@sean1111
What WOWM said is very true. I will give you my life experiences as my D is going through a DO school.
True, a DO school graduates can get into competitive specialties but that is far fewer and much more difficult. Not only you need high scores in the school and all USMLE tests. but also you need a lot of help in the following areas:
1.. The mission of all DO schools is to teach students in the primary care. You will find very little chance to be in those competitive specialties rotations, ie, derm, ortho, ENT, neurosurgery, rad onc, ophthalmology. The school has few contacts in those fields and will not give you a lot of time in Rotations. I think my D was in one Ortho rotation for one month out of the 24 month in her 3rd and 4th years. Maybe she will be in a two weeks rotation in rad AFTER the matching day, which is not going to help her even if she wanted to apply Rad residency. If you want to concentrate in those competitive specialties, you need to schedule all NON-Core rotations with that specialty by yourself, the school is not going to be much of a help. Without a high score in specialty rotation, you will not be able to get LORs and thus you wonât be able to get a residency.
- If you want to try for those competitive specialty as a DO, you need to be at least at 5% top of the class in your first year and get a high USMLE step 1 score that is in the 250s, 260 is even better. And your USMLE step 2 score should be 10 points better than the step 1, because normally step 2 is considered "grade inflated". COMLEX does nothing in those specialties.
- In addition to the high scores and enough rotations, you need to have some research paper published for that specialty. With the high demand in the med school, you will have little time to do that, but that is required to be successful in competitive specialties. Please watch some Youtub videos, there is a MD school graduate who got into a derm residency. As a DO you need to be at least as good as him.
My D is in the top 15% of the class, she did not get a top score in Step 1, her step 2 is in line with her step 1 score(10 points higher). She is in this year matching cycle as a DO for one of the Medium Level Specialty. ALL her elective rotations are concentrated on her chosen specialty and she applied to 36-40 programs that is in her score range and was rejected for interview by MOST University teaching hospitals, including some are âoff the beaten pathâ, but not DO friendly. She ended up 12 IIs, mostly community hospitals that are DO friendly.
My suggestion is that if you can get into a MD school it is ALWAYS better than going to a DO school
Happy decision day, everyone!
The application year is pretty much over, so I wanted to post an update on how the cycle panned out during Dâs gap year application cycle. She applied to 23 schools. She received 10 interview invites. One at a top 10, one at a top 20 and the rest were mostly mid-tier. She attended 7 interviews during the months of September through early December and declined to attend 3 interview invites that came in January that were all great mid-tier schools. She most likely would have attended those interviews had they come earlier in the season before she had any acceptances. She ended up with acceptances at the first 3 schools she interviewed at. She was waitlisted at the other 4 schools and she withdrew from 2 of those waitlists because she knew she would not attend those schools based on cost, location, and her gut feeling after her interviews. She stayed on the waitlist at a top 10 school and a top 20 school, but the top 20 was probably not going to be affordable even if she got an acceptance unless it came with a good scholarship. Unfortunately, those two schools are known for having very little waitlist movement. The top 10 school stayed in communication with D and vice versa, but as of now she has not received a waitlist spot, so it seems very unlikely to happen at this point. Iâd say we were all cautiously hopeful but not expecting anything to happen.
The process with how waitlist movement works changed this year with the new AAMC traffic rules. Most medical schools now have âplan to enrollâ and âcommit to enrollâ deadlines and those deadlines are set by each school and not a universal date that AAMC used to enforce. Before this year, schools were able to see where applicants were accepted and could then give acceptances to waitlisted candidates up until the day classes started (where the applicant was enrolled). Now schools have no idea where students have been accepted. All they know is that a student has selected âplan to enrollâ or âcommit to enrollâ at a school. Also, the new AAMC guidelines for this new process are just that â guidelines. This means schools can follow them or not which has left many wondering how waitlist movement will pan later this summer. Some schools donât have a âcommit to enrollâ deadline, but most do. Dâs school has a CTE date that is earlier than most of the other schools because classes start earlier (most CTE deadlines are 3 weeks before classes start). Once she chooses CTE, she will have to drop (or will be dropped) from the other 2 waitlists, so there will be no chance for a waitlist acceptance at either of those schools. In the past, students could remain on waitlists after commiting to one school. But now applicants who have an acceptance and selected âplan to enrollâ at a school with an early CTE deadline are at a disadvantage compared to students who donât have CTE deadlines or have deadlines that happen a month or more later in the summer. It is unfair, but it is what it is.
D decided to attend our state school which she is very happy about (good vibe/fit and very low tuition), and we are glad to have her in the same city for 4 more years. She quit her research job and is now just enjoying some free time before the grind of med school begins.
Good luck to all those applying this season! Itâs a long, arduous process, but worth it in the end!
@icuinNm Congratulations. If I may ask, what kind of LizzyM score does your D have?
@texaspg Thank you!! Not a top ten level LM, but she had many consistent ECâs since high school and one that is somewhat unique. She also fit the mission to the school quite well. I do believe after this process that MCAT trumps GPA with adcoms even though both are important. I will send you a pm.
@icuinNm Iâm a little confused about the wait list process you described. My friendâs daughter committed to the school but sheâs still on the waitlist of another school. That waitlist is still valid and open. ?
@momworried Congrats on your friendâs D getting accepted! I remember you were worried earlier in the application season about a lack of interviews. Iâm glad it all worked out. Wasnât there also a sister applying? How did that go?
