What % get scholarships

[indymed]

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I am interested in the army medical scholarship for medical school. I am wondering what percentage of people applying actually get the scholarships? How selective is it?

 

[moniagrl]

i am not exactly sure about how many people get it but what i heard, each medical recruitment area (i dont know how big that is) has a quata to meet. this year, the area i am in needed to find 16 new recruits. three of those were Army HPSP scholarship people. the others were other health personel(5 nurses and i dont remember what the rest were)

in the january HPSP board 12 people were rejected

 

[idq1i]

If your MCAT is above a 30, you have an excellent shot of getting it. I applied for the very last board meeting (in mid-June) and I got an automatic acceptance with a 35

 

[moniagrl]

yea the better your scores are, the easier it is to get in. they say the average scores are a 26 on MCAT. my scores were above that so i can't comment on what scores u need but i have seen people say that they got in with lower MCAT scores than the average.

also it depends on how good your recruiter is at their job and how good they are at writing an LOR. i actually think if u have great LOR's then u will get in no matter what. that is what i had 🙂

but be careful cause one of the peole who wrote me a good letter for med school wrote me a negative one 4 teh army. make sure your recruiter checks 2 make sure letters are good

a good recruiter makes the procass painless a bad one makes it hell(i have heard bad stories)

 

[ddmo]

I might be wrong, but I think I read somewhere that an MCAT above 29 will get you automatic acceptance.

 

[idq1i]

Originally posted by ddmoore54
I might be wrong, but I think I read somewhere that an MCAT above 29 will get you automatic acceptance.

Along with a 3.5 for a GPA. I got the impression that they like the MCAT more.

 

[texdrake]

They do like the MCAT more but you must have both. I had a 29 MCAT which qualified by gpa was not quite 3.5 so I had to do the whole application..guess it worked as I have that pesky Lt. in front of my name now.

 

[ek6]

Hey guys, I just started the application process and have almost finished my initial application. I sent my AMCAS app and all to my recruiter yesterday. Any tips?

Also, are you guys definitely in? I'm still wavering a little (if I get into a SUNY, I may go there on loans). I like the idea of the military and think it may be a good fit for me. I just wonder how much you'd be limited when it comes to research and fellowships. Do you guys know whether you can defer your commitment, if say, you want to do a research fellowship before your active duty starts?

 

[militarymd]

All that stuff you want to do will be ok if operational needs are filled first.

Having said that, the military has physicians leaving left and right, and many billets are being left unfilled.

So the stuff you want to do....well, chances aren't good.

 

[ek6]

militarymd - I've gotten a lot of information from you and have gotten the gist that the military is a huge sacrifice to make once you reap the benefits of paid tuition, etc. Just out of curiosity (since I'm familiar with how it all works in med school, with obc, the military match, and even residency), once you're done with residency and on active duty, what are the nitty-gritty details of how the system works? In other words:
1. do you apply for positions and put your preference for the hospitals you want to work at? walter reed, etc
2. once there, who is "technically" your superior (a CO?) ? what the heck is this "detailer" that I always hear bad things about?
3. how do they let you know if you're going to be deployed?
You can PM me if you prefer, but I'm just curious as to how different it is from civilian work.

 

[militarymd]

Originally posted by ek6
militarymd - I've gotten a lot of information from you and have gotten the gist that the military is a huge sacrifice to make once you reap the benefits of paid tuition, etc. Just out of curiosity (since I'm familiar with how it all works in med school, with obc, the military match, and even residency), once you're done with residency and on active duty, what are the nitty-gritty details of how the system works? In other words:
1. do you apply for positions and put your preference for the hospitals you want to work at? walter reed, etc
2. once there, who is "technically" your superior (a CO?) ? what the heck is this "detailer" that I always hear bad things about?
3. how do they let you know if you're going to be deployed?
You can PM me if you prefer, but I'm just curious as to how different it is from civilian work.

The detailer is the person who writes the orders that stations you at your duty station. So this detailer is a very powerful person. Unfortunately, the detailer may or may not be an honorable officer. Some of my complaints in my previous threads relate specifically to detailers. There is a saying,"How can you tell when a detailer is lying?" The answer is, "When he is talking." In my experience (11 years active duty), 3 out of 4 times when I changed duty stations, that saying was true.

