Not every pre-med out there is an overachiever. I went to a school on the quarter system, so my spring classes went until mid July. I think the first day you can submit amcas is July first...kinda problematic if you have finals in 1.5 weeks. I was also finishing up a year of p-chem, with lab reports averaging 28-30 pages. Umm....I wanted to make up for the 8000 hours of sleep I missed during the year. ok..not 8000, but you get my point. I also was taking two summer classes to meet requirements for a school...UofI. I was also working and doing research at the time. So yea, call me lazy, but I didn't want to fill out another application service.
Was that the only reason, no. Like I said earlier, I would not know how to get my hands on a DO letter. I don't think the AOA pairing you up with a doc is well known. I also was getting robbed with amcas as it is. How does it cost you $35 to ELECTRONICALLY send my app to additional schools? Last I checked, e-mails are sent for free. Oh, you have to verify my grades, well I think I pay $85 bucks up front, and for the record, a high school student could verify my grades, so let's say you pay them $10/hr, and it takes them a very generous 2 hrs to verify...that's $20. Umm...where did the rest of my money go?
So the reasons why I did not apply DO, in no particular order: different application service, I probably spent $2-3k on MD schools - I was broke. I had no way to get a DO letter. I seriously thought I would get into some of the schools I applied to. Why go through the hassle, spend more money, when I feel like my goal of getting into a med school will be achieved by the applications I've already sent out?
But with all that said, if I just had to click a box on amcas to add a DO school, I would have done so.