Hello. I’m beginning a Biochemistry PhD this Fall with the knowledge that I will apply to medical school during the tail end of the program. I’ve applied twice before and was rejected twice. My first application was admittedly rushed and mediocre. My second application was improved and I completed a medical masters but was still rejected. During my PhD, what should I do to ensure I’ve done as much as possible to give my third (and probably final) shot the best chances? What type of volunteering and clinical activities should I pursue? I will have to sit for the MCAT again and wonder, in what score range should I aim? I know graduate GPA is not weighted heavily but I hope 4-5 years of PhD work and a high MCAT will outweigh my shaky undergrad performance. My graduate school has a medical school and I wonder if I should try to network to increase my chances of matriculating there? I’m open to advice because I know I don’t know everything about building the strongest application. Thanks for reading!
@WayOutWestMom do medical schools look at graduate school grades at all?
Does the program you are in tend to produce PhD graduates in the 4-5 year time frame…as a median or a best case scenario? When looking for this data, you’ll need to subtract any MD/PhD students, as they complete the PhD portion faster in average than the other students (for various reasons). Overall, among middle-aged doctors, there are a not insignificant number who had a PhD before going to MD, but most of them (that I’ve known) are foreign medical graduates, so the reasons for that order of events (and how the timing worked) were specific and not applicable to Americans.
I’m not sure. I know medical masters grades are considered but I believe PhD grades would have less weight. I know graduate and undergraduate GPAs are separated in AMCAS.
Most PhD students defend and complete in 4-5 years.
Additionally, I went to an HBCU for my undergrad and masters and believe this hurt me. I spoke with an admissions faculty who literally stated that applications from HBCUs are evaluated differently. My PhD is at an R1 university ranked within the top 50 for Chemistry. My thinking is that taking time to focus on ECs, taking coursework and TA’ing will allow me to strategically craft the best possible application.
At least volunteer there regularly and after you get to know some doctors, etc, ask them for advice on your application. You will need to ask some for LORs anyway.
I’m unsure on all the rest as I only see undergrads who then apply to med school, but it’s what many of them do if their school has a nearby med school. They usually end up successful, but I don’t know that networking has as much to do with it as getting good LORs.
This is good news.
My best guess is that the grades from graduate school classes will not matter nearly as much as your thesis project, including your academic productivity (mainly measured by first-author publications) and how well you discuss your research in the med school application and interviews. Possibly also impactful will be the identity of your research mentor, but I’d be cautious about choosing one only based on “clout”. Good luck!
For osteopathic (DO) medical schools, graduate school grades in BCPM classes are included in the GPA calculations.
For allopathic (MD) medical schools, all graduate grades are listed separately and are not included in GPA calculations. Individual schools may or may not look at graduate grades. It depends upon exactly what graduate degree program the student was enrolled in. A thesis based research MS or PhD in bio might get some consideration from the adcomm at some schools, but other grad degrees won’t.
Med applicants regardless of their degree level all need to have the same things-- long term community service with disadvantaged groups, clinical exposure, physician shadowing, and leadership roles in their activities.
Take a look at these 15 Core Competencies for Incoming Medical Students and make sure you have all your bases covered. Community service needs to be long term with a single organizatio or cause, rather a bunch of 3 hour one-shots. Ideally your service needs to be with groups from a different background than your own. Service must be face-to-face service–not administrative or fund-raising.
Your clinical exposure, shadowing and community service needs to be recent. While you can list stuff you did in undergrad, that’s not going to impress anyone.
You need a minimum of 200 hours of recent community service and 200 hours of recent clinical exposure to prevent getting screened out in the initial screening rounds. For service-oriented med schools, community service hours need to be much, much higher.
Your PhD won’t help you much with the associated med school unless your thesis advisor is also med school faculty and has some pull. If your advisor sits on the admissions committee, they won’t be able to participate at all in your application’s review due to a conflict of interest so that’s not a plus.
Your application list will need to include schools that are open to “re-inventors”–students who have come back from a weak undergrad performance. Not all school are and your list will depend on exactly how high your MCAT is and the impact of your thesis and any associated publications.
tl;dr your AMCAS GPA will only include your undergrad classes. It’s done this way so that med schools can compare apples-to-apples w/r/t GPA among applicants. Some med schools may give some consideration to your PhD coursework, but there are no guarantees.
Two questiona
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if med school was your end goal, why didn’t you enroll in a SMP? These programs have proven track records of placing students into med school.
