Why You Should Hold Off On Sending Out the DO Application

The Negatives About Applying to a D.O. Program 

Although a DO program does represent a realistic avenue to become a doctor in the US Health System, you will be in much more debt that if you were in a traditional MD program.  DO schools are expensive and students can often find themselves paying over $60,000 per year in some institutions in order to earn their degree.  

You may think that Medical School from an MD Program is also expensive but the one factor that and MD and a DO program really differ in is the fact that most DO programs require incoming students to do a one-year transitional year in order to be excepted in the program.  Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale is notorious for this practice where you are essentially guaranteed a spot in your interview if you are willing to complete the transitional year.  This means an extra $60,000 for the institution and even if they advertise they have a growing class size every year, most of those slots are already reserved from those who enrolled in the transitional year so in reality, a first-time applicant may be competing for 30 positions out of the 250 in the class.

Another slight of the DO realm is that rotations can be hard to come by depending on where you are able to schedule them.  When I completed some electives with DO students, they told me that their schools have a pretty extensive network of affiliations across the Eastern US but the hospitals are generally smaller than the main hospitals an MD student would have access too and only a few students are able to rotate at a time.  This can be a big disadvantage if you are not exposed to a lot of cases during your training.  Unfortunately, the learning curve is quite short once you start Residency so you will not be able to just causally learn a problem during your hospital rounds.  You have to master them before and if you are not familiar with a concept, you may need to spend a lot of time in a library researching a disease you may have never seen before.  

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Unfortunately, these DO programs also have residencies that are specific for DO students that can be found in small community hospitals.  It may be a good chance to see a variety of patients but during my rotation, I had to help a few DO students from the Erie campus of LECOM because they had come from the North and had little experience of speaking Spanish with patients.  In this specific hospital, there was a DO program and 90% of the population were native Cubans so no English was spoken whatsoever.  That microcosm of a hospital can make it extremely difficult for a Resident to feel comfortable and I was told by the residents that it is common for DOs to reapply to different programs every year to have a broader overview of the field before finishing Residency.  That can make it difficult if you are supporting a family.  You may not have stability and can lead a nomadic life similar to clinical rotations as you attempt to get licensed.