Nobody requires that you take USMLE step 2 for licensing purposes. COMLEX fulfills all legal requirements in all 50 states.
So it comes down to the individual program, how competitive it is? And if they will regard you as an equal applicant as a DO. How many hoops you want to jump through to be the best applicant.
My advice is if you took USMLE Step 1 and did reasonably well on it, there's no need to jump through the hoop and paying the extra money to take USMLE Step 2. Step 1 score is the bigger factor, like was said earlier, many applicants MD and DO don't even have their step 2 scores released before match day. However if you didn't take it, or didn't score well + you want to go to a competitive path program, that's the only scenario I could see going through the trouble for.
Extra piece of advice, in case you didn't know. As a DO, you are considered an "independent applicant" in the match process. Therefore you legally do not have to even go through the ERAS match system, and you can sign a contract with any MD program, at any time. As a DO you are only legally obligated to the DO match system if you choose to apply, though as you already know there are no DO path programs. MD program people familiar with DO's know about this loophole in the system, and quality applicants can take advantage of this. So if you sure of where you want to go, you can actually mention it to the program director during interviews and see if they bite. Great little benefit of being a DO that many don't know about and if I were an MD I would be pissed off about. Though in the next few years I'm sure that loophole will be closed.
