Ok Im stepping in here to dispel some of the things you are bringing up:
VCOM Viriginia is not directly related to VTech. Virginia Tech Carilion Clinic Med school takes precedence over research there. VCOM CC isnt related to any major university. VCOM Auburn is a major university in sports medicine, NOT biomedical research.
CCOM is not begging anyone to do research, i know of a student there who cant even find research opps there and the difficulty of finding across institutions is not something you can blanket under a statement of "oh well its there". PCOM students are in direct competition to medical students from Penn State, UPenn, and Temple. These are MD medical students who probably already have significant research experience as compared to a good majority of DO students whose research experience is shallow in comparison. So tell me, who would the PI pick, the MD student with three years of UG research experience and a co authorship to a pub/poster? or a DO student with no research experience or experience that spans as far as "ran some pcrs and western blots".
I cant keep saying this but burrell is NOT affiliated with a large scale research university. NMSU pales in comparison to UNM health sciences. NMSU has 20 something projects, yes one with Fred Hutchison they are piggy backing. UNM is a NIH appointed NCI cancer research center. And you would still me that youd choose BCOM over UNM School of Medicine if you had both acceptances?
Also, UAMS is obv not a top performing MD school but hell, no DO school even compares! They have their own teaching hospital and more importantly they have a high performing research uni backing them. If you want to deny the fact that at this present moment UAMS has 166 nih grants with the majority of those being R01s (meaning they have real research faculty that students can work with) that is currenlty present on the nih reporter then idk what to tell you. Moreover, the fact you would pick a DO school that doesnt even SHOW UP on the nih reporter (because they have zero NIH grants) just because Little Rock is "the worst city ever" is foolish. Do students turn down Johns Hopkins for med school because its in baltimore (also one of the most violent and crime ridden cities in the US)? How about Duke because durham NC is dangerous too? no. because the opportunities they would have there in comparison to 99% of DO schools is not even on the same playing field.
I know you are trying to push this notion that DO schools at "the top" beat low tier MD schools but...they dont. And if you keep saying this and believing this then we can never get to a point where we as a profession (the AOA, the students that represent the DO profession) can improve to actually get there.
There is nothing wrong with improving where we are at.
http://uamshealth.com/hospitalandclinics/hospital/
http://research.uams.edu/files/2015/10/Awards_Sept-2015.pdf
http://cancer.unm.edu/research/programs/