What happened to DoctorBob?

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drmantistobbogan

drmantistobbogan

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I remember reading about the crazy success story of DoctorBob23 last cycle and I was going to show his website to a friend as a source of inspiration. But it looks like he fell off the face of the Earth? There isn't a trace of him, his twitter, his website, or his facebook group. Does anyone know whats up?
 
He was an infamous poster here who allegedly was accepted to an insane amount of schools despite having below average stats. He ran a website that offered MCAT and application advice.
 
Cyberdyne 101 said:
Who is doctorbob?
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The man, the myth, the legend.

drmantistobbogan said:
I remember reading about the crazy success story of DoctorBob23 last cycle and I was going to show his website to a friend as a source of inspiration. But it looks like he fell off the face of the Earth? There isn't a trace of him, his twitter, his website, or his facebook group. Does anyone know whats up?
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I believe somebody doxxed him and since then he disappeared.
 
freak7 said:
Someone called him out as a fraud basically. I didn't look too deep into it.
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Wow, I mean, his story did seem a little too good to be true. It would be nice to know the backstory to avoid giving my friend false hope lol.
 
drmantistobbogan said:
Wow, I mean, his story did seem a little too good to be true. It would be nice to know the backstory to avoid giving my friend false hope lol.
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Your friend's hope doesn't have to be tied to a specific individual. Show your friend the LizzyM calculator here and the stats on AAMC. They can base their hope on that.
 
Someone started looking into his blog and facebook and twitter (his identity was on his blog) and it began to appear he was not as he claimed. There was a thread about it which the mods deleted (no callouts allowed), it was discussed in some existing threads (earning me a probation for being off-topic), and then he disappeared. After deleting his blog page and claiming it was due to no longer wanting to pay the hosting cost, of course. To quote the sleuth that was digging into his various web presence:

"

It was just awful click bait titles like "Three secrets that will guarantee you an acceptance to med schools... You won't believe #2!" Along with stolen clip art and pictures of Minions as doctors. It legitimately looked like someone's grandma made it. If you look through his twitter, which shared the same name as his blog, you'd find that he also had a similar website about finance that was really just an ad for whatever pyramid scheme he was trying to do at the time.

"

Iirc he was supposedly a white male with a LizzyM in the mid 60s who went to 20+ interviews and got into 90% of them. I think that's what got suspicions aroused, underdog inspiration stories are great but at some point it starts getting likely to be just another elaborate fake story/identity on the internet.
 
efle said:
Someone started looking into his blog and facebook and twitter (his identity was on his blog) and it began to appear he was not as he claimed. There was a thread about it which the mods deleted (no callouts allowed), it was discussed in some existing threads (earning me a probation for being off-topic), and then he disappeared. After deleting his blog page and claiming it was due to no longer wanting to pay the hosting cost, of course. To quote the sleuth that was digging into his various web presence:

"

It was just awful click bait titles like "Three secrets that will guarantee you an acceptance to med schools... You won't believe #2!" Along with stolen clip art and pictures of Minions as doctors. It legitimately looked like someone's grandma made it. If you look through his twitter, which shared the same name as his blog, you'd find that he also had a similar website about finance that was really just an ad for whatever pyramid scheme he was trying to do at the time.

"

Iirc he was supposedly a white male with a LizzyM in the mid 60s who went to 20+ interviews and got into 90% of them. I think that's what got suspicions aroused, underdog inspiration stories are great but at some point it starts getting likely to be just another elaborate fake story/identity on the internet.
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I thought he was a non trad URM with some experience as a pca.
 
efle said:
Someone started looking into his blog and facebook and twitter (his identity was on his blog) and it began to appear he was not as he claimed. There was a thread about it which the mods deleted (no callouts allowed), it was discussed in some existing threads (earning me a probation for being off-topic), and then he disappeared. After deleting his blog page and claiming it was due to no longer wanting to pay the hosting cost, of course. To quote the sleuth that was digging into his various web presence:

"

It was just awful click bait titles like "Three secrets that will guarantee you an acceptance to med schools... You won't believe #2!" Along with stolen clip art and pictures of Minions as doctors. It legitimately looked like someone's grandma made it. If you look through his twitter, which shared the same name as his blog, you'd find that he also had a similar website about finance that was really just an ad for whatever pyramid scheme he was trying to do at the time.

"

Iirc he was supposedly a white male with a LizzyM in the mid 60s who went to 20+ interviews and got into 90% of them. I think that's what got suspicions aroused, underdog inspiration stories are great but at some point it starts getting likely to be just another elaborate fake story/identity on the internet.
Click to expand...

He was a non trad URM with almost half a of decade of experience in healthcare.
 
