Hi everyone,
While trying to juggle MCAT studying and research, I've begun panicking thinking that I’ll have no chance of getting into any MD/PhD programs next cycle and my future will be abysmal (as I do from time to time
). Because of that, I've turned to digging around for data to try and assure myself that there are “good” programs that I would have a chance at. However, something I quickly realized was that I didn’t have benchmark data to help with preliminary stratification of MD/PhD programs.
I feel like it’s easy to identify top 10/20 programs because they’re pretty well-known, but being able to identify strong mid-tier programs and lower has always been a bit of a challenge for me. So with that in mind, I went through old threads to see what benchmarks had previously been used to help applicants determine program quality.
Based on what I found in the threads (@Neuronix and @Fencer, in particular, have posted lots of helpful information), I decided to find data to address the following criteria:
Program size (2019 FACTS: Enrollment, Graduates, and MD-PhD Data)
I believe @Fencer has previously suggested 30 students as the “critical mass” for a program
CTSA status (Institutions | Clinical & Translational Science Awards Portal)
I believe @Fencer has also suggested that Clinical and Translational Science Award status is a good indicator for a program
F30 training grant number and % of students in a given program with an F30 (NIHRePORT query)
To paraphrase what I believe @Fencer and @Neuronix have said previously, not having a lot of students with F30 grants is not necessarily a bad indicator for a program, but having a lot of your students with F30 grants suggests that a program really helps students with career development (please correct me if this is incorrect paraphrasing)
An additional note is that I thought I’d read somewhere that there have been alterations to how MD/PhD training grants are organized i.e. what grant type they receive, so if this use of F30 grant data is inappropriate, I hope that someone more knowledgeable will correct me
Overall Funding of an institution (NIHRePORT query and Ranking Tables of National Institutes of Health (NIH) Award Data 2017)
People have suggested that being in the top 50 for funding can be a good indicator for a program, but like all things, it is not the "be all end all" marker of a school
With this benchmark, I pulled the 2019 data from the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research as compiled by Robert Roskoski Jr. and Tristrom G Parslow. To complement this data, I also performed a 2020 NIHRePORT query (https://report.nih.gov/award/#tab2) that probably doesn’t match the exact query that the Blue Ridge Institute uses for their data, but was as good as I could manage given my (lack of) skills.
For my own NIH query, getting an exported excel spreadsheet with the data wasn’t possible (possible issue on the NIH's end because the excel file wouldn't generate), so I copy and pasted all of the data provided from my query and organized it by funding amount, so here are the criteria I used for that query:
Fiscal Year: 2020
Institute/Center: All
Funding Mechanism: everything except “construction” and “other”
FOA: blank
Location: US states only (no US territories)
Congressional District: All
Organization Type: Domestic higher education, Research Institutes, Independent Hospitals
ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT NOTES:
For the F30 funding data that I combined with program census data, there were some instances where the different institutes in the same program were listed e.g. Rutgers, and in other instances like the Texas system that I’m not familiar with, AAMC’s census data was hard to understand. Furthermore, I organized that data by hand because 1. I’m not highly skilled with informatics and/or higher level excel functions and 2. The NIHrePORT university/institute naming system varies from that of the census, so there wasn’t a common naming system to make processing this easier.
With all that said, ***PLEASE*** take that data in particular with a grain of salt and consider doing your due diligence by re-working the raw data (especially if you’re better with informatics).
Finally, if anyone has recent applicant/matriculant statistics (GPA, MCAT, research hours, etc) based on program, it’d be wonderful if you could post it in this thread! I have yet to go through to pull that data because it would be a bit of an undertaking, but I think it could help students with making lists of programs they’ll apply to so they have a mix of safety/mid-tier/reach programs. Even if it's only for a subset of schools, it's much easier to compile other people's data than going to each school website one at a time to pull the data.
I hope that some people find this helpful and that others will contribute their own data or help process what I’ve posted.
