<p>Hi guys, I am currently an undergrad, and I want to go into biological/behavioral neuroscience research, and become university faculty after I finish my studies. Most people tell me a Ph.D is fine and will get me to where I want to be, but my dad (who is an MD) says that MDs are more desired by medical research teams, I can emphasize a research base in medical school, and getting an MD > Ph.D because my chances of getting a job and working up the ladder at a top university is better with an MD than a Ph.D (I know MD|Ph.D is an option, but I am just asking this to know which one is better if I had to pick one first). </p>
<p>I don't really have an interest in becoming a practicing physician full time, if I were to become one, I would always want to be doing behavioral neuroscience research as well. So basically the question boils down to what degree/path would give me the brightest future prospects knowing that I'd like to become faculty at a research university such as the one I go to now. What do you guys think I should be pursuing since most of the graduate departments I want to apply to don't take MCAT as a replacement for GRE scores? Any reputable links, sources, and articles on the matter of choosing between an MD/Ph.D would be extremely appreciated. Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>I don’t know if money is a concern for you at all, but an MD might cost you $600,000 more than a PhD. (PhD students get their tuition paid and a stipend for living expenses, whereas MD students might face a cost of attendance of $80,000/year at a private medical school.)</p>
<p>Beyond that, I second RacinReaver: see what degrees faculty do have, and maybe even ask them for advice if you get a chance.</p>
<p>A PhD or MD/PhD. As an Ex-Bio Person/Ex-Premed, who once worked with both doctors and researchers a long time ago, I would be honest- MD’s are not seriously considered research degrees and are not really what you would get when looking for a long term research degree in neuroscience. Some MD programs do have some research component to it (usually the top ones like Wshington U/Hopkins and Harvard) but they are not as intense as PhD programs.</p>
<p>Your best bet would be an MSTP (MD/PhD) program. You get a stipend I think and tuition waiver and you are in general considered and respected as a researcher. Main concern of course being the 7-8 years in school and the extreme difficulty in getting into one. Most MSTP programs might be debatably much more difficult to get into than a pure PhD program. So you should weigh things carefully also as to what is the best school you can get into. You can also just do a PhD.</p>
<p>But if you do an MSTP you would likely not need to do residency so really you dont lose much.</p>
<p>Also the MD has two years of classes and 2 years of mostly clinical rotation, I dont know how that would adequately prepare one to research extensively and informed manner on neuroscience</p>
<p>Keep in mind that successful completion of medical school is pretty difficult, and residency programs are also incredibly competitive (and have many horror stories). </p>
<p>The rule of thumb really is if you want to do research about medicine, get your PhD. If you want to practice medicine, get your MD. </p>
<p>And if you want to do both, good luck getting into MD/PhD programs.</p>
I think the average time-to-PhD in the biological sciences is something like six years. Definitely not eight-plus. And a six-year PhD costs -$180,000 – that is, you get paid $30k a year to do it.</p>
<p>It depends on what you want to do. If you want to be a neuroscientist, in a department of neuroscience or a department of psychology or some other more traditional university department, a PhD is going to be far more desirable than an MD. I don’t know any neuroscience/neurobiology or related field professors with an MD. Furthermore, I would dispute the idea that working up the ladder is easier with an MD. Most top administrators in universities are PhDs, with the exception of administrators at medical centers (specifically medical schools).</p>
<p>However, if you want to do research at a medical center or research complex - and you wouldn’t mind teaching in a medical school - then either is fine, and an MD might be more desirable. You can do the same kind of research as you would with a PhD, just that you’d more likely do it either at a medical center or an interdisciplinary research institute as a full-time researcher or as a medical professor.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, MDs are not designed to be research degrees. Most people who intend a research career as an MD intend a very applied focus to their research and intend to combine research with practice. I go to an academic medical center in public health, and the MDs who do research here generally have a private or group practice (or work in a community health clinic) in addition to their teaching and research responsibilities.</p>
<p>In reference to #8, A PhD does not last twice as long as an MD. PhD students in the natural sciences can normally expect about 4-6 years of study before they graduate. What’s more, PhD programs typically come with a tuition waiver and a stipend, so a graduate of one should leave with little to no debt.</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback everyone. So it seems like the general consensus is to go the Ph.D route first at least. Only thing that caught my eye was texaspg’s post:</p>
<p>“MDs on faculty get paid lot more than PhDs on faculty.”</p>
<p>How true is this, and anything I can do as a Ph.D that would help my paycheck besides obviously being a better academic? Obviously I would rather do what I love than be payed more, but should I go back to school for an MD after getting my Ph.D? Is it worth it down the line for the difference in salary? Or would my debt and time from/in med school outweigh the benefits? </p>
<p>jayeyesee, thank you greatly for the link. I didn’t know about that forum. I will frequent it now! :)</p>
<p>I am choosing the PhD route, but I currently work with a lot of MDs in research. Here’s my experience:</p>
<p>-Do not get a PhD and then and MD separately. This is the longest and most expensive route. If you want both, go for the combined program - it’s 100% free and schools tend to try to push you through the PhD faster.</p>
