Osteopathic Med Student

Archive for the ‘Schools’ Category

I loved ATSU-KCOM when I went out to Kirksville to interview, and my friend really liked ATSU-SOMA. Any student applying to osteopathic medical schools should take time to consider A.T. Still University. Take a moment to look at the ATSU-KCOM MCAT and GPA information page. I have also updated the ATSU-SOMA MCAT and GPA stats page. KCOM is the original DO school and you should take a moment to check both schools out.

As promised I am working on adding more MCAT scores and GPAs for osteopathic medical schools. Des Moines University’s MCAT and GPA statistics are now available to view here on OMS. 

Please enjoy these as I work on adding more stats for more schools.

The project is officially going! I just entered the second school’s statistics. RVUCOM’s average MCAT score and average GPA are now available on our site. Feel free to take a look. I was also able to find a few more interesting demographics about their inaugural class.

It has taken a little while, but I finally got it started. Under the tab for titled “Osteopathic Schools” you can now find a section featuring MCAT and GPA statistics for osteopathic medical schools.

University of New England – College of Osteopathic Medicine is the first school featured in the MCAT/GPA pages. Check out the UNECOM MCAT and GPA scores page to see how you match up.

Once the statistics pages are finished I will work on adding more general information about schools. If you know any information for one or more of the schools and would like to contribute feel free to leave a comment.

If you are anything like me, then you want to know if you are competitive at a school before you spend all the money to submit initial applications and then another $40-175+ for secondary applications. I know I spent a fair amount of time searching out data about schools. Recently, I mentioned that I am working on upgrading features on this site. One of the features is that I am going to put up the most up to date MCAT and GPA statistics that I can find for each osteopathic medical school. I am working on collecting the most up to date MCAT/GPA information I can find. This may take a little while (I am still a student and school has to take priority), but if anyone out there has any information that they would like to contribute to this effort please let me know.

If you are looking at this while preparing your applications for the next year or two then please check back soon. Updates are on the way.

I just compiled a list of osteopathic medical schools along with their contact information and websites. This should have all the most recent contact information for each school. 

I am also working on gathering statistics for entering classes. Many students spend a lot of time searching out MCAT and GPA statistics for the schools they are interested in. Hopefully, we will be able to find the most recent data available. Too often google searches and statistics found in forums is far outdated. I recently found someone students arguing about the scores for matriculated students. After following the links provided and checking the source code I found that the stats they were touting were at least 5 years old! Standards have changed so much in that short time, and now it has become more competitive. I will let you know as the information becomes available.

Recently a good friend of mine interviewed at Western University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific (Western U/COMP) in Pomona, CA. When he was first going out for his interview he was not very excited about the school. Don’t get me wrong, he was excited to be interviewing for medical school, but he didn’t know much about Western U/COMP. Visiting the school opened his eyes a little bit.

Some DO schools are stand-alone private medical schools. Western University is a little bit different from those other schools. Along with the DO degree, Western University offers podiatry, optometry, dentistry, physical therapy, PA, pharmacy, vet, and other health science related master’s programs. Having so many different programs at the school gave Western U the university feel that my friend is used to. He really liked that there was more to the school than just physicians.

After seeing the presentations, and feeling impressed by the tour of the facilities, my friend gained a real desire to attend Western U/COMP. He felt that they offered exactly what he needed to become a quality physician. With this new determination he was ready for the interview.

The Western U/COMP interview is a 3 person panel interview: a physician,
faculty member, staff member, or a student. My friend sat down with a DO, a PhD, and a staff member. He felt for the most part that they were friendly, but really seemed to focus on certain topics. Some questions that really stuck out from his interview went something like this:

• “We are a very diverse university. What do you bring to this campus that makes you diverse?”
• “Could you tell us about the research you were involved with?” And then they grilled him for a while about the many different aspects of the research project that he participated in. Make sure you know a fair amount about your research if you were involved with a project!
• They also asked him point blank, “If you were accepted would you come here?” It sounds like a silly question, but make sure you are ready for it! I had it asked on more than one occasion. Be ready to give them more than just a “yes.” You should be ready at any moment to tell them why you would want to study medicine at their school.

Since Western U/COMP was not high on my friend’s list he had not taken his preparation very seriously for his interview with Western University. He learned the hard way that sometimes you will really like a school that you didn’t know you would. I learned that myself; I turned down schools I had very high on my list to attend a school I didn’t know I wanted to go to until I interviewed with them. My friend still got accepted by the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific, but a little more preparation could have saved him a little bit of anxiety during his wait for his acceptance letter.

WVSOM’s interview day was very relaxing. My interview day started at 10 AM. Half of the people had their interviews first thing at 8 AM and the rest of us were interviewed after the presentations, tour, and lunch. WVSOM seemed to feel that keeping the interview day very personal was a way to make interviewees feel at home and comfortable (I rather enjoyed how comfortable the day was). We started off the day in the foyer where we all sat in a circle in nicely padded chairs. There we had quick presentations about the school.

