Some thoughts after watching the Med School Insider Video ''Competitiveness of Med School vs Pharmacy vs Dental vs PA vs Business vs Law''

[Taskha]

Data from the AAMC roughly shows only 40% applicants matriculate to MD school. Data from AACOM in 2018 shows roughly 35% matriculate to DO schools. If we put MD and DO together, is the matriculation rate of US med school much bigger than 50%? If we also consider US IMGs who matched into US residencies, is being a US physician having a much larger chance than being a dentist or lawyer?

My point is, we don't know the exact number of student apply to both MD & DO together. If they ended up getting into an MD, he became the 65% who didn't matriculate to DO. So we don't know those who didn't matriculate to DO, didn't ended up entering in a US MD school. And vice versa.

Link of video:

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[Dr Meow]

I'm confused. Don't these statistics seem way too high?

 

[FrkyBgStok]

The thing you are missing is the self selection. Over my time here, I once read a statistic that seems to fit. I don't have a source and I don't know where I read it here. It was that about 7% of people who claim premed their freshman year end up attending medical school.

So while 40% applied, how many of those initially wanted to apply and realized that they had no chance. And dental school is different because it is such a different job than medicine so people who want to be a physician and fail, don't really go to dental school en masse. So there is a much smaller pool of people who claim dental school early in college and end up attending.

And I think you are looking at the percentages wrong. 40% of people attending MD school and 35% of people get into DO school isn't the same as 75% of people getting into medical school. Combining would give you like 37.5% of people get into medical school. So much harder to become a physician than a dentist or lawyer.

 

[DO2015CA]

Confused why this is a thread.