Hi
Careofme-
First of all, congrats on your acceptance! I am a second year here at COMP and I will be happy to try and answer some of your questions...
First of all, it is true that many attained residencies are in primary care but for two main reasons. There are many many more Family Practice Residency Programs available, not just in California, but nation-wide. Also, there has been an increasing need for family practice doctors, particularly in rural and underserved areas (there has been a massive shortage for quite some time now) and I believe this is why many med students have a propensity toward this type of residency program. Other reasons for their choices may be number of years spent in residency, lifestyle, making room to have families (this may be more of an issue since the average age for incoming freshman to DO schools is usually around 25 or 26 years of age...a time when most start thinking about starting families).
However, despite all this, I do know of many (particularly at COMP) who are interested in many specialties. I believe there is a high percentage in my class who want to go into Neurology and PEDS, including myself!) If you look at the match list for the last two years, you will see a diverse list of students matching into a variety of specialties. I believe we had at least 8 match into top ER residencies and a high proportion of students this year match into Internal Medicine (I know of 4 who will be doing IM at USC in the fall).
So, if you want to do Surgery and that is the type of Residency Program you want to attain, then go for it! Just remember, post-graduate training in specialties can be very competitive, but if you take the right route into obtaining that goal then you will have no problem.
Which comes to your next question, research. COMP is not a research institution (as most DO schools are not) but I do know that COMP is shifting towards this direction (I believe melancholy touched upon this in a previous post in another thread). I would love to see COMP do more research and I believe it is already happening. In the meantime, there are various opportunites to do research at other institutions, the faculty and the clincians here are very good at helping students out in this department. If you are interested in surgery, you should look into doing research, as most competitive specialty programs not so much require it, but really just recommend it so that it will make you a competitive applicant. I, too, am currently looking into research opportunities to enhance my CV when applying for Pediatric residencies. I do know of a few professors and faculty clinicans on campus who are conducting some research and are always looking for students to get involved.
As far as the surgery rotations, I won't know until a few months from now when I have my first one at the teaching hospital we are affiliated with, but I have heard great things about these rotations. I heard you learn an awful lot!
I hope this answered some of your questions and if you have any more, feel free to ask any of us here!
Good luck and again, congrats!
Hope everyone else out there is surviving, just a few more weeks to go! And first years, Neuro is almost over! Hang in there! Hey Melancoly! how ya doing? I can't believe school is almost over and we still have not met! <img border="0" alt="[Laughy]" title="" src="graemlins/laughy.gif" />
Kira, MSII
<img border="0" alt="[Laughy]" title="" src="graemlins/laughy.gif" /> <img border="0" alt="[Lovey]" title="" src="graemlins/lovey.gif" /> 
