<p>@ apumic: ill cross that bridge when I get there but when I spoke to my FPA he told me to get my gpa up and keep doing research to be nominated. im not saying that im guaranteed to get one, i realize its very competitive, and the probability of me getting one is slim. im not relying on this to get me into med school by any means.</p>
<p>I do have research experience and will work hard on improving my ec’s. ive finally decided that im not gonna give up on medicine just yet, even though it does seem like it right now.</p>
<p>If you seek advice, than listen. You seem to be looking for argument, not advice. You are told once and again, the only way to get anywhere in life is to have mental priority list and stick to it. In the case of a goal of being MD, one need to work hard and there is no other way. You can argue as much as you wish, but you are just wasting your time.</p>
<p>The process of qualifying for med school is a multi year marathon, not a sprint. No amount of fierce attitude is going to get you there, motivate yourself to do the best you can each day, research what you need to do and you could have a chance.</p>
<p>I have to agree OP, you seem to be here for venting and self motivation, not advice. There’s nothing wrong with that but you should make that more clear.</p>
<p>Honestly you keep telling yourself you want to be a doctor and want to go to medical school yet you keep ruling out DO. DO = medical school = doctor. I can understand that you don’t like the stigma associated with DO, but if medicine is your true passion then why not? At the end of the day you are a medical doctor and doing what you love, if that is what you really love.</p>
<p>On another note, your best chance is to not follow the traditional pathway - stop out either during or after your undergraduate years. By stopping out, you can take the time to pursue other interests, work on & strengthen your application, study for your MCATs (difficult to do during school season), perform research, get involved, etc. If you take time off, you’re likely to appear as an even more well-rounded applicant. Having life experience is important to becoming a doctor. Being a good communicator with great social skills are representative of good physicians, not necessarily always how well they perform academically - medical schools know this and actually often prefer mature students with more life experience (average entering medical student is ~24). Use this to your advantage. Stopping out can be very useful and can add a lot to an application, especially if used productively. The traditional pathway is not always the best pathway, pave your own road - there are many paths to becoming a physician, find the one that’s best suitable for you.</p>
<p>However, without raising your current GPA, all of the aforementioned tips would be useless.</p>
<p>@ Indianjatt: a DO doesn’t have nearly as much respect in the medical community as an MD. Most DOs are people that couldn’t be an MD. Both are indeed doctors but a DO will be a DO and an MD will be an MD. Most people would prefer an MD to a DO. Sorry to be so blunt, but im tired of everyone (not jst CC ppl, but ppl in my actual life as well) telling me to be a DO. Obviously as of now im not good enough even to be a DO, let alone MD. But thats no reason for me to settle for a DO, because im not gonna live the rest of my life viewing myself as a failed MD. Its not over yet.</p>
<p>@ EngineerHead: thanks for the advice. thanks for the harvard remark as well. clearly wat i desire most is harvard medical school with a 2.7 gpa …oh no wait nvm, i jst want to get into any medical (meaning MD) school. But i appreciate your other advice though, and time off is something i have to do at this point.</p>
<p>And we wonder why med schools want everyone to get clinical experience. It’s not so you can see some cool surgeries or do any meaningful clinical work. It’s so you can learn enough about the “medical community” that garbage likes this doesn’t get spewed.</p>
<p>my friend’s father is a cardiac surgeon. i was talking to him about life as a surgeon, etc. and we touched on the MD vs. DO topic. turns out most patients prefer MD doctors to DO doctors, in fact a lot of DO doctors apparently end up referring their patients to MD ones anyway.</p>
<p>You clearly haven’t spent any time in the “medical community”.</p>
<p>And what patients prefer DO doctors? How many patients do you think even care to look up that sort of thing? A lot of DOs refer to MDs, perhaps because the majority of doctors are MDs. The majority of MDs that refer patients to other physicians also refer to MDs… simply because of statistics. I can’t believe you honestly believe DOs are worse doctors than MDs. I suggest you take a few years off and get your feet wet in a hospital or clinical setting.</p>
<p>However, I think I’ll play devil’s advocate here. I have heard a surgeon advise an undergraduate student to go MD, not DO, simply because it’s easier to obtain a job with an MD than a DO.</p>
<p>Most patients have no idea what med school their doctors went to or even if they’re DO’s or MD’s. I get mistaken for a doctor and I don’t have a DO or a MD. I think some patients are not quite sure what a DO is but I have never experienced a patient “preferring” a DO. The only time a patient has EVER EVER EVER expressed preference of one doctor over another, it has to do with how they were treated by the physician (how friendly the physician was, how much eye contact the physician made, how much time the physician spent them, etc.), not the letters behind their name.</p>
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<p>95% of doctors are MD’s. So, of course, there will be more referrals made to MD’s than to DO’s.</p>
<p>^^^ I do not think the poster believes that DOs are worse doctors than MDs. I have had plenty ( over 4 years ) of clinical experience in hospitals, clinics and surgical ambulatory centers and I can tell you that I have heard plenty of patients (and physicians) talking among themselves and questioning the credentials of a physician who has a DO degree. This has gone from an innocent remark like- “Oh, you are not seeing the doctor, you are seeing the DO”, to something more vitriolic like - “Make sure you ask for the MD, the other one is a DO”.</p>
<p>In addition, at one practice where orthopedic surgeons were recruiting a new physician, a senior doctor specifically requested “not to interview any DOs”.</p>
<p>Ignorance ? - yes. Bigotry ? - Likely. But it is out there. I think educating the public and ourselves is really important.</p>
<p>^From my D’s experince with practice MCAT tests, GPA has nothing to do with the MCAT score, good preparation does and not in every section either. For example, it is not possible to prepare or improve Verbal, it is just an individual Reading level. Yes, all her previous tests (starting with elementary and including ACT, had Reading well below everything else). So, maybe some previous tests are better indication of MCAT score than GPA. But MCAT needs much more prep. than any test in your life.</p>
<p>^Truth is it does correlate with GPA. Research has shown it does. The correlation is moderate (around r=0.5), so the common factors make up about 25% of the total factors affecting an MCAT score. The correlations with the ACT and SAT are in the range of r=0.3-0.4 and the GRE is about the same as UG GPA (r=~0.5). So yes, there are many other factors and amount of prep is one of them but past performance does predict future performance (for a number of reasons). (Subject GREs would probably be the best predictor for the BS and PS sections of the MCAT due to their heavy emphasis on critical thinking about content learned and therefore heavy prep requirements, but I have not found any research to substantiate this or refute it and so have not included it in the estimator.)</p>