He looked pretty ORM in his pictures but had a hispanic-sounding last name so I just assumed given his location that he was Puerto Rican (which I assumed was URM?). Overall, sounds like a scam and his disappearance only supports those findings. I feel bamboozled.
 
efle said:
I found it actually, he said he was Cuban, which I think gyngyn has said is not URM among the hispanic groups (whereas Mexican for example is URM)
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Categorically true, but in my experience from other sdn users that werent traditionally URM, but latinx, there may still be appreciable advantages.
 
Wait, is the guy who claimed to have like, a 1.0 GPA his first semester of college, and then turned it around and went to a top school? And had multiple acceptances?
He had this guy sitting, with a pensive look on his face, as an avatar? I had a feeling he was sketchy!
He claimed to have a sub-60 LizzyM but still get into multiple med schools. He *just* vanished, like, two months ago, correct?
 
mwsapphire said:
Wait, is the guy who claimed to have like, a 1.0 GPA his first semester of college, and then turned it around and went to a top school? And had multiple acceptances?
He had this guy sitting, with a pensive look on his face, as an avatar? I had a feeling he was sketchy!
He claimed to have a sub-60 LizzyM but still get into multiple med schools. He *just* vanished, like, two months ago, correct?
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Yeah, his username here was @doctorbob23 , looks like he hasn't posted since February.
 
drmantistobbogan said:
He looked pretty ORM in his pictures but had a hispanic-sounding last name so I just assumed given his location that he was Puerto Rican (which I assumed was URM?). Overall, sounds like a scam and his disappearance only supports those findings. I feel bamboozled.
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Mainland Puerto Rican (and Mexican-American) is URM. Cuban Americans, as Doctor Bob claimed to be, are not URM and have been more politically and economically successful than other Hispanic populations.
 
Probably deleted everything after realizing it was a bad idea to reveal his identity online and then basically flaunt the acceptances he had. His story was not unbelievable though. I remember he said he was a nurse, went to FIU, I thought he said he was Puerto Rican but I could be wrong. One of my friends is Puerto Rican and he had at least 7 interviews (out of like 10) with an average app. It sounded like DoctorBob had a pretty good app despite his low numbers so the amount of interviews and acceptances he had is not so hard to believe.
 
ace_inhibitor111 said:
Probably deleted everything after realizing it was a bad idea to reveal his identity online and then basically flaunt the acceptances he had. His story was not unbelievable though. I remember he said he was a nurse, went to FIU, I thought he said he was Puerto Rican but I could be wrong. One of my friends is Puerto Rican and he had at least 7 interviews (out of like 10) with an average app. It sounded like DoctorBob had a pretty good app despite his low numbers so the amount of interviews and acceptances he had is not so hard to believe.
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I'm not sure I agree with that. He made no attempt at keeping his identity a secret through his blog and Facebook page. If he was truly trying to help people, I'm not sure how it would be a bad thing to have his identity be known. Plenty of pre-meds and med students run blogs/social media centered around helping people. The only thing that I could think of is that he wouldn't want his identity known if he was caught lying.
 
OchemOficionado said:
Let it go, let it gooooooo.

He's not active anymore so it's not relevant.

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people"
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Yes I'm sure something like this will never happen ever again, and there's no problem at all with a mod response of covering it all up

Edit: Actually a question I have at large for SDN: why isn't there a verification of med student status? Why do we only verify the docs? Isn't it weird to have a community of premeds here that allows anyone to come on and claim to be successfully on the other side?
 
efle said:
Yes I'm sure something like this will never happen ever again, and there's no problem at all with a mod response of covering it all up

Edit: Actually a question I have at large for SDN: why isn't there a verification of med student status? Why do we only verify the docs? Isn't it weird to have a community of premeds here that allows anyone to come on and claim to be successfully on the other side?
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IIRC Physicians dont have to be verified. You just get a verified badge if you do get verified. There are some attendings on the board that have no verification.
 
His point is that they can be frauds, just like people who claim to be med students.
Actually, that makes sense. I do sometimes wonder if people who claim to medical students are actually medical students, and if they're giving "wisdom" to pre meds, they should be held accountable for being fraudulent.
 
mwsapphire said:
His point is that they can be frauds, just like people who claim to be med students.
Actually, that makes sense. I do sometimes wonder if people who claim to medical students are actually medical students, and if they're giving "wisdom" to pre meds, they should be held accountable for being fraudulent.
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This is an anonymous internet board. There is bound to be some bad information. Any information that is of significance should be vetted by looking at primary sources, literature, data even if it is coming from trustworthy sources on these boards. People masquerading as attendings can be frauds as well, that was my point. Plus it doesnt take a whole lot to fake verification unless they are asking for unique DEA numbers which they verify against the DEA database(which is unlikely).
 
