<p>Unless you are independently wealthy, I would strongly consider MSTP elsewhere over the Harvard MD/PhD Program where you have to pay up your medical debt for the MD part of your schooling. Academic medicine tends to be lower paying in the early years. Why rack up debt and feel the pressure to pay back as a fellow or junior faculty? I think the freedom from debt allows the young scientist to focus on his/her research. This is a "raison d'etre" for the MSTP program in addition for encouraging MDs to obtain rigorous scientific training.</p>
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For the Harvard program, it seems only your PhD years are funded (and that's with the usage of Harvard MSTP funds)
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Unless you are independently wealthy, I would strongly consider MSTP elsewhere over the Harvard MD/PhD Program where you have to pay up your medical debt for the MD part of your schooling
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<p>Uh, no, that's not what it says. </p>
<p>"Generally students admitted to a graduate program in the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) will receive a funding offer to cover the PhD segment of their program. Our Social Science Track utilizes some MSTP funds, as well as other funds to assist students with HMS tuition and expenses."</p>
<p>The</a> M.D.-Ph.D. Program at Harvard Medical School</p>
<p>Now, granted, the program may not cover all of your MD costs, but it does strongly indicate that it will cover at least some, and perhaps all of it.</p>
<p>anyone have any knowledge of the University of Alabama Birmingham MSTP program? They are ranked 18th in NIH funding (i saw some references to University of south Alabama...but not uab )</p>
<p>so im not really sure what the argument here is but i can offer my perspective.</p>
<p>as a hopeful md phd i can tell you now that if i don’t get into a program that is better than cornell’s tri-institutional i will forgo md/phd and do something else. </p>
<p>reasoning: if i have aspirations of doing amazing research, the level of expertise, of funding, of resources, of people, OVERALL, at least in my interest (neural circuits), differs sharply even when comparing harvard, to, say, columbia. it’s less about research than about recognizing that the environment you immerse yourself in will, in a large part, decide how prepared you are to do serious damage in research in the future. especially in such an integrated field as neural circuitry, i would want amazing biophysics, molecular, computational departments to share ideas with and for them to guide me. not to mention that as a grad student who will be glued to a single location, i’d really rather be in nyc/boston/san fran than alabama. </p>
<p>with that being said, if i was interested in dissecting potassium ion channels i’d rather go to rockefeller to work with rod mckinnon than go to harvard. the environment matters, but lab fit is a very crucial factor as well. </p>
<p>pure and simple: the level of guidance, of intelligence, of support and of inspiration you will garner from an amazing lab and an elite university is what matters to me and probably to a lot of people who are applying to schools. prestige doesn’t and shouldn’t factor into the calculations.</p>