As for the waitlist process, AAMC guidelines state that students should select a âPlan To Enrollâ at one school and drop all other acceptances by April 30th. But this is no longer a âruleâ and just a guideline. There were estimates of 15-20% of students still holding multiple acceptances after April 30th and designating those as PTE Some adcoms could see students with more than 1 PTE in AAMC system. So schools didnât/donât know how many of their PTE accepted students are actually going to attend that school or drop off later on, which has resulted in much less waitlist movement because schools donât want to overfill their classes if people donât drop.
At some point, most (but not all) of the schools have a âCommit To Enrollâ deadline. Those deadlines (set by each school) started on May 30th and run through early August. Once a student selects CTE at the school where they were previously designated as a PTE student, they get dropped from all other waitlists. So perhaps your friendâs D is still in the âPTEâ status and the deadline for her to CTE is down the road.
So letâs say your friendâs D is accepted at Great Medical School and she is on the waitlist at Better Medical School and is still hoping to get off of that waitlist. Great Medical School has a CTE deadline of June 15th. So if your friendâs D does not get off of the waitlist at Better Medical School by June 15th, she must lock in at Great Medical School by selecting CTE and is then dropped from Better Medical Schoolâs waitlist.
Now say her sister is accepted at Awesome Medical School and is also on the waitlist at Better Medical School. Awesome Medical schoolâs CTE deadline is July 15th and Better Medical Schoolâs deadline is July 30th. Sister does not have to select CTE for another month and can stay on the waitlist at Better Medical School while her sibling had to drop off of the waitlist because her school had an earlier CTE deadline. On June 22, Sister gets off of the waitlist at Better Medical School, but her sibling has no chance of also getting a waitlist acceptance because she was dropped from the waitlist on June 15th.
tl;dr Students at schools with later CTE deadlines have an advantage because they can hold their waitlist spots longer than students with earlier CTE deadlines. Some students have already had to select CTE and had to give up their preferred waitlist spots.
So there is no uniform CTE across AMCAS?
No. Itâs up to each individual school to set the CTE date.
Some have set it quite earlyâas early as April 30; most are setting the deadline at ~ 3 weeks before the beginning of orientation.
Schools have to ensure that they can fill all their seats now that AMCAS isnât managing the process.
If a student doesnât click the CTE box before deadline, schools are allowed to withdraw their offer of admission immediately without any further notice and give the seat to someone else.
My D told me that there is only PTE option in AMCAS. So I presume each AMCAS MD school may have an option for CTE. In her case she said there is no CTE in UTSW. But she accepted UTSW and she told she is getting all the emails in UTSW system to do various on line pre-req training she need to do etc. I searched TMDSAS web site. It has extensive details only for Tx residents. But for non-Tx residents it is not clear what they need to do.
Since she has not shared login details for TMDSAS or UTSW, I have to assume that she has done what ever she needs to do and there is no surprise.
TMDSAS forces you to go down to a single school choice in late January. They ask you to rank schools in order of preference and drop all schools in the list except for one. You can rank waitlist schools ahead of the the sole choice and if you do get into a waitlist school then your choice drops and if you get into a higher waitlist, then that one drops.
Essentially, if people have UTSW ranked as one where they are on waitlist, UT Houston as 2 and they are on waitlist, UT El Paso, Lubbock, A&M where they are admitted, They can lose El Paso and Lubbock end of January, A&M as sole admission and keep the other two waitlists. UT Houston admits them, they lose A&M. UTSW admits them, they lose UTH.
D kept UTSW from January to end of April and had emails coming from the school to only UTSW school email for those 3 months.
Both girls got into several medical school which is great. So her waitlist came after traffic day. And Iâm pretty sure she committed to the school right now with a CTE. Sheâs also still on that wait list. Maybe there are exceptions. ?. No idea how this new system works. But I also heard from other kids that this year because of that the wait list movement is super slow.
Per this [AMCAS sponsored webinar](https://www.aamc.org/download/490772/data/webinarpowerpoint.pdf)â clicking CTE does NOT automatically withdraw an applicantâs from their acceptances/wailists at other schools. The applicants must do that on their own by contacting each school and telling them they no longer wished to be considered. (Remember AMCAS is no longer in the business of enrollment management.)
After April 30, any med schools where a student is either accepted or waitlisted can see if the student holds other acceptances or waitlists. (Just not at which schools.)
Choosing the CTE requires the student to withdraw from all other acceptances and waitlistsâitâs part of the contract agreement when they choose CTE. By remaining on a waitlist after CTE, a student is violating their enrollment agreement with the CTE school and the school can withdraw their acceptance at any time without prior notification.
Now a student who is PTE at a single school is allowed to stay on waitlist right up to the day of the CTE deadline for the school where she is PTE.
@momworriedâno exceptions. These are the new rules.
@WayOutWestMom Where is CTE done? Is it AMCAS or individual school site?
My D told she does not find CTE either in AMCAS or in TMDSAS or UTSW.
@texaspg What you described, is it for Tx resident only? Because my D told, there is no option for Non Tx resident in TMDSAS to list the order of school etc. There is not even a procedure to indicate which school she plans/commits.
All that she has done is PTE in AMCAS and listed only 1 school. She has formally withdrawn in all other accepted schools. Finally she followed the procedure of UTSW by sending the acceptance 1 page signed doc and sent it via email.
The CTE button is only on AMCAS.
Does UTSW participate in AMCAS for MD applications? I know the MSTP program requires applying though AMCAS, but I donât think the MD program does. I think thatâs done through TMDSAS only.