What you guys are failing to realize is that there are exceptions to every rule. All schools will tell you they prefer MCAT... some will say it's absolutely required. Then, you will find out about "rare circumstances" where people got in with DAT, GRE, etc. Were those students ones with a very high gpa? Maybe... or maybe it was late in the cycle, the school was not yet at their enrollment cap, and they needed to fill seats in a hurry to make more tuition dollars. This same issue occurs with residencies: some will say they have a high requisite gpa or class rank, but many will be willing to drop their standards and accept poorer students in years where they get little interest or some/all of their spots go to scramble.
Regardless of which pod school says what regarding admissions tests, the bottom line is that the pod applicant pool needs to improve. Harkless, the new dean of Western will tell you this, and it's a key part of his plans. Higher admissions standards will obviously improve our profession, and it will also make attrition rates improve and the residency spot balance easier to predict. We need to go to MCAT only, and we need to be done with rolling admissions that basically say "if it's April or May and you are still on a wait list for MD/DO, go ahead and apply to pod." To me, the rolling admissions is potentially inviting MD and dent wannabe students who are going to have a bad attitude and a chip on their shoulder from the start. A lot of those late acceptance students end up feeling "limited" and dejected since they jumped into a career they did little research on beforehand... although they usually later realize that pod is a relatively great and broad scope specialty once they start clinic/residency and experience other medical and surgical services.
In the end, our pod school app pools are not bad. They are better in some years and worse in others. Pod schools certainly get better apps than a lot of other health professions grad schools, and hopefully that will continue to improve as awareness of the average level of DPM training and income rises. Dent school avg admission stats were significantly below MD schools a couple decades ago, but now many dent schools are pretty close. Many PA schools also had pretty relaxed admissions in the past, but they are now pretty competitive in most areas. Health care professions are good jobs, and I think that, all things considered (sense of reward, interesting cases, income, prestige, family time, etc), podiatry is a fantastic job.
