Student Presenter(s): Lucas Hildreth, Anisa Raidah, Pauline Huang, Naveed Tariq, and Helen Wong
Faculty Mentor: Sheldon Yao
School/College: Osteopathic Medicine, Old Westbury

Background: Previous studies have looked into perceptions of allopathic versus osteopathic physicians. However, osteopathic medical students’ preference on osteopathic vs allopathic degree associated with desired specialty has not been extensively studied. Objective: Examine the effect of desired specialty on perception of osteopathic and allopathic medical degrees. Methods: The research protocol was deemed exempt by the NYIT IRB. A self-administered 43- item confidential questionnaire was distributed to all current medical students at NYITCOM using an email listserv. The questionnaire included items addressing student perceptions toward allopathic and osteopathic degrees as well as desired specialty. The data was collected using Survey Software. The data was compared using a chi-squared test and significance is deemed as a p-value.