<p>Some MSTP programs I am looking at are Ohio State, Baylor, Rochester, and Stony Brook (these still won’t be easy to get into by any means). I would love to go to somewhere like my own undergrad’s MSTP (UCLA-Caltech), but that is really a reach (even more so than the choices I’m looking at). </p>
<p>I’m trying to compare places like Ohio State MD/Ph.D to a Ph.D from UCLA/Stanford/Columbia/UPenn. I am trying to figure out which one would have the highest chance of getting a great position in research after completion.</p>
So the difference is not based on what type of degree you have, it’s based on whether your lab is located at a medical school or a university/college basic science department. This might be because NIH prioritizes funding medically-applicable research, which might be more likely to be performed by PIs at a medical school. Other sources have suggested that the better success rates at medical schools are a result of more urgent motivation – at a university basic science department, if you’re tenured, you have a job even if you don’t get your next NIH grant. If you’re at a medical school and you lose your funding, you’re done.</p>
<p>Dear Golden,
Please listen to your father, he knows what he is talking about. I completed a PhD (from the #1 life science research university and I published high impact articles), now I am attending medical school because the job prospects are absolutely terrible for neuroscience PhD holders. All of these posters are giving you bad information and do not know what they are talking about. If you complete a PhD in the life sciences it will take 6 years, then you will most likely do 2 postdoctoral fellowships that last an additional 6-7 years. After 12-14 years in training, only 15% of life science PhD holders get a PI position in academia or industry. The rest of them end up leaving research in their mid-thirties or get stuck as “perma-docs = post-docs forever.” The average age for a first R01 grant these days is 42 years old. The starting salary for an academic PI is somewhere between 60K and 95K.</p>
<p>DO NOT GO TO GRADUATE SCHOOL</p>
<p>A degree (MD or MD/PhD) from any medical school in the country is more valuable than a PhD from Harvard or Hopkins. Even if you do research, it is a very competitive environment and when you lose your funding at age 49 you can always fall back on your clinical training if you have an MD. </p>
<p>There is a reason it will be easier for you to get into a top PhD program than any decent medical school. There is also a reason 50% of post-docs are foreign and no Americans will take these jobs anymore. </p>
<p>I would suggest you do some google searches (i.e. Miller McCune, The Economist “why a PhD is often a waste of time, The real Science Gap, Nature on PhD overproduction”) rather than listen to a bunch of random posters.</p>
<p>You should listen to your father. He is right.</p>
<p>This is what you should be thinking–
What is it that you want to be doing EVERY DAY, month after month, year after year?</p>
<p>Forget the salary talk. What will get you up in the morning, after the novelty wears off?</p>
<p>If you want to do research (and discover new things)…and you are really talented, grants will come. But poorly thought out proposals will fail at attracting money. BTW, the top PhD researchers make more money than most MDs practicing medicine. I know several researchers that have made plenty of money via licensing, biotech startups, etc.
(note: My own brother has a Berkeley PhD, co-founded a company, and is doing research everyday because he gets to discover new things and get paid for it. Also, he has zero debt and plays the stock/options markets for fun with his play money, which is easily into the 6 figures:)</p>
<p>BUT I can also tell you that the top researchers I know never really thought about money when they began their careers. That is just not a common trait among the best researchers. In time, money just seems to come to them because they were/are so good at what they do…excellence eventually gets recognized.</p>
<p>If you want to be a mechanic, and diagnose/treat people’s physical problems on a daily basis, getting an MD will be your cup of tea. Otherwise, get a Ph.D.</p>
<p>However, I can’t stress enough that each person has to do an honest self-assessment and ask, “Do I think I’ll be really good at research?”. The reality is that MOST people are NOT as good as they think they are…</p>
<p>BAFapoptosis, I appreciate you registering just to post that comment. I completely take it to heart. However, not that I’m accusing you, but I would love to see some sources for some of the facts you presented in your post such as how the average age for a first grant is in the 40s. Also, I would love to go into an MSTP program of any sort, however, I just don’t have the GPA to get into those kinds of programs so the Ph.D path is the one I have to go down. I will have to make good use of my opportunities and become one of the few successful academics. I was hoping it wasn’t comparable, but I guess it is comparable to a high school kid following his dreams to play in the major leagues. Most dreamers don’t make it to the major league. I guess by what you described, if true, today’s Ph.D job market is akin to getting into the major leagues then. </p>
<p>And nwcrazy, I know for a fact I want to do research for a living. That is why I would want to go Ph.D over MD any day. However, above all, I’d love to get into a fully funded MSTP program, but I simply don’t have the credentials so I’m shooting for something more realistic.</p>
It’s not the job market itself – it’s the chances of being a faculty member at a research institution. </p>
<p>There are very few unemployed biology PhDs. This is not like the situation in the humanities, where a PhD is a genuine risk and the odds of unemployment are high. It’s true that relatively few grad students will end up as faculty members at research universities, but it’s not true that the rest don’t have jobs. BAFapoptosis is not really being fair – he’s comparing the PhD –> research faculty to MD –> doctor, when the appropriate comparison is MD –> top hospital/top specialty position. </p>
<p>Also, it’s true that faculty age at first R01 is up in the 40s now, but not age at first grant. There are many other types of grants offered by NIH and other funding agencies, some of which are explicitly intended to be stepping stones for new investigators on the way to their first R01.</p>
<p>References:
“Give postdocs a career, not empty promises” Published online 2 March 2011 | Nature 471, 7 (2011)
“Fix the PhD” Nature 472, 259–260 (21 April 2011) doi:10.1038/472259b
Published online 20 April 2011
“What is a PhD really worth?” Nature472 , 381-381(2011)
“The real science Gap” Miller McCune (just google it)
“Trends in the Early Careers of Life Scientists (1998)” National Academy of Sciences</p>
<p>Just make sure you do your homework before you end up 35 and switching careers. Its very unlikely you will get a P.I. position in academia OR industry. And to do so you will have to be talented AND lucky.
