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<p>That’s putting a rough burden on yourself at age 17-18. Really, you just need to select a major and make some plans for a career that you might like, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to select what you are going to do for the rest of your life. Many people change careers later in life, and even before that you might change your major.</p>
<p>But basically, if you want to be a medical researcher, there are three broad paths you can take wrt education.</p>
<p>One is to go to a medical school to get an MD. MDs do research of all kinds, and they can also teach at medical schools. Although all U.S. medical schools are excellent, you should choose one that focuses on research over primary care. Once you have an MD, you can do what’s called a postdoctoral research fellowship - which trains you to do research. MD programs are mostly clinical, so often a postdoc is necessary to get a research position somewhere. (Don’t worry - they pay you). Some people do the postdoc before their residency and others after. After that, you can become a professor or a staff researcher at a university medical center or some private or government agency, whichever you prefer. You also have the flexibility to see patients and do clinical medical practice. If you choose this route, you can major in anything you want - although I would recommend a natural sciences major (probably biology or chemistry or biochemistry) given your interests.</p>
<p>Another is to go to graduate school for a PhD in a field that allows you to do research on Alzheimer’s or cancer or another disease. The thing is, there are a large range of those kinds of PhDs. You can get a PhD in a discipline like biology or chemistry or biochemistry, or you can go for an interdisciplinary field like biomedical science, immunology, virology, neuroscience, etc. The important thing is to find someone who is already doing research similar to what you want to do; you will work with that person in their lab for the duration of your PhD, and they will train you in the ways of a research scientist. If you want to do this, you do not have the flexibility of doing clinical medicine (but some people don’t want that). An exception is if you chose to do a PhD in nursing and got your RN; however, most academic nurses I know don’t do basic science research but do research on nursing care. You will also most likely still have to do a postdoc afterwards. The upside is that you won’t have to pay for it - virtually all science PhDs worth doing will offer an admitted student a full funding package that covers tuition and health insurance and also pays you a stipend, probably around $30K a year.</p>
<p>The third option is to do a joint MD/PhD program. This has the “best of both worlds”, in that you get an MD (which allows you to practice medicine if you want) but also a PhD (and usually the funding that comes with it). The downside is that these programs are ridiculously competitive and also take a long time - usually 7-8 years. Note that you do NOT need a PhD to do research - there are many researchers out there doing research with just an MD. It’s just that because the MD is a clinical program, you usually need additional training and experience to transition into researcher.</p>
<p>Time + money:</p>
<p>MD: 4 years, probably around $150K-250K in debt depending on where you go.
PhD: 5-6 years, little to no debt.
MD/PhD: 7-8 years, little to no debt.</p>
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<p>A little extra: Both MDs and science PhDs can work in a variety of different settings when they do research, but I would say in my experience that MDs are more in-demand and have the fallback option of practicing medicine and doing medical administration work (like working as a medical officer for the CDC or running parts of a hospital or clinic). Most science PhDs who do research are employed at universities and academic medical centers, usually as professors.</p>
<p>The problem is that the professor job as we currently know it - in which a newly minted PhD goes to work as an assistant professor, toils hard for 6 years and then gets tenure as a permanent, unfireable faculty member - is largely going away. The modern university employs tons of administrators whose job it is to try to minimize costs, and part-time adjunct professors who teach a class here and there are way cheaper than full-time faculty with benefits and offices. Thus, most college classes these days are taught by adjunct professors.</p>
<p>These days, science PhDs who wish to to be professors often need to do 1-2 (or more) postdoctoral research positions, for which they are paid small amounts (usually between $40-60K/year). That can take anywhere from 2-4+ years. Then they go on the academic job market. The science academic market isn’t as bad as the humanities, but it’s still pretty hard to find a job. And in today’s economy, science professors are increasingly expected to bring in their own salary with grants. At the academic medical center from which I recently graduated, professors had to fund 80% of their own salary with grants from outside sources. The problem with that is that grant success rates are at historic lows - less than 20% of NIH grants are actually funded.</p>
<p>Of course, this would also affect an MD who is trying to become an academic professor - if you wanted to be a professor at a med school you’d likely be expected to do a postdoctoral position and also bring in outside money from grants, working with pharma companies on clinical trials, and seeing patients. It’s just that MDs have more career options if they decide that the cutthroat world of academic medicine isn’t for them anymore. And of course, PhDs often go to work for pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, think tanks, and other kinds of non-academic companies and agencies. But that’s not the job that your advisors will be preparing you for, so you need to take initiative and get non-academic experience yourself (although things are slowly changing).</p>
<p>Just some things to think about.</p>