Stay safe and healthy and good luck to those applying this cycle =)
While trying to juggle MCAT studying and research, I've begun panicking thinking that I’ll have no chance of getting into any MD/PhD programs next cycle and my future will be abysmal (as I do from time to time
). Because of that, I've turned to digging around for data to try and assure myself that there are “good” programs that I would have a chance at. However, something I quickly realized was that I didn’t have benchmark data to help with preliminary stratification of MD/PhD programs.I feel like it’s easy to identify top 10/20 programs because they’re pretty well-known, but being able to identify strong mid-tier programs and lower has always been a bit of a challenge for me. So with that in mind, I went through old threads to see what benchmarks had previously been used to help applicants determine program quality.
Based on what I found in the threads (@Neuronix and @Fencer, in particular, have posted lots of helpful information), I decided to find data to address the following criteria:
Program size (2019 FACTS: Enrollment, Graduates, and MD-PhD Data)
I believe @Fencer has previously suggested 30 students as the “critical mass” for a program
CTSA status (Institutions | Clinical & Translational Science Awards Portal)
I believe @Fencer has also suggested that Clinical and Translational Science Award status is a good indicator for a program
F30 training grant number and % of students in a given program with an F30 (NIHRePORT query)
To paraphrase what I believe @Fencer and @Neuronix have said previously, not having a lot of students with F30 grants is not necessarily a bad indicator for a program, but having a lot of your students with F30 grants suggests that a program really helps students with career development (please correct me if this is incorrect paraphrasing)
An additional note is that I thought I’d read somewhere that there have been alterations to how MD/PhD training grants are organized i.e. what grant type they receive, so if this use of F30 grant data is inappropriate, I hope that someone more knowledgeable will correct me
Overall Funding of an institution (NIHRePORT query and Ranking Tables of National Institutes of Health (NIH) Award Data 2017)
People have suggested that being in the top 50 for funding can be a good indicator for a program, but like all things, it is not the "be all end all" marker of a school
With this benchmark, I pulled the 2019 data from the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research as compiled by Robert Roskoski Jr. and Tristrom G Parslow. To complement this data, I also performed a 2020 NIHRePORT query (https://report.nih.gov/award/#tab2) that probably doesn’t match the exact query that the Blue Ridge Institute uses for their data, but was as good as I could manage given my (lack of) skills.
For my own NIH query, getting an exported excel spreadsheet with the data wasn’t possible (possible issue on the NIH's end because the excel file wouldn't generate), so I copy and pasted all of the data provided from my query and organized it by funding amount, so here are the criteria I used for that query:
Fiscal Year: 2020
Institute/Center: All
Funding Mechanism: everything except “construction” and “other”
FOA: blank
Location: US states only (no US territories)
Congressional District: All
Organization Type: Domestic higher education, Research Institutes, Independent Hospitals
ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT NOTES:
For the F30 funding data that I combined with program census data, there were some instances where the different institutes in the same program were listed e.g. Rutgers, and in other instances like the Texas system that I’m not familiar with, AAMC’s census data was hard to understand. Furthermore, I organized that data by hand because 1. I’m not highly skilled with informatics and/or higher level excel functions and 2. The NIHrePORT university/institute naming system varies from that of the census, so there wasn’t a common naming system to make processing this easier.
With all that said, ***PLEASE*** take that data in particular with a grain of salt and consider doing your due diligence by re-working the raw data (especially if you’re better with informatics).
Finally, if anyone has recent applicant/matriculant statistics (GPA, MCAT, research hours, etc) based on program, it’d be wonderful if you could post it in this thread! I have yet to go through to pull that data because it would be a bit of an undertaking, but I think it could help students with making lists of programs they’ll apply to so they have a mix of safety/mid-tier/reach programs. Even if it's only for a subset of schools, it's much easier to compile other people's data than going to each school website one at a time to pull the data.
I hope that some people find this helpful and that others will contribute their own data or help process what I’ve posted.
Stay safe and healthy and good luck to those applying this cycle =)
