Ask Dr. Gray Premed Q&A: MD vs DO Applications?

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Highlight & Takeaways

Session 71

The AMCAS and AACOMAS are slightly different application services. Do you need to tailor your personal statement to each of them?

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[00:11] Writing Personal Statement for MD vs DO Applications

Question: How would you recommend an applicant write their extracurriculars or personal statement that caters specifically to MD vs DO schools?

Answer: AMCAS and AACOMAS are two different application services. If you want to go to an osteopathic medical school or you want to go to an allopathic medical school, my recommendation as always is to just apply to both. At the end of the day, you’re going to be a physician either way.

[00:52] Writing Extracurriculars

With that said, the applications are a little bit different. For the MD application for allopathic medical schools through AMCAS, you have to write 15 extracurriculars, 700 characters. Each three of those 15 you can mark as most meaningful and you get an extra 1,325 characters as a separate essay.

The DO application does not have that most meaningful designation for the extracurriculars. So that’s one difference.

Another difference with AACOMAS for DO application is that the descriptions for the extracurriculars are only 600 characters. You have a hundred character count difference between the two.

Some students will write 600 characters for AACOMAS and then just use that on AMCAS. You can do that. I don’t recommend it because a hundred characters you can get a lot out in.

I would write the 700 and then figure out how to crunch it down into 600 for AACOMAS.

“Do not write a job description for those extracurriculars.” Click To Tweet

More importantly, don’t write job descriptions for your extracurriculars. The person who’s reading those applications knows what a scribe does. They know what an EMT does, they know what a researcher does.

Tell stories. Show how that extracurricular impacted you on your journey to becoming a medical student.

[02:21] Writing Personal Statements

For personal statement, where the biggest question comes up with a DO vs MD application (AMCAS vsAACOMAS) is, number one, character count. We have an 800 character count difference, which is a huge difference.

For AACOMAS, you only get 4,500 characters and for AMCAS, you get 5,300.

Do not write 4,500 characters and use that for AMCAS. Do not do that.

800 characters is a huge story that you’re able to tell. And for a person reading that application, it’s very easy to see that, that you “cheated” because you used one over the other.

Now students will ask, do I need to write a different personal statement?

This is something that I’ve written on The Premed Playbook: Guide to the Medical School Personal Statement.

A lot of students will “force” in the conversation of osteopathic medicine (AACOMAS) too. So if you’re applying to DO medical schools, students will try to force this into the conversation and say, “This was when I was exposed and knew I wanted to be an osteopathic physician.”

“Fitting in or squeezing in “osteopathic medicine” everywhere you would've said physician just doesn't work.”Click To Tweet

The goal of the personal statement is to talk about why you want to be a physician. That’s the same across all three applications, MD, DO, and Texas. It’s the same across all. Why do you want to be a physician?

If you have specific experiences shadowing an osteopathic physician being treated by an osteopathic physician, great.

If you have very specific experience and you can tell the story and then highlights why you are interested in osteopathic medicine because of that experience, great. Go right ahead and talk about it.

Other than that, there’s no real specific reason to force in “osteopathic medicine” into the osteopathic medical school application.

There’s no specific reason to highlight why you want to be an osteopathic physician above a regular physician. Schools know that you’re applying to both. And so it’s, it’s feigned when you try to force in the osteopathic side of things.

And this is really the same thing with extracurriculars when you do the 5,300 character one and then squeeze out 800 characters to make it fit for the AACOMAS application at 4,500 characters.

And when you need to squeeze out, do it line by line, sentence by sentence. Is this sentence adding to my story or is it just extra description, extra fluff, extra storytelling that doesn’t really add to it? If I cut it out, does the story still flow properly?

Just go line by line. 800 characters you can cut out pretty quickly. Most students don’t have a problem cutting out. They go sentence by sentence. Is this really needed, is it not?

[06:43] General Tips for Writing Secondaries

“Most students try to get too fancy and they don't answer the question.”Click To Tweet

Secondaries are very easy and not something premed should worry about. Whenever I go over student’s secondaries, for the most part, they are good to go on the first pass. There’s some grammar things, maybe a little bit of a story change.

But the biggest piece of feedback when I do those secondaries is you didn’t answer the question.

Answer the question. Don’t try to get too fancy, tell a story to highlight whatever you’re trying to answer. Stories always work the best, but answer the question and start early.
Pre-write your secondaries. It’s not a personal statement, but it’s not something you’re going to need 10 rounds of edits on secondary essays. Usually, you write it one quick pass with someone who can read it and make sure you’re answering the question. If you need that or you can just reread it yourself, make sure you’re answering the question. Make sure grammar is good and then get it off.
Be as specific as possible. When answering the question why you want to attend to that specific school, be as specific as possible. Do your homework. Research the school and research the programs.

Obviously, medical schools are all going to be very similar. They’re all going to teach you what you want to learn. They’re all gonna make you a physician at the end of the day.

Highlight as best you can, different programs that they have, different initiatives that they have.

For instance, you may be part of the LGBT community and they have a big push for LGBT highlight that they may have a big PR push for inner city underserved populations. And that’s something that hits home to you because that’s the kind of community that you grew up in. Highlight that.

“Be very specific when you're looking at the schools and when you were talking about why that school.”Click To Tweet

This is a great exercise because you need to be prepared to talk about it in your interviews too. So it’s something that you should be very prepared to talk about.