School questions

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Hello Pre-DO board,

I am about to graduate with a masters in Social Work. When I was undergrad I was Psych Pre-Med. I finished everything, but I decided I wanted a faster (and cheaper) way into the field of mental health. I'm very happy with my choice to go into Social Work and I learned a lot from my experience. My experiences, however, have rekindled my ambition of being a physician (specially a Psychiatrist). After a lot of reflection, I know its the move I want to make (knowing fullwell of the time and financial commitments and how to handle them). Furthermore, I'm really into the DO values and philosophy. The muscuoskulo manipulation stuff seems cool too =P

My problem is I'm not to keen on the processes of how to get into DO schools. I've found lists of schools, but not any ranking lists. My university has a lot of hand outs and such about MD, but nothing on DO. So I don't have any resources of that kind. I guess I just want to know what steps I should be taking right now. I'm looking at a 2011, 2012 admission. I know I need to take my MCAT...which I kind of fear. It was 2004 when I took Organic. Where do I go from there?

 

[beckhunter116]

First, I would read the stickies at the top of the pre-DO forum. Those have a lot of helpful links to either information about each school or about the process in general. As there are only 25 DO schools ( I think this is the current number) go to some of their websites and read about them. The most popular schools (as per SDN) are probably PCOM, DMU, CCOM, NOVA, Western, and LECOM. Of course this is subjective. Also, US News rankings ( I believe that is what you were mentioning) for MD schools is based on factors like how many students go into primary care or research, so those numbers don't really mean much.

Yes, the MCAT should be a slight concern but in reality you need to be thinking about the whole package. As in...

Do you have clinical volunteer hours? (Not hours that were a requirement of your degree) Have you shadowed any doctors (DO or MD)? Do you have any regular volunteer hours, just community stuff? What was your undergrad GPA, and science GPA? Do you have all of the pre-reqs? Good luck!

 

[justDOit84]

Volunteering is a must! I know that DO schools like to see that you went to an awareness day so that you know what their philosophy is about first-hand (that is how WesternU was). Also, if you have any research they like to see that you are into the lab side of things or at least have experienced it.

As for the ochem on the MCAT, it depends on the test that you get. If you take a prep course for the MCAT, that is basically all of the ochem you need to know. It isn't much at all.

Don't stress out about the ochem, just make sure you know how to filter through all of the extraneous information in the questions (they like to try to confuse you!). Also, the ochem is mixed in with micro, physio, immuno, embryo and other biological sciences, so the biosci section is usually a good mix of everything.

GOOD LUCK!!! Keep asking questions and you will get there!