Try to get off waitlist or reapply?

All medical schools in the United States are excellent medical schools that can get you into whichever residency you want. It's my suggestion that you do both of the things you described in your post. You should both try to get off the waitlists at the schools that have waitlisted you AND you should submit another application in June in the event that you are not accepted. As many have said before me, it can color your application negatively if you receive an acceptance and don't take it.

Finally, I want to encourage you to take your father's advice, assuming you actually wish to be a physician. Since your father is a physician, doesn't it seem reasonable that he would have a better grasp of the situation?

 

Think of it this way: will you be able to respect yourself if you have to settle for a subpar medical education?

 

I'm certain that your godfather has the best of intentions. However, unless he is LITERALLY the chair of the admissions committee of one of those top 20 schools, taking his advice would mean taking a gamble on your career. Going to a US MD school all but guarantees you a residency spot assuming adequate performance on Step I, and prestigious fields and hospitals are accessible from any of them if your qualifications are good enough.

 

Who's going to medical school? You or your godfather? Do what you feel is right. But if I were you, I'd go to any US medical school in a heartbeat if given the chance.

 

You should both attempt to get in this year and prepare your application to be submitted as soon as possible (June 3rd is coming very quickly).

And frankly, no one worth a damn cares about where you went to medical school any more than they care about when you took your last dump.

Good luck, OP.

 

Also, is going to a different medical school worth 1 year with a physicians salary?

just tryn' be economical brah

 

Why did you apply there in the first place? If you re-apply you're loosing 1 year's salary as physician, you are expending more money on a new application cycle, and you will have to explain it( I think). It's your call.

 

Did you apply to DO schools or just MD? If you get off the wait list, go to medical school. Getting into residency is so much more than where you went to medical school. Where you went to school means almost nothing when applying to residency. The caveat is if you went to a foreign medical school. That can be a bit challenging and is a discussion for elsewhere.

You are stressing over something that may be a moot point. You do not have an acceptance from either of the schools you are wait-listed for. Take a critical evaluation of your application and strategy. Where are there holes in your application? What can you change now (not GPA, probably wouldn't take MCAT a third time, etc)? Focus on improving your application and how you look to acceptance committees. You may not be a "top tier" candidate which may mean you have to "settle" for a "lower" school. I use those terms loosely because I think they are a misnomer. Facilities and curriculum are things you can worry about when given a choice of more than one acceptance. Having a new carpet in the lecture hall will not help you learn any better. Medical school is very much user dependent so you will be one of the biggest factors to how well you learn the material and how well you improve your residency application.

This is a little deceiving. Yes, if you go to a US MD school your chances of getting into a residency are higher than if you go to a foreign medical school. That being said, if you aren't a strong resident applicant then you may end up scrambling and the prestigious fields and hospitals will not be accessible to you.

The people with arguably the highest chances of matching into residency are the DO students. A little known secret is that they can apply to DO and MD residency programs which means they greatly increase the number of residency options available to them. The DO and MD GME entities are supposed to merge at some point (which may not happen in the end) which will make this possible for MD students, but for now DO students can apply to both MD and DO residency programs. I know a lot of friends who went to a DO school and matched into competitive residencies that were ACGME (MD) [Derm, Radiology, etc].

There are two separate matches for DO and MD residencies BUT DO students applying to MD programs can pre-match. They can sign a contract that guarantees them a spot (legally binding) in that residency before the match.

Happy to look over your application. PM me if you would like.

 

Go. Going forward focus on the best damn Step 1 exam you can get and aim for the best residency in the specialty of your choice. There are no guarantees in life and it would suck to be at this point next year and have no offers compared with being at the end of M1 year at this time next year.

 

http://www.nrmp.org/match-data/main-residency-match-data/

According to the most recent survey of residency program directors, in considering approx. 40 factors as to which applicants to offer interviews for their programs, going to ANY US med school is a more important factor than graduating from a well known med school. I am a grad of an arguably “mid tier” med school. My classmates and I are currently residents at Yale, Columbia, Michigan, Emory, Duke, Northwestern, WUSL, Georgetown, UCs (including UCSF), U Wash, among others. These residencies include derm, plastics, radiology, and anesthesia among others.

The name of your med school carries much less weight than your actual med school performance (Step I especially, GPA, clerkship grades, evaluations, etc) when trying to get a residency interview offer.

As a note some of my classmates who excelled in school choose not to try to match into well known programs for reasons such as significant other might be a second year MD or PhD student and they didn’t want to separate, or for other family/personal reasons. The point is don’t look at a med school’s match list as the list doesn’t provide any insight into a graduating med students’ reasoning in deciding where to try to match.

If you get off a waitlist, start med school, don’t reapply.

 

Potentially throwing away your only opportunity to go to a medical school because you wanted to try again and land at a school with more prestige is a pretty stupid thing to do imo. Like everyone is saying, your performance in medical school is going to determine what you can do, not the school. It seems that you are still on the waitlists now, you aren't even into a school this year, a slightly better app won't even necessarily gain you more interviews due to the huge applicant pool and being a reapplicant, much less guarantee you an admission to a higher tier school.

I would try your hardest to get into one of your waitlist schools, you don't have the luxury of trying to choose your ideal school, so go with whatever you can get. Other than that, prepare for a reapply, 2 waitlists is hardly a guarantee or even a good shot of getting in this year, so plan for your retry.

 

Applying earlier is good. Having a job during the gap year is good. Having a better MCAT is good. Having some experience with interviews acquired in the last cycle is good.
Don't give up on those waitlists, even to the bitter end, but get out there with a 2015 application next week, too.