The detailer is supposed to make decisions in conjunction with the specialty advisor for your specific specialty to decide where you ultimately get stationed. So your input, along with the needs of the military, along with your specialty advisor and detailer ultimately decides where you go. Your wants on location comes last in the list of things that go into the decision process. My specialty advisor was a piece of work too.....never answered my calls or e-mails.

Having said that, you may be lucky and have a good detailer / advisor who will work with you on where you go, but I would recommend not counting on that.

Once you get to your duty station, there will be a "chain of command" that determines who you work for. At a major institution, you will have a department head, etc. like any regular hospital. At small commands, you may wind up working for a nurse....once again, I would probably count on that if you wind up at a small command. It happened to me.

As far as deployments, you will be assigned to "platforms" or "units" that can get deployed when there is a need. Sometimes you will have lead time, sometimes not. I got sent to Iraq on 5 days notice. Others had 3 weeks of lead time. Some billets are non-deployable, but usually they are reserved for senior officers, or for people stationed in remote duty stations.

good luck

 

[ek6]

geez...I'm going to start calling you militarybritannica - thanks for your info! how often do you get deployed (granted, I know this must vary)? In other words, would it be totally unrealistic to expect to stay at one domestic military center for your entire 4 years of active duty? I take it, this must depend on specialty too.

sorry if this is too many questions too quickly, but I've gotta milk you active duty md's for my own good and the good of any other hpsp'er reading this.

thanks again.

 

[NJEMT1]

Originally posted by ek6
how often do you get deployed (granted, I know this must vary)? In other words, would it be totally unrealistic to expect to stay at one domestic military center for your entire 4 years of active duty? I take it, this must depend on specialty too.

My Army recruiter told me you can be deployed every 18 months for 90 days and my Air Force recruiter told me you can be deployed every 15 months for 60 days. Are these figures correct?

 

[militarymd]

After your residency, it is not unreasonable to stay at one place for 4 years. Orders will be for 2 to 3 years, but you can extend if your command approves, and the detailer says it is ok, but you may deploy from where you are stationed. If you get sent overseas, and that is certainly a possibility for your first duty station, you would probably want to move back to the states before you get out.

Once again, everything is variable, based on the needs of the military, your specialty, your chain of command.....just about any scenario you can envision can happen, but you can't count on it. That's one of the things I hate about the military. None of what happens has anything to do with the kind of person you are, but on the kinds of persons that you work for, and that changes on a year to year basis.

The number of deployments are based on the op tempo of the units that you would be in support of. So, pretty much you won't know until you get your orders. Certain specialties definitely deploy more than others.

 

[mitchconnie]

"My Army recruiter told me you can be deployed every 18 months for 90 days and my Air Force recruiter told me you can be deployed every 15 months for 60 days. Are these figures correct"

In my experience, these numbers are a VERY general guideline, and are a complete fantasy in most cases. How often you are deployed will depend heavily on what you do. General surgery, ortho, anesthesia, and ER will deploy relentlessly. Once the current conflicts began, surgeons at my last base were invariably deployed for 6 of every 15 months.

The original idea (in the AF at least) was to keep your life predictable by having a 15 month cycle in which you were only vulnerable to be deployed during three of those months. But there are nowhere near enough surgeons to cover that many rotations, and many have excuses not to go--like bogus medical conditions or administrators with no actual surgical skills. So guys were sent to the Middle East, and no one was available to replace them for months at a time.

In my experience, it was a very political decision-making process and the newer, lower-ranking guys got the shaft and were sent to the desert repeatedly.

Of course, people in some specialties or at some bases with less deployment taskings may never have to go anywhere. It's almost impossible to predict years in advance how much you'll be deployed once you are on active duty.

 

[indymed]

For active duty, how much does your input matter on were you are assigned? Like if I wanted to be on the west coast, would they take that into consideration?

Also, how many military hospitals could we say there are in the USA? How many of these are army?

 

[militarymd]

Like I said, your input is the last thing on the list of things that goes into the decision process. I get the feeling that you want me to say there is a good chance based your needs....let me repeat......your needs come last. It is a crap shoot whether you get what you want.

If your father is a flag officer or if you are a flag officer, then chances get better, but otherwise, I would recommmend on not expecting to get your desired location. That is the only way to approach this to not get disappointed.

