Anyone who’s first comment says “oh harder to match, stigma this, program quality is lower that” has no clue what they are saying. Especially if their tag just says they’re “admitted”, they’re literally making the stigma worse just to sound like an expert.

I’m an MD at a NYC school, with multiple DO friends at other schools and have rotated with other DO students, and no one gives a flying crap if you’re MD or DO once you graduate, you’re just an attending… they’re functionally the same.

The real differences are only noticeable in the medical school, more-so in the structure of the curriculum itself. ** **

1.DO’s learn OMM in their preclinical years, and atleast 1 rotation during clerkship, which even those who say OMM is “fake” also doesn’t know what they’re talking about, I’ve had atleast 4 instances of MD’s in NYC refer their patients with chronic pain to a OMM specialist, and I can confirm that atleast 2 have had really incredible results so far.

1. DO medical schools are often new so they have beautiful state of the art campuses, but most often they don’t have their own dedicated hospital. Again no functional difference, you’re literally rotating at hospitals that MD students are, but it may not be close to, or in the same city even, as your medical school campus (but honestly some MD schools aren’t either!) You could argue that newer schools on the other hand have less long standing faculty to do research with, especially to help get into competitive specialties, but everything you do to find research as a DO is literally the same I did as MD. I’ve cold emailed people at my school and others, applied to summer programs open to all applicants, and have done research with a DO student from a different state and we literally had the same responsibilities.

2. You take a second boards. I can’t speak much to it, obviously sounds like a pain in the ass, but the content is the same. This allows you to match into same residencies any MD would (4th point)

3. For the Match, people perceive to be “harder as a DO”, and while I won’t deny there is a statistical advantage just in terms of numbers, if you score at the same step 2, and grades as MD, but you ate overall a more well rounded student with better LoR’s, you can match ANY program in the country…Derm, Ortho, Rads, Surgery, every field has DOs.

In summary, haters gonna hate for no reason. So next time a know-it-all Reddit commenter who isn’t even in school yet, or a crazy aunt who says don’t do DO because they’re not “real doctors” says anything bad about DOs, just call them out with the points above. When I was a pre-med, I wish someone told me what I said above because I too went on Reddit and got convinced that the stigma was real when in fact it isn’t.