<p>Congrats to all with good news!</p>
<p>Got my first NYC II. With any luck I’ll get a few more. I love NY!</p>
<p>Finished with all of my secondaries, and actually got 3 interview invites already (UPitt, UVA, and NJMS). Very excited, I scheduled NJ for this coming Tuesday (8/20), and Pitt is in early October. Have to schedule UVA, kind of difficult considering they only open 5 interviews dates at a time … I’m hoping to snag a Monday interview day so I can drive down on Sunday. We’ll see!</p>
<p>@phillipb22, you’re off to a great start. (and it’s only mid Aug.) It is nice to get an August interview date since there will likely be no conflicts with school or work. I’ve got one in Aug. and two in early Oct. and two more I’m trying to schedule. Good luck with the UVa interview.</p>
<p>Congrats Phillip and Plumazul!</p>
<p>Plumazul - Are you doing interviews only for the combined or did you designate that you will interview for MD alone if combined is not possible?</p>
<p>@texaspg, I’m only considering MD/PhD. I have no interest in being a clinician as a career. My only interest in becoming a physician is to gain the insight, knowledge and patient contact that will make me a more efficient and focused researcher.</p>
<p>It is pretty good to see 5 IIs for MD/PhD this early. I have heard they process very slowly.</p>
<p>Congratulations! Best of luck with the interviews.</p>
<p>Mammal- I am confused, perhaps I missed an earlier post so forgive me if this is redundant. You said your DS has a PhD acceptance in hand, but is also applying right now for MD school. But wouldn’t have have applied last fall to start a PhD this fall? So, if he committed to a program, accepted his PhD spot, why did he decide to apply for MD school now? Or is he going for MD/PhD?</p>
<p>Rock on, phillipb and plum! That’s great news!</p>
<p>I’m still slugging through secondaries. These diversity essays will not write themselves.</p>
<p>@texaspg,
</p>
<p>There seems to be two reasons for my early IIs. The first is that I applied to several schools that traditionally send out early IIs. The second is that in general, IIs are appearing a little earlier than usual. </p>
<p>This was the state of the MD/PhD II thread on SDN on this date last year:</p>
<p>[Student</a> Doctor Network Forums - View Single Post - 2012-2013 MD/PhD Application Interview Invites](<a href=“2012-2013 MD/PhD Application Interview Invites | Student Doctor Network”>2012-2013 MD/PhD Application Interview Invites | Student Doctor Network)</p>
<p>vs. this year:</p>
<p>[Student</a> Doctor Network Forums - View Single Post - *** 2013-2014 MD/PhD Application Interview Invites ***](<a href=“*** 2013-2014 MD/PhD Application Interview Invites *** | Student Doctor Network”>*** 2013-2014 MD/PhD Application Interview Invites *** | Student Doctor Network)</p>
<p>Early is good 
It helps with scheduling</p>
<p>Do people apply to 20+ schools when applying to MD/PhD programs?</p>
<p>^ Many do. I suppose it’s because the odds are so low at any particular school, applicants just want to play it safe. I applied to about 20 but since the interviews can be 2 or 3 day affairs, there is no way you can attend many of them while trying to finish school or work. Since there is no school on my list that I wouldn’t be happy to attend, I hope I get an acceptance on Oct. 15 and can then cut back on interviews.</p>
<p>^Also fit is a bigger and more nuanced factor. On the MD side you talk about research oriented vs. primary care which is very broad but for MSTP now you’re talking about not only neuroscience vs. microbiology vs. cancer vs. developmental, etc. but also even further subdivisions: cognition vs. neurodegeneration, viruses vs. bacteria, inherited syndromes vs. environmental agents, mesenchymal vs endodermal etc.</p>
<p>If the fit isn’t obvious from the application, it has to come out in the interview, and I have heard the adcom say, “yeah this person is great but whose lab do you see them joining?” Usually applicants self select but with cities like boston, nyc, philly or chicago which have multiple schools - you’ll easily get applicants applying to all the ones in the area and getting rejected from schools where they could easily have gotten into based on stats alone.</p>
<p>In addition to academic fit there is also more emphasis on personal fit, and when the school is paying you to be there for 7-9 years vs. you paying them to be there for 4 it can get very hairy.</p>
<p>Congrats on NYC plum! I just realized you’re doing MD/Phd…hats off to you, could never do that! </p>
<p>mrpenguin, those diversity essays will never write themselves. Learned that the hard way haha</p>
<p>Got 3rd II today in St. Louis this morning. Really happy and grateful at how the process is turning out so far.</p>
<p>somemom, he is declining the doctoral program. Is going to stay in his job another year and is interested in an MD, maybe with an infomatics masters program. Don’t know if he’s verified yet. He says he’s getting packets in the mail from md schools that he hadn’t listed. Is that a good sign? He is really busy and the secondaries will be hard to fit in. He says he will need to take some vacation days to get them done. This is so very different than when he applied to undergrad. I rather like being more of a bystander. Worried about debt tho if he does medicine.</p>
<p>Mammal:
Don’t stress the debt too much, especially if he does an instate school, they all have to take debt and should be able to pay it back, that said DD is certainly doing all she can to minimize debt.</p>
<p>If DS got into a PhD already, he may want to go for a PhD/MD, I believe it is funded and one does the 2 years of MD classroom work, but not the 2 years of clinical rotations, no plans to practice clinically. Do I have that right, plumazul? If your son in inclined to the research track that could be a good way to go.</p>
<p>Secondaries are time consuming, but once you have the first few done, it will become apparent that most ask the same or similar questions so they get easier…well, except for a few well-known ones that are simply long and arduous.</p>
<p>I am sew happy for your son to be in what seems to be a position of strength, between a PhD offer and unasked info from other schools, sounds like he is a strong candidate.</p>
<p>^Somemom, MD/PhD students do all four years of medical school, but they usually do the two pre-clinical years, then their PhD years, then finish the 2 clinical years of med school. Many MD/PhD students will go on to spend at least part of their time in clinical practice.</p>
<p>Thanks, Shy, I knew the went to the research after the first two years, I was not sure if they came back to clinicals. Guess i was too lazy to Google! That makes sense, with all the focus that residencies seem to put on recent medical interaction (if you read SDN stories about students who did not match or had some other issue) it seems like the clinical stuff needs to happen immediately before the residency.</p>
<p>Shy, now that I put some thought into it, that absolutely makes sense!</p>
<p>Yay! More good news this morning!</p>