Success in the medical school application process hinges on demonstrating a clear “mission fit” with each institution. Different schools cultivate different types of physicians: some aim to train primary care doctors for rural areas, while others focus on developing academic leaders and researchers.
When developing your application list, your primary objective is to define your own goals, carefully select schools that align with those aspirations, and then tailor your secondary essays to explicitly illustrate this compatibility. Regardless of your grades and scores, you must make it clear that you are interested in a specific school because your goals for your career are in harmony with the school’s vision for its students.
This post will focus on osteopathic medical schools with a strong service mission prioritizing social responsibility, community engagement, and care for underserved populations in their curriculum and admissions. These schools often seek applicants with a proven, extensive commitment to helping others, typically demonstrated through volunteer experience.
For allopathic medical schools: Application Lists: Service-Focused Mission Fit (MD)
NOTE: These lists are meant to give a start when creating an application list. They do not replace doing your own research.
(Significant contributions and review by @WayOutWestMom)
(continued)
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(updated list added in posts 6-8)
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(updated list added in posts 6-8)
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Thanks so much for sharing this out, @DramaMama2021, and for your contributions @WayOutWestMom!
The charts on this page for DO schools have notes reflecting whether the school is for profit or not-for-profit, whereas that wasn’t a column for MD schools. Of course, there are some non-profits that seem to be run and paid like for-profits, but I was surprised to see for-profits in the DO space. Is that common across the DO/MD space, or is that more unique to the DO space? Also, for other health fields, is there a higher prevalence of for-profits in those as well, or do for-profits remain a relatively small portion?
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Until a very few years ago, all allopathic medical school were required to be not-for-profit or the LCME wouldn’t accredit them. (Legacy of the Flexner Report.) Under the threat of lawsuit by the DOJ, the LCME reversed its stance.
There are only 2 for-profit LCME accredited med schools.
California NorthState University which has had more than its share of problems meeting accreditation requirements. (3 Medical School Deans losing their jobs, an extra 6 or 7 years of not meeting accreditation standards after graduating its first class, a couple of sanctions from the California Dept of Higher Education, a couple of shady real estate deals while trying to develop a home hospital --which STILL hasn’t broken ground more than 5 year after it was promised) However after a decade of being on provisional or probationary status, the LCME finally accredited CNU last year.
CNU is the ONLY US MD school that has refused repeatedly to enroll in the federal student loan programs.
The other is Ponce Health Sciences University Medical School–which also has a very colorful history that includes originally being a non-profit, going bankrupt and closing down while orphaning a bunch of students, then re-opening in 2014 as a for-profit entity owned by a venture capital healthcare investment firm. Ponce was originally and still is a Puerto Rican med school, but it has opened a branch campus in Missouri.
Since 2014, no new MD programs have opened that are for-profit.
OTOH, COCA (accrediting body for osteopathic schools) never had a requirement that schools had to be not-fot-profit to in order to be eligible for accreditation. Rocky Vista COM in Colorado (founded 2006) was the first for-profit med school to be accredited. It was controversial at the time and it was unclear if the private for-profit model was economically viable because operating a med school is expensive.
Rocky Vista was successful and it success encouraged other entities to open for-profit medical school because it’s a faster process than getting the necessary funding from state governments or other non-profit sources.
BTW, Rocky Vista was sold a couple of years to the same company that owns St George’s University Medical School in the Caribbean.
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