It doesn't seem like that many people match into allopathic residences at MSU...I mean, I guess this will all be obsolete in a few years, but I'm wondering if students aren't actively encouraged to try matching into both. Only 25% of 2015 matches were allopathic. Also, the majority of the matches are for hospitals in Michigan. Do people generally just want to stay? There a lot of great hospitals like Cleveland Clinic, Mayo, etc., but I didn't see any matches there from 2015.
MSUCOM did not really encourage/discourage us from any specialty or match. I have heard of some DO schools actively pushing students into primary care by making it difficult for them to do away rotations in other specialties, but MSUCOM seems to give us tons of freedom. There seem to be a lot more people applying allopathic match this year compared to last year, probably because of the merger and a lot of them are interested in acgme fellowships. Most people still pursue osteopathic residencies in Michigan for many reasons.
1. 2/3s of all osteopathic residencies are in Michigan. We have the best networking connections available in the DO world and students from other schools are sometimes salty about it. When we are based in hospitals with tons of spots it's a lot easier to get to know the program directors, attendings, and residents to get these spots.
2. People want to stay in Michigan. We have a lot of non traditional students which means more people are married and more have kids. I know a lot of people who basically have to stay here for their SOs/spouses/children and most are locals who just like being close to their families.
3. It's much easier getting competitive specialties in DO match vs MD match. Allopathic residencies will still favor MDs over DOs. If your dream specialty is ENT and a DO hospital offers you a spot, you are definitely going to take it! I know a Urology resident who was accepted to MSUCOM and Wayne state and he said if he chose to go to Wayne state be probably wouldn't have been competitive enough to get a Urology residency.
4. DO match is 6 weeks earlier than MD match and in the DO culture, a lot program directors will verbally offer you a spot way before the match. Most of my classmates already knew where they were going to match months ahead of time based on that communication and some were confident enough to only rank the one program that promised them a spot. Why risk skipping the DO match to do MD? Most of the people who did DO match didn't even consider the MD match.
5. I don't know if this is true or not, but my classmates believe that you get a lot more hands on training in DO residencies. Sometimes there are rumors that MD residencies don't allow you to do as much while DO residencies give you independence a lot quicker. They believe they can excel better as attendings by getting more hands on experience.
I personally was expecting to do the DO match from the very beginning which is why I didn't take the USMLE. The only reason I'm doing the MD match is because I ended up choosing psychiatry which truly does have way more options in the MD match (very few DO residencies and a lot are brand new). My friend is also doing MD match because she chose Pediatrics which also has few DO options.
The people I know who want to leave Michigan don't have much trouble doing so. They ended up matching to DO residencies in Denver and Seattle.
