Why DO Schools suck.

This is How To Premed, the Brita filter for premeds. I get rid of all the guck so you only get the best stuff.

Before I get into this, I need to make sure everyone read the title correctly. 

It says, “Why DO schools suck.”

To be clear, it’s not 

• Why DOs suck?

• Why the DO degree sucks

• Why DOs are less than MDs

• Why no one should go to a DO school.

The reason I’m writing this is to make sure that all students who are considering DO schools know what they are signing up for.

Before med school, I didn’t think much of the difference between MD and DOs schools. 

However, at some of my clinical sites, I got to work next to DO students and while the people were awesome, their experiences with their med school sucked. 

—— 

The biggest problem with many DO schools

The biggest problem was that many of the DO schools did not give a shit about its students. They were there to collect tuition. That’s it. 

Now for the homies who are not in medical school yet. Let me explain why this is a problem. 

In the big picture, the goal of any med school is to get its students to match well. 

When a school does not care about its students, they do not provide a lot of the infrastructure that you would assume would be part of a normal medical school. 

In the pre-clinical part of medical school, there is

1) exposure to different fields
2) good lectures and teaching environments and
3) support around taking Step 1. 

This part is important, and some people need it more than others. But the reality is that a lot of preclinical learning is self-directed. 

Most students use 3rd-party company resources like Boards and Beyond, Sketchy, Anki Remotes, etc. to prep for their school exams and Step 1. 

Impact of Poor Support During Clinical Rotations

The middle part of medical schools is where you see this lack of care manifest as infrastructure and systems for students. 

Imagine if, rather than getting a detailed schedule of the people you will be working with, their contact information, and when/where to meet them, you were only told just the name of the hospital. 

Imagine the difference between a teaching team in the hospital that expects you to be there and wants to teach you and a doctor that only finds out that they have a medical student when you show up. 

For many DO students, they are forced into these horrible situations.

Sure, the adaptive ones get really good at dealing with the randomness. However, there are a lot of people who need more structure. 

And despite how well you are dealing with these situations, any time that goes into figuring out where you need to be is taken out of time where you could be learning, studying, or doing research or doing extracurriculars. 

And guess what, it often gets worse.

Getting ready for med school apps

So, after you are done with your core clinical rotations and take step 2, DO schools will completely let you go. 

Many DO schools send you an email letting you know how many elective credits you need to graduate.

Then, the students are told to reach out to clinics, hospitals, etc. to get those credits. 0 structure.

But, worst of all, there are no expectations. The hospitals and clinics that they work with aren’t always used to having students. They don’t know what to expect, and oftentimes they aren’t used to writing strong letters or recs.

You don’t want your letter of rec to be a generic ChatGPT letter.

In the meantime, many MD students have bona fide relationships with hospitals for these students to do their electives, get strong letters of recommendation from attendings, and network with residency programs they want to be at.

It really sucks. Only through med school and talking to these students did I see that it’s not that residency programs want MD students, it’s that DO students literally work for everything that they have.

No wonder their CVs aren’t as long. 

Dr. Carmody has this long, but incredible video where he talks about other ways that DO schools oftentimes handicap their own students.

Here is the video. I would highly recommend checking it out. 

Bottomline:

I’m sure not all DO schools are the same and I’m sure some support their students more. But, I just wanted to make sure you knew more of the differences that matter once you get there.

Best,

CKR