Admissions

[AUDIO DESCRIPTION] Logo: Touro University California. A man in a white shirt and tie and a Touro lanyard sits in an office next to shelves with various items displayed.

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[STEVEN DAVIS] It's important for applicants, both in the primary application and the secondary application, during the interview process, to be able to show their passion for the profession. During an interview, we want to be able to see that passion as well. Why do you want to become a physician generally? Why do you want to become an osteopathic physician specifically?

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[AUDIO DESCRIPTION] Text: How to apply to: Osteopathic Medical School.

TUC College of Osteopathic Medicine.

How do I apply for Osteopathic Medical School.

Steven Davis, TUC Director of Admissions.

[STEVEN DAVIS] And osteopathic medical students go through AACOMAS, so the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine Application Service-- long, longwinded name there. It is a clearinghouse. It's a single source for applicants to submit all their application materials to one place. And then they pay that service to send their application materials in a standardized format to all the schools they wish to apply to. So for us, you go on to the AACOMAS website. You choose Touro University, California, as the school you wish to apply to and then you submit the required materials through their portal.

Once the application is submitted through AACOMAS, which we refer to as the primary application, we're going to do an initial screening. Not all schools do so. Some schools will invite every student-- every applicant, rather, to submit a supplemental application, which is the next stage. Others will do a pre-screening. We're part of that latter group. We look to make sure that applicants are satisfying our minimum application requirements, which are GPA-- minimum 3.0 science and cumulative GPA, and a minimum MCAT score of 500 or better are needed to qualify for that secondary application stage. On top of that, which usually is not an issue for us, but we double-check to make sure that they're on track to complete our prerequisite course requirements if they haven't already done so.

Deadlines are important. But I don't think that applicants should focus on them because they end up then waiting until the last minute to apply, which is always bad. Something always will come up at the end of the cycle. And then suddenly, they're left out in the cold because they can't get through. That said, our AACOMAS application deadline is March 15 of every year. Our supplemental materials application process, or deadline, rather, is April 15 of every year, meaning they submit their AACOMAS application by March 15. Everything else, if they otherwise qualify, needs to be submitted and received by our office by April 15.

[AUDIO DESCRIPTION] Why pick TUC College of Osteopathic Medicine?

Dr. Alesia Wagner, Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs, TUC College of Osteopathic Medicine.

[Dr. ALESIA WAGNER] --people. We have the most amazing students and the most amazing faculty and staff. Working with the classes and watching them grow and become the most amazing osteopathic physicians, and also as a faculty member, working with my colleagues, seeing the collaboration, somebody comes up with an idea and five other people volunteer. I think that's amazing. I recently had a student tell me that they were looking for a summer research project. And they come from a large university system in California. And in their history, they would expect to have emailed 20 or 30 faculty members to maybe get one "yes."

The student came to me for help. And how do you tell people you invited that you asked too many people? He sent six emails to six faculty members, and in less than 12 hours, five of the six said yes. And now he felt like he was going to embarrass himself because he asked too many people. But think about what that says to the students, that five faculty members in less than 12 hours replied that they had space in their research lab for him. It's pretty amazing.

[AUDIO DESCRIPTION] What are you looking for in potential students?

[Dr. ALESIA WAGNER] So we are looking for students who are a fit to mission. And if you look at our mission statement, it's about social justice and primary care and most importantly, competent, qualified, caring osteopathic physicians. So to be honest, you need to want to be a DO. You need to have some interest and focus towards primary care, since over half of our classes will go into primary care. And you need to have an interest in the community and social justice. We very much take all of that into consideration throughout our entire pre-clinical and clinical year teaching.

[STEVEN DAVIS] Make sure to review the requirements for our program or any other program. It happens often where somebody will say, well, I didn't know about that. That's not possible. All of our requirements are listed on our website. In addition, when we process the application for the first time, applicants get an email saying, hey, you've done all this, you haven't done all this. So make sure that you understand every single requirement for the schools you're applying to. We receive far more applications than we have seats for. So there's very little impulse on our end to say, OK, we're going to waive this or waive that. Requirements do not get waived.

[AUDIO DESCRIPTION] What should I keep in mind while applying?

[Dr. ALESIA WAGNER] It seems silly to remind people of this-- spell check. We often see copy and pasted statements. "And the reason I want to be an MD is--" this a DO school. You should be saying that. But I think that something a little deeper would be, everybody writes a personal statement like they're writing a short story about a loved one who got sick and/or passed. And that's generally not why somebody really wants to be a physician. That may have piqued their interest in medicine. But that's not really generally why you have a passion for it and why you're willing to make those changes in your life that you will make to practice medicine for the rest of your life. And so we're looking for those personal statements that give us some insight into the real why.

[STEVEN DAVIS] It's important for applicants, both in the primary application and the secondary application, during the interview process, to be able to show their passion for the profession. During an interview, we want to be able to see that passion as well. Why do you want to become a physician generally? Why do you want to become an osteopathic physician specifically?

[Dr. ALESIA WAGNER] And again, knowing what a DO is-- we often see people come in. And they have read Wikipedia. And they really can't tell us much about their understanding of ostepathic medicine. Certainly, reach out. If they live here near Touro, we have opportunities for them to come shadow fellow students, potential classmates of theirs in what we call the ShaDO program, where they can spend a half a day going to labs and seeing OMT performed, coming to our open house when we have it in the fall.

You wouldn't buy a car without driving it, and you probably wouldn't buy a house without looking at the neighborhood. And you're picking a career that you're going to have for the rest of your life. If you've never seen it, how do you really know you're going to love it?

[STEVEN DAVIS] We're looking at people who, in all likelihood, could be treating ourselves or other family members in the future. We want to be able to know that, hey, our family, our friends, our ourselves, that we're in good hands.

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[AUDIO DESCRIPTION] Visit the link in the description to learn more about Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine! Logo: TOURO UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA, College of Osteopathic Medicine.