 

[mpatel1080]

When I applied 3 years ago the recruiter told me that if you had 30/3.5 at minimum you will definately be accepted. That was 3 years ago though.

 

[edinOH]

Originally posted by militarymd
None of what happens has anything to do with the kind of person you are, but on the kinds of persons that you work for, and that changes on a year to year basis.

Truer words have never been written. This is probably the key to understanding military life.

One thing I found interesting is that on one hand it is obviously in the military's best interest if they only accept people who have a firm grasp of what military service entails, while on the other they have automatic acceptance rates for people with certain scores. I don't know if this truly is an official policy or not, but I too understood this to be the case four years ago when I was contemplating signing on. After spending five years in Navy Medicine as a corpsman, I'm glad I didn't.

I enjoyed my time in the Navy and doubt I would be where I am today without it. But then again I'm glad I'm done with it. I think alot of ex-military feel this way.

 

[Spang]

HPSP, flight school, the Academy, whatever, comes down to this: If you take the money, they own you. Plain and simple. If you think anything different than that, even if words to the contrary come out of the recruiter's mouth, you're deluding yourself. If you want to be a brilliant pediatric CT surgeon and make the news separating Equadorian conjoined twins and be on the Today Show with Matt and Katie, don't take the freakin' HPSP.

If you want, take the money, then do what they tell you, wherever they tell you to do it, and get on with it. Cripes. It's 3 or 4 years out of your life.

Look inside and ask yourself "can I do (whatever-the-worst-would-be) for that amount of time and feel like it was worth the tuition?" If no one inside there says "yes" go fill out your FASFA and let the rest of us get busy doing our part. I for one won't miss you.

I had shi^^y deplowments, missed alot of birthdays and holidays and hung my a$$ out there in bad weather and dark-of-night almost everyday, for sometimes trivial reasons. But I got my first choice of billets 3 out of 4 times, bought some nice property, put some money in the bank, made some great friends and felt proud to have served.

My .02, probably worth less than that.

Spang

 

[rgporter]

Originally posted by mitchconnie
[BIn my experience, these numbers are a VERY general guideline, and are a complete fantasy in most cases. How often you are deployed will depend heavily on what you do. General surgery, ortho, anesthesia, and ER will deploy relentlessly. Once the current conflicts began, surgeons at my last base were invariably deployed for 6 of every 15 months....[/B]

I am currently applying for a Navy HPSP spot. I like the idea of serving my country and that is why I am applying. Having said that, I plan on doing Ortho, and the thought of spending large amounts of time away from my wife is not appealing. Ultimately I can handle it for five years though, what I worry about is the possibility of ending up dead. How exposed to risk are you when you deploy? The recruiter said doctors deploy to tent cities in spain, not the front lines. But that can't be true. The four specialties you mentioned would have to be close to give timely care to our soldiers. I know one doctor has died so far, they told me at USUHS that he was serving as a medic though. Where would a Navy Ortho be located in the conflict? I guess that is my major question.

 

[Spang]

I came a hair's breadth from dying about 3 times in my 13 years of active duty. I was a COD pilot and although no one is shooting at you, usually, you can still bust your a$$. As a member of any of the branches of the military you are much more likely to die of: motor vehicle accident (think about the Beltway), suicide, or homicide (especially at Military Circle Mall!).

Although that is of little comfort if you are the one doc who buys it, the point is that life is short, and fragile, and can be wiped away by a momentary lapse, anytime, anywhere. I would not let that particular concern be your make or break factor. Long deployments, missed holidays, etc are a true possibility though.

I can't speak about the forward deployment of Navy docs, I'm curious about that myself, but the ones I do know that have deployed to a combat zone were on the USS (or USNS) Comfort and not in the weeds. I would hazard a guess that the Army and probably even the AF is better equiped to set up forward medical units than the Navy. We spend a lot of money on boats, and tend to put our people there

A recent shift in the money aspect of military medicine will supposedly mean fewer FP, IM, etc spots and more specialists dedicated to treating active duty and front line folks. This new plan is just now coming into effect and the long term consequences are really unknown, but keep that in the back of your mind.

Spang

 

[militarymd]

There are very few physicians who get killed in the line of duty. I definitely would not let that keep me from signing.......just the other stuff.