Since this post is about the interview day I will start with what my interview was like. I was interviewed by a 3 person panel. One DO, one PhD, and one admissions office member. Of all of my interviews WVSOM’s interview was the most intense; however, it really wasn’t that bad. Right as I walked in the room I was greeted in Japanese by Dr. Zachary Comeaux (Dr. Comeaux heads an exchange with a Japanese osteopathic school and wanted to test what I put on my application). Luckily, Japanese is a language I know and I quickly responded and we went on with the interview. The interviewers did notice that I had a few blemishes on my academic record, but they didn’t ask me to directly respond to why I struggled in those classes. The questions they asked that stood out the most were:

1- What do you do when you find you are struggling in a class?

2- How will you handle the fast pace and difficulties of medical school?

3- Why do you want to be a DO? Why did you only apply for osteopathic schools?

Obviously there were more questions than that, but they seemed to be fairly standard “getting to know you” questions. I was a little doubtful because of how much they seemed to focus on some past struggles. Only one of the people interviewing me seemed to really care (the PhD), but the other two seemed to think that my more recent academics and my plan I presented proved that I could handle the stresses that would come. Apparently my answers were good enough because I found out two days later that I was accepted. WVSOM’s online system is nice because you don’t have to wait for the letter to come in the mail; you can check out your account whenever you want to see for updates. My acceptance was already posted by the time I got home from the interview. Talk about a stress reliever.

And now for other interview day information. First we heard from different faculty members and the financial aid office. About the only bad thing about the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine was the tuition for out of state students. Now, the tuition is high, but the cost of living is relatively low. Because of this the overall budget is still high but is closer to being competitive with DO schools in places like California, and it is quite a bit lower than the budget at Michigan State University.

After the presentations we went for a tour of the campus. It was a very nice campus. I really liked how spread out the campus was, and that you were able to go outside when moving between classes and buildings. The WVSOM anatomy labs was huge and was very clean, both visibly and smelling. The cadaver tables are equipped with special ventilation systems to remove the special stench that most labs have.

The classrooms were nice too. The classrooms are very large lecture halls with nice chairs. Each room also has 3 screens for powerpoint presentations. They also record all the lectures for students so you can download them later. It seemed like a pretty nice setup.

WVSOM is also building a few new buildings. One of them is going to be a really nice gym, or “wellness center.” I wish I could remember what the other building was, but I remember it sounded nice, something like a research center…I don’t quite remember. All I know is that WVSOM was one of my favorite schools I have seen and if you get the chance to interview with them I would highly recommend it.

In a previous post I mentioned that I interviewed with LECOM-Erie. I thought I would give you a quick idea about how their interview day goes. It was my first interview and it was about two months ago so the details of time are hazy, but I definitely remember the interview very well.

The day started around 8 AM and I arrived about 20 minutes early. I know it sounds way early, but I was not the first person to arrive. Two other interviewees arrived up to 30 minutes earlier than I did! To start the day about 10 med school hopefuls piled into a conference room. At this time the director of admissions came in and started to get to know us. When he got to me he started speaking in fluent Japanese (luckily, I know Japanese). Always be careful about what you put in your application. You never know what a school might test you on.

Their day ran fairly similar to other schools interview days. After the introductions we were privileged enough to sit through powerpoint presentations about LECOM. Then we got to hear from the financial aid office and other administrators. These activities took up most of our morning.

Right before lunch was the interview. At LECOM they have recently decided to use a different interview method than other schools. I was interviewed by a 2 person panel. One interviewer was a man with a PhD in English and the other was a physiology instructor for LECOM. Neither of the men had ever seen my file. Because of this they had no knowledge of my past academic history, MCAT score, research or clinical experience. They had never even read my personal statement, secondary essays, or letters of recommendation. LECOM feels that if you made it to the interview then those aspects of you application are competitive enough and now your interviewers need to find out what kind of person you truly are. We spent most of our interview talking about my family (my wife and kids), and about my experiences that I have had serving as a religious representative in Japan for my church.

At no time did anyone ask any difficult ethics or recent healthcare hot topic questions. The only LECOM interview questions that really stood out were:

1- Why do you want to be an osteopathic physician?
2- Have you applied to any allopathic schools?
3- Why would you want to come to school at LECOM?
4- Do you have any concerns about attending school in Erie?

As you can see, none of these are particularly difficult. I didn’t have to explain anything in regard to question #2. I only applied to DO programs. Even if you did apply to MD schools, don’t worry, just make sure that you acknowledge the differences between the two methods of medicine and that you are very excited about the benefits provided through studying osteopathic medicine.

The whole interview lasted about a half an hour. It went very quickly and was very low pressure. I found it very refreshing to experience an interview with a closed file. Both men were friendly and never seemed to be interested in intimidating their interviewees at any time.

After the interview we had lunch with a couple of students that were able to talk about the different learning methods at LECOM and answer any questions about living in Erie. Of all the places I interviewed Erie was definitely the most non-rural place to live.

After interviews and lunch we had a few more presentations and ranked our learning style preference, and stated if we were interested in attending the Seton Hill campus. With LECOM-Stone Hill as an option you are essentially interviewing for one of over 300 seats in their school. This should be a big comfort to many people out their knowing that your odds much greater here than at most other schools in this nation.

Many aspiring physicians shy away from osteopathic schools because they fear that they won’t get the opportunity to do research. This is an unfortunate misconception. There are many people attending osteopathic medical schools that are getting involved in research projects.