Texas vs Arkansas to establish residency for med school exclusively

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crazyhead

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Currently legally working in AR over a year and just got a job offer in TX. I am still classified as international student and trying to see which state will be best for me to reside as a future med school hopeful considering my US biology cgpa 3.3ish and sgpa 3.1ish ORM. I have observed physicians very closely for a quiet time now so I am perfectly fine with MD or DO. Please make your suggestions assuming I am a green card holder (GC) planning to apply in next 2 -3 years. Here is my analysis of AR vs TX med school

AR: 1 MD and 1 DO school currently. UAMS has to allocate 70% of seats equally to 4 districts. District 4 usually has 50-65 applicants every year of which minimum 27 must be admitted. Another district has similar stats as well. New DO school with $52K/year tuition. Must have GC to apply.
TX: Public universities must matriculate 90% TX residents; cheap tuition; can apply as long as GC application pending

I consider my current clinical volunteer, physician shadowing, research experience to be fine, but will keep in adding in future as well. Just wanted to know which TX or AR offers me better chance of steeping my foot to med school as a future nontrad med school hopeful with gpa as is.

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I think most people would tell you Texas just because it has such a well established medical school infrastructure and what not. The TDMAS or whatever the application service acronym seems to work well and theres a reason why only like 8% of texas people end up leaving the state for med school.
 
I'll give you a little of the Arkansas side. Depending on where you live (district 4) and if you can contribute some diversity to the program(female or minority) UAMS can be relatively easy to get into UAMS compared to some other state schools. Its an 45-50th percentile school (pretty average) and you can go anywhere if you work hard. There will actually be 2 DO schools in the state by the time you apply, one in Fort Smith and one in Jonesboro (I would still shoot for an MD school first). There are a ton more schools in Texas though, and some of them can give you better opportunities for residency without working quite as hard. As I start looking for residencies there are a lot of places I'm interested in going in Texas now.
My thoughts:
Best chance to get accepted-->Arkansas
Confident in application--> Texas
 
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