A DO school is an osteopathic medical school, a four-year program that trains students to become fully licensed physicians with a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degree. There are currently 46 accredited colleges of osteopathic medicine in the United States, operating across 73 teaching locations in 36 states. Graduates can practice in every medical specialty, prescribe medications, perform surgery, and hold the same clinical privileges as their MD counterparts.
How DO Schools Differ From MD Schools
The core medical curriculum at a DO school covers the same anatomy, pharmacology, pathology, and clinical rotations you’d find at an MD (allopathic) school. The key difference is an additional layer of training in osteopathic manipulative medicine, or OMM. This is a hands-on approach where students learn to diagnose and treat patients using manual techniques applied to muscles, joints, and connective tissue. The American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine recognizes 40 distinct OMM techniques, ranging from soft tissue manipulation and muscle energy methods to high-velocity adjustments and lymphatic pump techniques.
OMM training is woven throughout all four years and continues into clinical clerkships. It’s not an elective or a side module. It’s a foundational, required part of the degree. This reflects the broader philosophy behind osteopathic medicine: the idea that the body’s structure and function are deeply connected, that the body has a built-in capacity for self-healing, and that effective treatment considers the whole person, including mind, body, and spirit.
The Osteopathic Philosophy
Osteopathic medicine traces back to 1892, when Andrew Taylor Still founded the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri. Still believed mainstream medicine of his era was too focused on treating symptoms rather than addressing root causes. He built a philosophy around four core tenets that still guide DO education today: the body functions as a unit of body, mind, and spirit; the body is capable of self-regulation and self-healing; structure and function are interrelated; and rational treatment depends on understanding all three of those principles together.
In practice, this translates to a training culture that emphasizes preventive care, the musculoskeletal system’s role in overall health, and a patient-centered approach to diagnosis. It doesn’t mean DOs avoid medications or surgery. They use every tool available. But their training encourages them to also consider how physical structure, lifestyle, and mental health interact in a given patient’s condition.
Licensing Exams and Board Certification
DO students take the COMLEX-USA, a multi-level licensing exam administered by the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners. This is the required pathway to licensure for osteopathic graduates. Many DO students also choose to take the USMLE, the licensing exam that MD students take, particularly if they’re interested in residency programs that historically favored allopathic applicants. Both exams lead to the same result: a license to practice medicine independently.
What Happens After Graduation
DO graduates enter the same residency match system as MD graduates through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). In the most recent match cycle, 7,928 DO seniors matched into residency positions. About half of those, roughly 4,026, matched into primary care fields like family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics. The remaining 3,902 matched into specialties across the board, including emergency medicine, psychiatry, surgery, anesthesiology, and others.
That roughly even split reflects both the osteopathic tradition of primary care and the reality that DO graduates increasingly compete for and secure positions in every specialty. The perception that a DO degree limits you to family medicine is outdated. Osteopathic physicians now represent approximately 11% of all physicians in the United States and more than 25% of current medical students, with over 167,000 DOs actively practicing.
Practice Rights
DOs hold full, unrestricted medical and surgical practice rights in all 50 states. They can specialize in any field, hold hospital privileges, lead departments, and serve in every branch of the military medical corps. Internationally, DOs trained in the United States have full practice rights in more than 65 countries.
Getting Into a DO School
Applicants apply through AACOMAS, the centralized application service for osteopathic medical schools. The application cycle typically opens in early May, with submissions accepted through the following April. For the 2024 entering class, average MCAT scores for matriculants were slightly lower than the prior year, continuing a trend of modest score fluctuations. The strongest section scores for DO matriculants tend to fall in the psychological, social, and biological foundations of behavior section (around 126.8 out of 132), while critical analysis and reasoning skills scores tend to be slightly lower (around 125).
Admissions standards at DO schools have risen steadily. Between 2016 and 2024, the mean MCAT score for matriculants increased, reflecting growing competition as osteopathic medicine has expanded. Many DO schools also weigh clinical experience, community service, and letters of recommendation heavily, and some look favorably on applicants who can articulate why osteopathic philosophy appeals to them specifically.
Is a DO the Same as an MD?
In terms of what you can legally do as a physician, yes. Both degrees lead to full licensure, board certification, and the ability to practice any specialty. The training differences are real but narrow: OMM coursework, a philosophical emphasis on holistic and preventive care, and a separate licensing exam. In a clinical setting, patients often can’t tell the difference, and many never think to ask. Both DOs and MDs can prescribe the same medications, order the same tests, and perform the same procedures. The distinction matters most during medical school itself, where the additional hands-on training shapes how osteopathic students learn to think about the body.