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if you attended a HBCU for undergrad and master’s–did you apply to an HBCU medical schools?
@Biochem2MD what does this mean…was this a special masters program?
Did you change your list of medical schools where you applied the second time around…or did you apply to the same med schools?
Did you apply to any HBCU med schools?
I think this is how the committees find their students for their med programs.
This description was completely our daughter and her classmates.
Every one of them had significant, long-term exposure to their local communities and worked with low SES populations and disadvantaged groups. Lots of clinical intake with patients and their vitals/lab results that targeted diabetes, prenatal care, hypertension, heart disease and nutrition. It helped that the majority of her class spoke another “needed” language at native, or near native, proficiency.
My concern is that you’ve already applied and were rejected.
So many students are rejected because there isn’t enough space and the schools know who they need.
If you currently attend a university in California, which has an aligned medical school, networking doesn’t really help. It may negate it. They are under no obligation to accept a current student and, at times, it can be a disadvantage because those committees want to bring in students with experiences from other colleges and those communities.
My friend, is on a committee that interviews prospective applicants. She says they wipe the slate clean. If a student attended their university, they do not give that student an “advantage” or preference. They know who and what experiences they want and look at the whole package presented. It’s a very specific type of student that they seek and they seem to know how that looks.
Also, medical school is not cheap. Can you afford it?
Edited to add: How will you be able to manage the Ph.D and have time to conduct your clinical experiences? I know that the research on my Masters took 4 years, a lot of that was getting the university’s approvals for subjects research. With the Ph.D., I imagine you would take even longer for the dissertation?
Our daughter took a year off to finish her clinical obligations, volunteering 40-hour work weeks in the clinic, doing vitals and blood draws (phlebotomy) then “charting” results for patients. It’s a lot of work!
I have seen people drop out with a terminal master’s degree and go to DO/MD schools but going after a PhD when you have already gone through a MS program seems like a very long road. Why not just try to improve your grades and your application?
PhD is no joke and as a word of advise, if your department finds out that you are an aspiring MD, things might go south in a hurry. Basically, you are taking up a training spot and a stipend when you have no intention of doing research. So if you go down this path, tread carefully.
This is my question. Why are you doing a biochem PhD? That will be a very hard program, especially at a top 50 R1. Why do you mention teaching? Are you not fully funded on a research assistantship? Are they requiring you to TA to get your stipend? That will make things even harder, especially with the premed stuff you need to do on the side.
I don’t want to discourage you if you’re really into the PhD. But at minimum, you have to want it for the sake of wanting it rather than just as a means to an end.
What would you do if med school was just not an option for you? If the answer is “biochemistry PhD”, then go for it. If the answer is anything else, you should reconsider your plan.
@Biochem2MD what is your end goal? If it’s to provide patient care, maybe you should consider a bachelors to nursing program…work as a nurse for a couple of years and then train to be a nurse practitioner (APRN). Lots of patient care…and less time than PhD, and then med school…and then residency.
Consider other options for providing patient care.
My understanding tha a “medical master’s” is not the same as a SMP, but if it was a recognized GPA-enhancing post-bacc (esp if it was associated with a medical school) and you had no success with your re-invention as a student, then something went wrong with your application. Possibly you applied to the wrong set of med schools (not all med school will accept academic re-invention), were a dud in your post-bacc, or just isn’t have a compelling application package. (Not enough or not the right ECs, weak LORs, MCAT mismatch for you target list, carelessly written PS/secondaries. )
Re-inventors aren’t going to end up at JHU, Harvard, Stanford or Michigan even with a PhD. They end up at places like Wayne State (which btw computes a new GPA using only the last 30 science credits earned including grad classes), their state publics, Eastern VA, Vermont, Drexel, NYMC, Hackensack, etc or at DO programs. If a re-inventor is a high stats post-bacc/high MCAT applicant, they might get a look from Dartmouth or Columbia, but those kind of acceptances are rare.
Did you get any interview invites either time you applied to medical school?
It was a Masters designed to help students matriculate to medical school. My second application cycle included many new schools and I applied to all the HBCU schools.
I’ve already completed an SMP and did well in it (3.8 GPA) but I was still rejected. I think doing a lesser known SMP hurt me.
0 interviews my first cycle and 2 interviews my second cycle.
The Masters is designed to help students matriculate to medical school and had basic science courses similar to the course medical students take; I finished with a 3.8.