Think about it. If there are 300 applicants for every tenure track faculty position or lab head position in industry, the employer has all the power. This supply and demand effect permeates throughout academia and industry.
PhD’s just aren’t worth that much anymore. It is a bad investment of your time and has huge opportunity costs. Get an MD or MD/PhD. Even if you just want to do research. They have research track residencies, ability to do a postdoc, etc.</p>
<p>The most relevant reference for you may be this one. </p>
<p>The Job Outlook for Physician-Scientists
By Karyn Hede December 05, 2008</p>
<p>“Voglmaier’s M.D.-Ph.D. colleagues chose other career paths despite the fact that prospects in academic research are excellent for the approximately 500 M.D.-PhD. graduates who emerge each year from an arduous 9- to 10-year training period and decide to stay in academia. In stark contrast to many areas of academic science, researchers with clinical degrees have good jobs waiting for them at the end of their long roads, say administrators at the nation’s academic medical programs.”</p>
<p>“All told, there seems to be a surplus of training slots for physician-scientists and plenty of job openings for clinicians who want to do research. That means excellent career prospects in academic medicine.”</p>
<p>And remember that MD/postdoc is also qualifies you to be a physician scientist. You don’t even have to get into an MD/PhD program from the start. If you get into medical school, you can easily transfer into their MD/PhD program after your second year.</p>
<p>I am not trying to be a jerk. I just wish someone was more honest with me when I was in college. Also most undergraduates (myself included at the time) are naive and think “Its really hard, but I love research and I will work hard and everything will work out” This is not true.</p>
<p>Also, yes the unemployment rate for PhD holders is low. This does not tell you how many of them are driving buses or waiting tables.
Additionally, I am talking about life science PhDs, the situation in other fields (i.e. applied statistics, engineering) can be very different.</p>
<p>I have heard that yes, right NOW finding a job with a PhD is very difficult. But you don’t have to find a job right now. You have to make it through 6 years of school first. Once YOU have a PhD will it be as difficult to find a job as it is now? Maybe, maybe not. I’ve been told it won’t be …</p>
<p>One of the grad schools I interviewed at claimed that in 6 years there will be a shortage of PhDs and we will easily find jobs. I have no idea how much truth there is to that.</p>
<p>The claim that “there will be a shortage of PhDs” goes back to the 1980s–at least. (Side note for general lurkers, etc.: Anyone who is spouting this nonsense w/r/t the humanities is, at best, clueless, and, at worst, lying to you.)</p>
<p>Now there are articles that claim that there are shortages of PhDs in the academy in some fields where non-academic work provides strong salaries, like business and accounting. And certainly, it may be hard to find PhDs if you are in an area that most would consider undesirable to live, demand a particular narrow specialty, or are offering a truly dreadful salary. I would ask for more information behind generalized claims about “shortages in the future.” </p>
<p>There are also a number of blogs that discuss this issue, but I know there are rules against linking blogs here. One blog in particular describes a student who, when he was an undergraduate in 1989-90, read about “the pending shortage” in the sciences, and then, when he was a graduate student a few years later, read about nothing but the difficulty of finding work in the sciences. The American Chemical Society careers blog (which you can google) cites two reports, both released in '11, that conclude that “the academic market for PhDs in STEM fields is weak.” </p>
<p>I’m not a STEM person, so I’m not well-versed in differences among fields, nor do I know how the MD angle/medical interests fit here (I’m commenting on “pure” PhD–the link a couple of posts above suggests that the MD/PhD situation is different). However, I would urge you to give claims about shortages and/or widely available jobs a lot of sober reflection.</p>