mwsapphire said:
His point is that they can be frauds, just like people who claim to be med students.
Actually, that makes sense. I do sometimes wonder if people who claim to medical students are actually medical students, and if they're giving "wisdom" to pre meds, they should be held accountable for being fraudulent.
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Physicians are verified because they get extra privileges and their information is more valuable, in part because there are fewer physicians active in these forums. Verifying every user with an acceptance letter (and giving them freedom to neurotically delete useful posts in med and pre-med forums) sounds like a moderator's nightmare.
 
cactusman said:
Physicians are verified because they get extra privileges and their information is more valuable, in part because there are fewer physicians active in these forums. Verifying every user with an acceptance letter (and giving them freedom to neurotically delete useful posts in med and pre-med forums) sounds like a moderator's nightmare.
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Well, they can have half step verification. Like, don't let them delete stuff, but the badge would let us now that we can believe what they say? Idk it seems doable to me but I'm not a mod so :shrug:
 
Verified physicians that aren't mods get to delete posts?
 
drmantistobbogan said:
We need to start verifying pre-med posters because now I can't believe anything they say
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Knowing who can be believed is one of the great challenges in life.
 
drmantistobbogan said:
We need to start verifying pre-med posters because now I can't believe anything they say
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You should verify yourself , because can you really trust anything you say to yourself?
images

x-xhibit-t.jpg
 
libertyyne said:
This is an anonymous internet board. There is bound to be some bad information. Any information that is of significance should be vetted by looking at primary sources, literature, data even if it is coming from trustworthy sources on these boards. People masquerading as attendings can be frauds as well, that was my point. Plus it doesnt take a whole lot to fake verification unless they are asking for unique DEA numbers which they verify against the DEA database(which is unlikely).
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So you're saying people just come on the internet and lie???????


Anyway, on topic: his story wasn't unbelievable but I immediately questioned it when he decided to attend like 85% of his IIs. That's just an insane waste of money/time.

The number of IIs itself wasn't really staggering as I know plenty who got 10-12 interviews out of 20-25 apps.
 
kb1900 said:
So you're saying people just come on the internet and lie???????


Anyway, on topic: his story wasn't unbelievable but I immediately questioned it when he decided to attend like 85% of his IIs. That's just an insane waste of money/time.

The number of IIs itself wasn't really staggering as I know plenty who got 10-12 interviews out of 20-25 apps.
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Wasn't he working as an RN? That many interviews would be difficult while working
 
I think I followed this person on instagram or facebook awhile back.

eta: because it sounds really familiar and I remember going to their website.
 
drmantistobbogan said:
I'm not sure I agree with that. He made no attempt at keeping his identity a secret through his blog and Facebook page. If he was truly trying to help people, I'm not sure how it would be a bad thing to have his identity be known. Plenty of pre-meds and med students run blogs/social media centered around helping people. The only thing that I could think of is that he wouldn't want his identity known if he was caught lying.
Click to expand...

Posting all that info could have come back to bite him if an adcom came across his website and found the information distasteful. He could have easily been thought of as arrogant or as someone collecting acceptances as trophies and wasting school resources (especially since he wasn't withdrawing from them). He realized he got carried away and so he deleted it.

I know his story sounds unbelievable, but there are always a few superstar applicants out there. Also, the places he interviewed at weren't exactly top-tier. If someone were going to lie like this, why wouldn't he go whole hog?
 
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ace_inhibitor111 said:
Posting all that info could have come back to bite him if an adcom came across his website and found the information distasteful. He could have easily been thought of as arrogant or as someone collecting acceptances as trophies and wasting school resources (especially since he wasn't withdrawing from them). He realized he got carried away and so he deleted it.

I know his story sounds unbelievable, but there are always a few superstar applicants out there. Also, the places he interviewed at weren't exactly top-tier. If someone were going to lie like this, why wouldn't he go whole hog?
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I looked through some old posts... Sounds like he was using his alleged acceptances to generate traffic to his website to collect ad revenue. Even if his acceptances did exist, I find that to be pretty distasteful.
 
Wait, could someone link me the website please?I can't find it again.
Edit: For some reason I thought you guys were saying the website is still viewable. My bad. Brain glitch
 
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I thought he had close to 30 interviews and basically the same amount of acceptances?

DoctorBob - the man, the myth, the legend. We are all witnesses.
 
mwsapphire said:
His point is that they can be frauds, just like people who claim to be med students.
Actually, that makes sense. I do sometimes wonder if people who claim to medical students are actually medical students, and if they're giving "wisdom" to pre meds, they should be held accountable for being fraudulent.
Click to expand...
Now you're thinking
 
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