Hi guys
I remembered this website I found in high school long ago as what got me to where I am today - Now a junior at Haverford College with the QuestBridge scholarship (thanks MYOS1634!)
Now that I’m beginning to learn all about med school and its application process, an important point my pre med advisor told me to consider is to find out, for MD/PhD applicants, the percentage of college graduates who matriculated to medical school with no gap years taken. She said if that number was small for the majority of colleges I was interested in, not to worry about the MCAT this year.
Does anyone happen to either know this information or where I can find out about it? For… any school with an MD/PhD program?
Is it also dependent on undergrad experience? Both of my summers were spent doing research internships, this past one doubling up to 70h/week on 2. As a chemistry major/biochemistry concentrator at Haverford, I’m also going to have 2 years worth of additional research experience via coursework (Senior thesis and junior superlab) under my belt. Though, counselor said this was not unique, so I’m wondering if it really matters.
GPA 3.95, MCAT not taken yet, but have been studying to apply straight through.
Any thoughts?
You are talking about a decade more of schooling. Why? The answer to that question will help determine what the next step is on the path you are on.
“Gap years” are in general not what they are looking for. “Never getting out of school” is what they are trying to avoid. So they are looking for some real non-academic experience, not just a pause.
Well, of course one would use the gap years to acquire more experience. So, i.e., using the gap years as an opportunity to work as… a shadower, lab tech, etc. my pre-health advisor said this was what some programs wanted, though she also noted that others (i.e. UPenn) would welcome undergrads doing MD/PhD straight through. Are you emphasizing getting relevant clinical/research job experience before applying?
Maybe gap year is the wrong term… I mean, after you graduate, getting job experience for 1-2 years BEFORE applying. Not putting education on pause. (Does that clarify anything…?)
You still haven’t answered the “Why?” question. That is absolutely critical.
If you intend to practice, why a PhD?
If you intend to do research, why an MD?
If you want MD/PhD it’s critical from what I’ve seen to be doing very valuable research while in college. Does your research carry over into something a med school would want?
If pursuing just MD, what research you do in college doesn’t really matter. Many schools just want to see that you know what’s involved in it and are able to think critically as it involves research. You could be researching music or ancient Greece and still do fine. Those won’t help with MD/PhD from what I’ve seen.
Twenty or so years ago, it was common practice to go directly from undergraduate to medical school. Now it is uncommon, from what I’m told. I don’t know the exact rates. But a friend of my son recently graduated from Duke, and told me that more than 3/4 of the pre-meds take an extra year before applying to med school.
During this year, most typically work in a lab. But shadowing is also very common. Also gives an extra year to practice for MCAT.
But MD/PhD is a very different beast than medical school alone. Among other things, it’s only about 3% of the size, so it gets completely washed out in med school statistics.
I am unsure as to how comprehensive you wish this answer to be, but I’ll begin to lay out my motivations here.
I’m interested in the intersectionality of the two professions, as one often instruments the other. I want to specialize in a certain system/paradigm (i.e. I’m very interested in metabolic research) and apply the findings of my research to the clinic. Both clinical observation and research results are crucial to me, as they either synergize in important findings or one may give insights about the other’s limitations. I want to understand the etiology of disease and research methods to treat these diseases, and then apply that to the clinic. (Yes, I understand investigation of treatments is not a fast process, and is very painstaking - I am equipped to deal with the hardships of research.) In particular, I am motivated by the things I see in metabolic related literature, particularly the role of insulin resistance, diabetes, chronic hyperglycaemia, and/or metabolic syndrome in a plethora of chronic diseases commonly considered as distinct and separate pathologies in the clinic. Chronic metabolic diseases, as being shown in the CLINIC, are efficiently remedied by lifestyle alteration, and the RESEARCH on this is about a decade behind clinical observation. Most interestingly to me has been my investigation of therapeutic carbohydrate restriction (commonly achieved via low carb or ketogenic dieting) as effective prevention and adjunct therapy for many diseases in the clinic - it evidences remission in patients with T2D and MetS, improves virtually all cardiometabolic risk factors and has protective effects in the myocardium, has dramatically reduced the proliferation of some tumors, slows and is a major prevention for Alzheimer’s and dementia, and much more. I desire to understand why this is being seen in the clinic, and supplant the literature with research that is not currently there for certain conditions (particularly virtually all research on maternal diet and offspring outcomes, for example, use a western diet model, and research on the ketogenic diet in pregnant mice is virtually absent - the literature here uses high-PUFA vegetable oil formulas, which would never be applied to the clinic. I can extend from here.)
The research that exists on this intersectionality is limited and I seek to not only expand it but apply my understanding of it in a way that patients in the clinic need, as the efficacy of conventional medicine is being called into question, i.e. statin use, as well as the perspectives that fuel it, i.e. the Diet-Heart Hypothesis. However, the hesitation and controversy of formal application of the KD in the clinic is primarily due to the LACK of literature and the funding for it. In addition, many people report increasing distrust of their doctors as a result of learning all this information, and that is a distrust I wish to remedy.
