as was specialty board certification (of which 83% of US grads, 81% of non-US IMGs and 67% of US-IMGs were in the study).

In any case, again, it isn't the whole truth to someone who doesn't know the study. A 9% increase in mortality doesn't mean say, if the mortality rate for non-US IMGs in the study was 5.4% (overall average mortality rate in the study) than the rate for US grads was say 14.4%. In reality again, if the rate were 5.4% for non-US IMGs, than it would be 5.9% for US grads and 6.3% for US-IMGs.

So again, for clarification for individuals who might misunderstand your post, the difference in mortality rates is on the order of ~0.5% between US grads and non-US citizen IMGs and ~0.9% between US-IMGs and non-US IMGs.

EDIT: Also to be clear that 9% & 16% that you stated wasn't just for CHF, but was for both CHF & acute MI cases combined.
Click to expand...
Oh, missed the acute MI. Let me edit my other post.
 
dyspareunia said:
Don't apply to any DO schools. Save your money for more MD secondaries.

Make sure the HBCUs, Wright State, and Rosalind Franklin are on your list regardless of your race and state of residence.
Click to expand...
That's an awfully low sGPA to go all-in on MD, IMO. If being a physician is your priority, throw some DO into the mix if you want to get in this year. If you want to be an MD, throw more MD apps in and accept that your chances of being a physician are greatly reduced without additional coursework, and that you might have to wait an additional cycle or two before you get a bite on your app.
 
Mad Jack said:
Given that there are a million people admitted yearly for CHF exacerbations, and 500,00 acute MI patients, an increase in mortality of a mere 0.5% translates to 7,500 dead people. That's a lot of coffins in my opinion.

The difference in quality is very likely due not to additional time in practice, as the longer a physician had been out of medical school, the more likely their patients were to die. On the one hand, that is surprising because we would tend to believe that experience and continuing education would reduce mortality. But on the other, it seems that no amount of continuing education and experience can make up for the substantially improved amount of knowledge contained in an up-to-date medical school curriculum as compared to one from decades past. The more likely reason that they outperform US grads is that to even make it into a residency in the US they must be a superstar back home, then perform exceptionally on a test that isn't even in their primary language, then complete what is often a second residency. So our FMGs are, more often than not, world-class physicians that we acquire via their filtration by multiple training and certification processes. Losing them would certainly be a blow to our medical system, as they make up a disproportionate amount of our medical school educators, researchers, and the physicians that care for the underserved, in addition to their already excellent clinical skills.
Click to expand...

On an individual level any increased mortality is important (i.e. any, even one, extra dead person is meaningful). But again, my goal was to clarify the difference between significant and statistically significant for someone who might not understand the difference. Someone reading your posts might interpret "siginficant increase in mortality" as a difference of 20 percentage points, not <1.

For the second part, yes, you're correct. That is a plausible reason.
 
Mad Jack said:
That's an awfully low sGPA to go all-in on MD, IMO. If being a physician is your priority, throw some DO into the mix if you want to get in this year. If you want to be an MD, throw more MD apps in and accept that your chances of being a physician are greatly reduced without additional coursework, and that you might have to wait an additional cycle or two before you get a bite on your app.
Click to expand...

So here's the thing, his stats aren't going to guarantee admission to the best DO schools, which are likely the 5-10 he would apply to. So essentially he's throwing money at AACOMAS for nothing. He's better off applying to 12-15 more MD schools, which I think based on application fees would cost about as much as 7-8 DO schools. Better odds for the cost, which is important since he says he's limited on funds.

Averages for MD are still around 3.7/3.7/31. Assuming the rest of his application is at least average, he'll get into an MD school if he applies to 30+ schools including all the ones known to accept people with lower stats. Or he could spend money applying to low-average DO schools, but that's a waste imo.
 
dyspareunia said:
So here's the thing, his stats aren't going to guarantee admission to the best DO schools, which are likely the 5-10 he would apply to. So essentially he's throwing money at AACOMAS for nothing. He's better off applying to 12-15 more MD schools, which I think based on application fees would cost about as much as 7-8 DO schools. Better odds for the cost, which is important since he says he's limited on funds.

Averages for MD are still around 3.7/3.7/31. Assuming the rest of his application is at least average, he'll get into an MD school if he applies to 30+ schools including all the ones known to accept people with lower stats. Or he could spend money applying to low-average DO schools, but that's a waste imo.
Click to expand...
The matching difference between an average DO school and a higher "tier" one isn't all that great. I'd say do a mix of DO schools myself, because, really, you're going to be looking at roughly the same odds of matching in the NRMP because most MD programs really don't care what DO school you went to. I guess it also depends on their career goals- if you don't know, push harder up the MD side, but if you have a very strong idea of what you're looking for and it's something a DO can reasonably match, add more DO to the mix.
 
dyspareunia said:
Don't apply to any DO schools. Save your money for more MD secondaries.

Make sure the HBCUs, Wright State, and Rosalind Franklin are on your list regardless of your race and state of residence.
Click to expand...

Isn't Wright State a state school? I didn't think that accepted a ton of OOS?
 
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