<p>-If you don’t want to end up being a doctor, don’t go to med school.</p>
<p>-Yes, there are benefits to being an MD in research. I’ve heard it’s easier to get grants and if your research ends up failing, you can still fall back on being a doctor.</p>
<p>-MDs in research take a lot longer to pay off their school loans.</p>
<p>-I’m sure this is not true for all the MDs in research, but all of the MD-PhDs in my lab have decided to give up the research and make way more money working 3 days a week as a doctor. I kind of question some of these people’s lab skills … the PhDs seem WAY WAY better prepared for research than MDs. MDs are kind of spread thin - they have clinic duty and can’t spend all of their time in the lab. (No offense to MDs, but this has just been my experience)</p>
<p>-Yes, PhDs don’t get paid a lot. I would guess that avg grad school stipends are around $25-28K/year. Post docs start at $39K and go up to $54K (depending on years of experience). If you want lots of money, this is not the profession for you.</p>
<p>There are a lot of things that suck about being an MD or a PhD. If you are aware of this and still think the profession is a excellent fit for you, go for it! I think in order to make it through, you have to really want to do the work.</p>
<p>It’s true that, on average, MD faculty get paid more than PhD faculty. But that’s because medical school faculty get paid more than faculty in traditional academic departments, and MDs are much more likely to be on faculty at a medical school. If you get a PhD and get on the faculty at a medical school, you will get paid a lot more, too.</p>
<p>Assistant professors in the sciences can start out making anywhere from $50K to $85K depending on where they work, possibly more. For example, the average salary of assistant professors at my university (Columbia) is $99,000 a year. At Chicago it’s $102,000. If you can get a job at one of those prestigious places, that’s great. But at Appalachian State, they make $60,000 on average. The median seems to be right around $52,000.</p>
<p>The AAUP 2012 Faculty Salary Survey provides information on average/median salaries for faculty members:</p>
<p>I’m guessing that the very large professor salaries at the big research institutions on the list are somewhat skewed upwards by their medical faculty, who tend to make a whole lot of money. But full professors almost anywhere can expect to be in the low six-figures (unless you’re at a tiny teaching college or very small regional public in a low COL area), and associate professors can probably expect to make anywhere from $65K to $100K, although that’s a really large range and it depends on the area and the school.</p>
<p>Research institutions tend to pay more than teaching institutions, but it sounds like you want to do research anyway. Schools with bigger endowments tend to pay more. Another thing that PhDs often do is write grants to supplement their salary. At some schools (“soft money,”) you are required to do this, as writing grants is the only way to pay your salary anyway.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s easier to get grants as an MD. It depends on the kind of research that you are doing.</p>
<p>Thanks for more input guys. I really appreciate it. </p>
<p>phagocytosis, I would love to do an MD/Ph.D program (in fact I think that is the perfect credentials for the type of research I want to do), but the problem is I just don’t think I am competitive enough for the MD/Ph.D programs. To put it bluntly, I think I can get into a much better Ph.D program than an MD program and since MD/Ph.D hinges on admission into the medical school more so than the Ph.D program, I would be screwed at the top MD/Ph.D programs. I have pretty good research experience, and I am looking to work at a 2nd lab soon (both labs research very relevant to what I want to do in graduate school, and I will be published for sure by the time I graduate from college) so I will have two jobs that are extremely relevant to my graduate school admission, but not really med school. I won’t have time to do clinical internships and the like. I plan on having 3+ years of research experience in 2 labs (I’m a second year in college), and some publications that are pertinent to what I want to do in graduate school. I was very lucky to get into a good lab at the department I am interested in. None of this really helps a lot for medical school as much as it does for graduate school so that is why I am not really competitive. Also, I am just not a cutthroat person, I expect to graduate with a GPA that is not in range for the medical schools of colleges I would expect to get into Ph.D programs for. For example, I am decently confident I could get into a top 15 grad program for my field of interest since I have reasonable experience, know exactly what I want to do, will be published, and will have known professors for over 3 years for good recs. However, my GPA is nowhere near the the range of top 15 medical schools in the nation. I like to explore, take classes in different departments, and came into college not trying to get a 3.8-4.0 which 99% of top 10 med school admits have.</p>
<p>tl;dr: I would love to do MD/Ph.D; however, I am not confident I would be able to get into a decent med school. I am much more confident I can get into a great Ph.D program since admissions to each degree are not very similar, and admission to MD/Ph.D hinges more on MD acceptance.</p>
<p>I’m just stating that one person (PhD) told me that he thinks it’s harder for him to get a grant than if he was an MD. And I’m pretty sure my 40-year-old PI (MD) is still paying off med school debt.</p>
<p>Feel free to ignore me, I haven’t started grad school yet so I have no personal experience with this matter.</p>
<p>Thank you for the informative data. It is more information like this I want so I can make an informative decision. </p>
<p>Not that I am saying I can get in for certainty in any way, but I am hypothetically debating currently if it would be better to go to a mid to low tier MSTP program vs. a top Ph.D program at somewhere like Columbia.</p>
<p>Depends on what you want to do, but basically speaking, it’s not easy or common to get a position as a researcher at a top school/institution without a PhD or MD from a top school. So it depends on how lower-tier the MSTP is and what kind of place you want to work at when you’ve got it.</p>