Any actual doctors in the house (especially med school docs)?

yes, usually one applies to DO school when they do not get into MD school the first time around. DO is more accepted in the west coast than in east coast. Remember I said about prestigious residency program, extremely rarely a DO can match into a MD residency.

not only the weather sucks, the roads are horrible. I am now driving his Alfa 4c spider. I can only imagine how bad it is to drive that car in NY, except that road to that premium outlet in Jersey.

 

OUCH!!!!!!


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Just adding a little levity to the thread. I’m one of those fake doctors myself.

 

Western is a pretty famous DO school here at Pomona. A good spot of residency??

 

The largest OB/Gyn group at our regional hospital are mainly DO’s… they’re doing well.


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I see. Landing a job anywhere at the very end of the day is almost all about connections. MD without connection vs DO with connection is hard to say, depends on where one is trained. Where one is trained will create a lot of connections. Locally trained is always easy to get a job locally becasue of the reputation and local guys connection.

In general I know very limitedly about DO application process. For example, I don't know how they want to accept student that didn't make it to MD to begin with. I just don't know.

I think for now let's just focus on your son's personal statement first. It's a gruesome process.

 

It's not always about having a local residency to get a job locally. Medicine fields are pretty small and tight knit and they all have their own organizations with local chapters and they know quality programs. If you go to a quality program, you'll have connections to get good jobs through them without needing to use their jobs boards where you'll probably end up in a not so great group that couldn't fill by word of mouth.

I applied to MD programs in the late 00s and was in med school 10 years ago (US MD). I got into multiple programs that were in-state (both public and private) and being local helped in that regard. The schools exist in those regions to serve those regions so the thought is to train people more likely to stay rather than train and bolt elsewhere that is underserved.

For me, being a non-traditional applicant with a few years removed from undergrad and entirely different career helped as did others in my class with all types of backgrounds. It made us stand out from other applicants and most of my interviews they asked about that and the path that led me there and now med school. I think it has helped through my career as I have perspective of what it's like with a "normal" job as being an MD is completely different that I think going straight from undergrad wouldn't get. It was harder though I think for me as I missed having a normal life after work and didn't care for studying like undergrad again (UF undergrad, top of class, research, etc).

I think taking some time off and having a career doing something else may be best. Other paths include DO, Caribbean MD, some strange new MD programs 50% in Australia then 50% in New Orleans or whatever I found out last year, masters program tied to MD program that is basically 1st year MD program but helps you get in, etc. I wasn't interested in any of those. If you're persistent you can get in. My friend got rejected from like 30 MD programs (1 interview at VCU), went DO, then intern year, applied 3 cycles for derm and got in finally after a program filled with a guy (599 owner btw) who already exhausted his Medicare funding with path residency. Now my friend is a pp dermatologist with multiple locations. He was not top of class at UF, 50th percentile MCAT, etc.

 

With May right around the corner I don't think there is much else he can do. The only things I guess that could be done in 6 months or so is volunteer work or unusual hobbies and taking lessons in those for any applications that ask about hobbies/interests. I think the best bet is to narrow down programs with the best chances to get in (imo programs in areas he has ties). The application process will be time consuming and he should get them in asap. Interview invitations and offers were on a rolling basis when I applied and I did it right away. Thankfully I received offers early from the two places I wanted and I was able to cancel other interviews to save time/money and withdraw my applications elsewhere.

 

I think any of these feats demonstrating perseverance is a forte.


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I’ll be brutally honest—I doubt a Med school will care how much he can lift, run, or jump. Now, what would be really impressive is if he used his knowledge, passion, and dedication for personal training and fitness and started a program for disadvantaged teens trying to pull their lives together. Using fitness to help others succeed with their health and achieve their own goals. The discipline from fitness can help with their grades, etc.

 

You're absolutely correct, I was asked that very same question by a trauma surgeon at my med school interview after he tore me apart about how he wasn't sure why I even got the interview?? He goes on to say, I don't think you have what it takes to survive our curriculum. Talk about demeaning interview, the entire time he spent trashing me and my CV. Then he finally said, one last question, "what you gonna do when you don't get in?" My answer to him was, "well, since I'm fairly young, I will re-apply next year and the year after that because I'm stubborn and don't give up easily."

So after I got in and went on my trauma rotation, I reminded him of our interview and asked why he approved me. He simply stated, "if you can handle me ripping you apart and not shed a tear and still wanna come here after all that, then I want you in my school."

 

What an a**hole!

One of my interviews was very stressful.
The interviewer, an older grizzled male wanted to do a role play: I was to be the primary care doctor and he was going to play a young woman. (We had to stay in character).
Young woman: Hello Dr. I need your advice. My Dad is the most important person in the world to me and he is dying of Parkinson’s. I have done extensive reading about an experimental treatment being studied in primates—that is implanting neural stem cells directly into the brain to stimulate new neural growth and hopefully slow or reverse this horrible disease. I did my undergrad studies in molecular biology so I know quite a bit about DNA, genes, organ transplantation, and immune rejection science. I want to be artificially inseminated with my Dad’s sperm, then abort the fetus, and then transplant the neural stem cells from that fetus into my Dad’s brain.
What advice can you give me?

Me: (Coughs. Fills pants with a hot steamy brown potato...and then passes out.)

 

that interviewer was a complete weirdo.

 

if I were to interview your son, I will ask him why not applying to be a physical therapist.

 

@Xrayv8 and @italiafan are/were you both radiologists?

Only weird question I can recall was during radiology residency interviews. Baylor Houston guy asked me "Why are you even here right now? We invite applicants like you from Florida all the time and none of you end up matching here." I was like okay...how do past applicants have any bearing on present and future. I ended up ranking them low (various reasons) and matched out of FL where I wanted. I liked their residents a lot though and would have fit well in that regard. At the time one of the residents won a Super Bowl with Brett Favre and the Packers (first round OL draft pick too immediately after Ray Lewis). The PD didn't even know that his own resident had a wiki page lmao. Another interviewee asked for the guy's autograph haha.

 

the god complex of trauma surgeon is often on a different dimension.

 

I am and more specifically interventional radiologist. BTW many of the residents from my program went to Baylor for Mammography fellowships. IMO, they have one of the best fellowships in the country.

 

Nice. Yeah they are a good program. One of the main things that led me away from them was they had too many IR rotations imo, especially in first year. I already decided by that point I wasn't interested in IR even though it's what randomly introduced me to rads in medical school as I did a lot of TheraSphere research with the IR docs. I thought I was going to do EM when I applied to med school and I did enjoy that 3rd year rotation, but rads it was. The program I matched into did have a lot of IR and we had our own angio room as residents and fellows had their own, but thankfully it was only 2 rotations at the main hospital with small stuff at the VA in other rotations.