I read every MD vs DO comment. Here's the truth

Comments · 72

• ME

  @MedSchoolInsidersBlueprint · 2 months ago · pinned

  📅 Physician-led Q&amp;As. Live, every week, inside our Skool community.<br><a href="https://www.skool.com/medschoolinsiders/">https://www.skool.com/medschoolinsiders/</a>

• JO

  @jonbaker3870 · 5 months ago (edited)

  I’m so tired of this conversation man. I can’t wait for 20-30 years from now when hopefully the two degrees will be more quantitatively equivalent.<br><br>Edit: accidentally wrote qualitatively

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• S.

  @s.p.8508 · 5 months ago

  I’m a 2nd year DO student. I love my school, and I’m very happy that I went here. That being said, yes pre med students should go in with eyes wide open. It’s harder to match into competitive specialties, it’s harder to match into competitive programs. Having to take 2 board exams sucks. Having to sit through OMM when you can be studying more important material sucks. My school does have some great hospital associations because we are an older school, but still nothing compared to having our own hospital. Truth be told I was a terrible applicant. I had a 510 MCAT and a 3.96 GPA, but minimal science classes, applied late, only applied to 15 MD schools (yes I was a very dumb applicant), and had roughly 50 clinical hours at the time of application. Sure I could have taken 2 years to become a better applicant, but the opportunity cost would have been huge and I just wanted to get started, and there is nothing wrong with that. <br><br>Ultimately, I do not regret my choice of going to DO school (although that may change when I’m actually applying to residency and have to deal with the bias firsthand), but I always tell any pre med that asks me that they should definitely try for an MD school do avoid the bias and the headache.

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• JD

  @Jdot984 · 5 months ago

  I would like to close the loop on my comment about 5 do acceptance and 1 waitlist with 514 and 3.82. <br><br>I submitted app day one, went through many versions of my written application, refining it with my student pre-health advisor (tons of experience has helped students get into top ranked institutions for many years). Got &nbsp;all secondaries in within 5 days of receiving them. Been an avid viewer of med school insiders for years and used a lot of the advice. Idk man felt like my application was good. Only got the one MD interview and it went well enough to get a waitlist hopefully I make it off but seems like I’m going to be a DO still excited to start. In my scenario feels like I got a little bit of bad luck but also had great luck with DO programs. Wish everyone the best, just feel the need to provide a more complete story.

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• DA

  @daphne10120 · 5 months ago (edited)

  DO student here. Choose the path that makes the most sense for you. I’m primarily EM focused and worked in the field for a number of years for several very fantastic osteopathic physicians. EM is very DO heavy and my school has a lot of matches into it every year. I chose DO because I knew I’d be fine and I preferred the bedside manner and medical decision making I’d seen working under both DO and MD physicians. The DO bias is there but it has gotten better. If you want that competitive specialty you’ll have to work twice as hard for it. I spoke with a DO CT surg resident a few months ago and he made sure to do audition rotations with big names in the field to ensure he had letters from them. You have to play the game. It’s not game over if you go to a DO school and don’t let that stop you from going, but understand that you’ll have to work harder.

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• 93

  @93drizzit · 2 weeks ago

  He keeps mentioning soft parts of your application, and it’s so true. ORM here that had a 509 MCAT, 3.0 uGPA, 4.0 SMP GPA, that had 2 M.D. acceptances and is an MS1 now. I never thought I’d get into any MD school, let alone have 2 A’s, but it’s possible to get into allopathic schools with low stats. You just need to show and explain why you had low stats, and how you’ve learned from them and grown from them. There’s hope ya’ll! 💙

• DI

  @dinobot7025 · 5 months ago (edited)

  MD school is getting more and more competitive every year, soon it will be the norm to take 2 gap years postgrad before applying. <br><br>Its a trade-off. DO is way easier to get into, but unquestionably limits your specialty choice and you have to deal with OMM and COMLEX. <br><br>Yes, going MD opens doors in terms of specialty choice, but DO literally opens the door to starting medical school whereas the same person might need 2+ more years to get in MD. <br><br>There are so many factors. What specialties are you interested in? How old are you? What would taking more gap years mean for your finances and lifestyle? How badly do you want to start med school? How much work would be required to be competitive for MD?<br><br>If you want a competitive residency or are undecided its generally worth the extra time. But consider around 60% of MDs practice in &quot;DO-friendly&quot; specialties anyways. Its always better to focus on your own situation and overall statistics over anecdotes. <br><br>But if you do pick DO, nuance is needed. Going to a new DO school is especially risky, do your research. Established DO schools have long histories of achieving 98%+ match rates but new schools don&apos;t have any track record and often lack resources and rotation sites. At that point we aren&apos;t just talking about worse match rates, we are talking about a school not even meeting the bare minimum.

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• GA

  @garrettdyess1110 · 5 months ago

  Yes, great advice as always. Current med student who just tells all the pre-meds that I talk to to search &quot;Kevin Jubbal&quot; followed by any question they have. So much bad advice out there, and these kinds of videos are what people need.

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• DI

  @dinobot7025 · 5 months ago (edited)

  Just to add: in terms of residency connections, research funding, quality of education, student programs, the best 100 medical schools in the US are without question MD schools.<br><br>It is so hard to disentangle the true effect of DO bias without accounting for this. DO schools are just worse, DO students are generally lower performing. The average matched DO applicant for every specialty has a lower step 2 and fewer research items than the average matched MD.<br><br>When you compare the actually established DO schools to MD schools of similar level of resources, primary care focus, and student profiles, the match outcomes are very similar. Not exactly the same, but very similar. If you changed all established DO schools into MD schools overnight for most schools match outcomes would not significantly change. <br><br>Its more complicated then just &quot;MD vs DO&quot;. If you really want to keep your options fully open there are some MD schools you should avoid too. If it sounds like this is really hard its because it is. Getting into a good medical school and matching derm/neurosurg/ortho/plastics is extremely hard, impossible for an average MD.

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• ED

  @edhcb9359 · 5 months ago

  These types of discussions always end up being a competition between what is possible(anything is possible with the right political ties) and what is probable(in this case, it’s highly improbable that a DO gets a competitive specialty).

• BR

  @brettbarthman44 · 4 months ago

  First off, been following you since the animated videos and loved the content! I don’t think you can take those statistics at face value. My experience is only limited to being a DO student, but I do know that we had very limited application guidance when it came to applying. I’m curious for my MD counterparts if school advisors were much more involved in the application process and assessing strength to competitive specialties. I wonder if some “didn’t match” before they even got fourth year because school advised them from ever pursuing that specialty due to their application strength. Definitely another perk of going MD. I also know that in DO world, dual applying is becoming more prevalent, resulting in some individuals who might apply and see if they get lucky. Some confounding variables that might affect that 40 to 45% match rate you talked about compared to the mid 70s. Definitely don’t think that it would completely close the discrepancy but important to consider. MD will probably always have the upper hand when applying to these specialties and to any pre-med who only received DO acceptance or current DO, know it is all possible, you’ll just have to work a bit harder for it. I appreciate you continuing to have and open dialogue about this and I’ll make sure to do a few extra practice questions on statistics before I go to bed tonight lol

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• RY

  @ryanhiga963 · 5 months ago (edited)

  Insightful video! Would love to see a video about how DO’s can overcome the unique challenges that come with COM’s if trying to match in a non-primary care specialties so we can further understand the choice that is made when going to a DO school. (i.e. access to research years, networking, etc)

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