Of course, I don’t expect specialization right off the bat. As the effects of insulin and chronic hyperglycaemia are pleiotropic, I would have interest in metabolic research on any system, as well as the epigenetic effects of metabolism. Moreover, I recognize that diet and lifestyle are not blanket panaceas, to which I anticipate the MD component to inform me of the complexity of human disease and how to treat it accordingly.
Does this in any way answer your question? What is this supposed to tell me about my chosen route?
Can you please define “washed out”? I have purchased the MSAR, to which my pre-health advisor at Haverford has advised my close scrutiny and comparison of the MD/PhD statistics therein. Are these stats, however, skewed because this is…the MSAR, which displays…predominantly medical statistics?
This is by no means all inclusive of why I’m considering a MD/PhD - I can go further (though, do you need further explanation? Or is this all tangential to…what you are really asking?)
My point - I don’t know how many of these schools are like this in that students typically take 1 or 2 years off to get extra experience, and moreso, to what degree that is now relevant and crucial in getting admission to these schools. I am now realizing that maybe it would be better to use that opportunity to work in a lab somewhere.
This past summer I have completed two internships:
1 - Sanford Research SURP - my research involved investigating effects of grandmaternal exposure to diabetes and high fat diets on second generation offspring risk of ischemia reperfusion injury and ferroptosis mediated mitochondrial cell death (Baack made her titles quite…specific, but basically, Baack’s lab has shown that moms eating a Western diet during pregnancy and/or having maternal diabetes affects offspring cardiac risk with sex specific mechanisms, and my small project was to assess how far down the generational pipeline this went.)
2 - Nutrition Network - I worked closely with content editors and registered dieticians in putting together, editing, referencing, and summarizing a plethora of authors’ work on applying therapeutic carbohydrate restriction in the clinic. This involved primarily a lot of practice in writing literature abstracts, summaries, reference checking and supplementing - so literature diving. I plan to extend my work with this network in any way possible perhaps in the foreseeable future.
Superlab, as a year long junior course at Haverford, aims to get students involved in the lab early on - small groups are assigned to professors and their respective projects. For example, right now I am working with a guy doing photochemistry research, and next semester I’ll be involved in the biochemistry component of this course on a different project.
I plan to get involved this summer with Rob Fairman at Haverford, if possible, to get my foot in the door in HIS lab in order to have a high probability of doing my thesis with him. The students in his lab focus on risk factors of neurodegeneration and their mechanisms. This would be another year of independent research in senior year.
I am trying to get research that has clinical relevancy - there are multiple ways to do this at Haverford, but Rob and I have some aligned interests that I wish to prioritize.
Most kids at Haverford are doing things along these lines, and I realize this. This may not be enough. Is this what you were asking?
This is mainly all a concern for me as I know MCAT score validity is finite - I’d hate to study my butt off now and go through all this stress, end up getting a good score, take all the grueling steps to apply to med school, but then be effectively told that I need to take 2 years off. I would have to take the test…again for most programs I believe, and studying for it amongst all these courses I have is already hell. If taking a year or two off really is the way to go, then I suppose I will postpone my MCAT study.
But…registration is in October, and I need to figure this out fast.
You apply for medical school about a year before you actually start (if accepted). So…you would be out of school for two years if you applied for medical school admission a year after you graduate undergrad…and you would actually be out for two years before you start medical school (one year before you apply, and one year after you apply)
Yes, I understand. I am a junior now, meaning to go straight through, I begin the application process…effectively now.
I understand. What I am saying…if you apply one year after undergrad, you will be away from school for two years total.
If you apply as a junior, if you get accepted, you will immediately start the fall after you graduate undergrad. It will be a short summer. Some medical schools start the second week of August.
@WayOutWestMom do you know if MD/PhD students typically go straight through after undergrad. Or is it possible to take a year or so between undergrad and Md/PhD programs?
My daughter is in one of these programs. It’s not common to go straight through, but it’s possible. I think it’s far more common for students to take a year or two to do more research and make sure that this (very long) path is really what they want to pursue. My daughter and her friends didn’t think of it as a chore, but rather used that time to learn, grow, and discover. I’m not sure there is a place to see the actual statistics on how old MD/PhD students are at various medical schools, since most of the data on the MSAR includes the MD students as well.
There are some good things and some not-so-good thing about this plan.
First, it’s specific. That’s good. Actually, excellent. However, specific has two downsides: one is that it narrows down the options substantially, the other is that people’s goals evolve. If you start down a very, very narrow path and change your mind, you may end up in a spot where you can’t change.
Next, the only reason for an MD that I see is that you think all the knowledge has to be in your head, and not your collaborators’. This will be a barrier to overcome: you’ll be interviewing with MDs, and this can’t come across as “I need this all in my head, and not to collaborate with you and your ilk”.
The single author paper is rare - most papers have multiple authors with differing areas of expertise. The standard path to progress involves getting a team together, not going it alone.
The plans for the gap years seem to revolve around making your application more attractive to other people, not to improve your preparation. That will be less helpful than you imagine. I would take a gap year for you, not for your application.