med school

[jon stewart]

does the med school you go to have an influence on what type of doctor you can be? Do you have to go to the top medical schools to be allowed to practice certain specialties? Or do you just need to ace the usmle?

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[sunnyjohn]

does the med school you go to have an influence on what type of doctor you can be?

Probably

Do you have to go to the top medical schools to be allowed to practice certain specialties?

No

Or do you just need to ace the usmle?

Yes

 

[rpkall]

From what I know of the culture (entering school this fall), you can go to any med school you want and practice any specialty you want, as long as you do well on the boards, get decent grades, and show extracurricular interest in the specialty you want to pursue.

Some specialties are much, much more competitive than others (radiology, dermatology, opthalmology, radiation oncology, surgery, ENT, some internal medicine subspecialties too), and specialties like pediatrics, family practice, psychiatry are not as competitive. Therefore, you need better scores on the board exams (mainly step one) and extracurriculars (research, third year related rotations with letters of recommendation) to get into the more competitive specialties.

DO schools tend to shunt their graduates towards primary care specialties (family med, peds, etc), but DO's can also practice whatever specialty they want as long as they do well on their boards and do everything possible to make themselves competitive applicants to more selective residencies.

Hope that answers some of your questions.

 

[sunnyjohn]

From what I know of the culture (entering school this fall), you can go to any med school you want and practice any specialty you want, as long as you do well on the boards, get decent grades, and show extracurricular interest in the specialty you want to pursue.

Some specialties are much, much more competitive than others (radiology, dermatology, opthalmology, radiation oncology, surgery, ENT, some internal medicine subspecialties too), and specialties like pediatrics, family practice, psychiatry are not as competitive. Therefore, you need better scores on the board exams (mainly step one) and extracurriculars (research, third year related rotations with letters of recommendation) to get into the more competitive specialties.

DO schools tend to shunt their graduates towards primary care specialties (family med, peds, etc), but DO's can also practice whatever specialty they want as long as they do well on their boards and do everything possible to make themselves competitive applicants to more selective residencies.

Hope that answers some of your questions.

Your answer was much better than mine.

 

[Law2Doc]

does the med school you go to have an influence on what type of doctor you can be? Do you have to go to the top medical schools to be allowed to practice certain specialties? Or do you just need to ace the usmle?

Everything has some effect, but from what I've heard, the boards have a far greater effect on your residency than where you go to school.
But like attracts like, so I suspect that schools with strong reputations in primary care tend to attract and turn out more primary care physicians and schools which are research powerhouses turn out more academic docs. I certainly found on interviews some schools which were a "turn off" to me because their focus didn't coincide closely with my own aspirations.