Matching into Ophthalmology

[slaveofthehealer]

I am an OMS I student interested in matching into ophthalmology and I was hoping if someone who has matched into an ophthalmology residency as a DO can advise me about what steps to take to be a competitive candidate. My school does not have many clinical research opportunities so I was wondering how I can do research and find a mentor in the field.

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[LemonLens]

I just posted on your other thread in the DO medical students forum.

Not a DO, but here is some advice:

1) Email academic departments in the area to try and land a research position so that you can publish. You need to get a strong research CV together. You have an early interest in ophthalmology, which means you may have some sort of background in it - if you do, you should reach out to people you worked with. If not, all you can do is email.
2) Get letters from ophthalmologists (preferably well known ones) that you do research with. It is very common for programs to simply ignore your application if you are from a DO school. The most reliable way to get interviews at programs as a DO or even a low tier MD student is to have ophthalmologists you worked with make phone calls to those programs. Otherwise, you truly risk your application being tossed in the trash at a very large number of programs. Ophthalmology programs care a lot about the school you come from (it's actually one of the most important considerations when selecting residents), so you need a strategy to get past that hurdle - phone calls from well known faculty is one way to do it.
3) Things are getting more and more competitive in ophthalmology, so you need to have the above or you have a pretty high chance of not matching as a DO. This interview cycle is proving to be filled with very strong applicants, if the quality of applicants to our program this year is any indication of that.

 

[sab3156]

I am an OMS I student interested in matching into ophthalmology and I was hoping if someone who has matched into an ophthalmology residency as a DO can advise me about what steps to take to be a competitive candidate. My school does not have many clinical research opportunities so I was wondering how I can do research and find a mentor in the field.

Contact nearby departments. Most will not answer you, like I said in another thread, but that's about all you can do at this point. You can also try applying for a research fellowship year somewhere. Not sure if they are hard for DO students to get. But if you don't get a strong research mentor who not only gets you publications but also writes you influential letters and/or makes phone calls, applying ophthalmology is very tough for DOs. You have to really play the game to get anywhere.

 

[mjohnsonets]

There are DO based ophthalmology residencies:

https://www.aocoohns.org/storage/app/media/documents/OphRes1.pdf

Some of them have good numbers and get exposure to very diverse surgical skills since none of them have fellows. This decision will depend a bit on what type of practice you wish to pursue after training though. There are residents who match into good fellowships that have done one of these residencies.

I'm guessing they're still fairly competitive and you should pursue the means mentioned above still.

 

[sab3156]

This year's match rate for osteopathic seniors was 55%, but 5 of the 16 osteopathic seniors have probably matched to former AOA programs. That's about 1/3 of the matched applicants basically being put into programs that were almost guaranteed to fill with DOs. Match rate could be as low as 38% when taking this into account, and probably is around there. So realistically, the match rate hasn't changed for the programs that were historically ACGME. The former AOA programs ended up filling their seats with DOs (for whatever reason), but who knows if this will continue into future years.

 

[realba11]

This year's match rate for osteopathic seniors was 55%, but 5 of the 16 osteopathic seniors have probably matched to former AOA programs. That's about 1/3 of the matched applicants basically being put into programs that were almost guaranteed to fill with DOs. Match rate could be as low as 38% when taking this into account, and probably is around there. So realistically, the match rate hasn't changed for the programs that were historically ACGME. The former AOA programs ended up filling their seats with DOs (for whatever reason), but who knows if this will continue into future years.

That's what I was thinking. The number of applicants dropped from 54 last year to 37 this year, and only 29 participated. Was hoping to have some positives to take out of this match going into next year, but the results are neutral at best compared to prior years. I also heard some MD's matched into DO spots, but only from forums.

 

[sab3156]

That's what I was thinking. The number of applicants dropped from 54 last year to 37 this year, and only 29 participated. Was hoping to have some positives to take out of this match going into next year, but the results are neutral at best compared to prior years. I also heard some MD's matched into DO spots, but only from forums.

Yep, that's the only real conclusion that can be drawn here. Really hard to put a positive spin on this when the overall bias is clearly no different than before.

It will be interesting to see who (DO vs. MD) filled those seats at the former AOA programs.