Age at matriculation?

[Kraazy]

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I need to decide soon whether I will request a 1-year deferral and several people have expressed concern regarding the fact that MD/PhD training is so long, I should just start ASAP lest I turn into a shriveled-up old hag by the time I graduate (I've already been out of school for 2 years).

I'm not terribly alarmed, but as a matter of curiosity, how old were you (or will you be) at matriculation?

 

[solumanculver]

Well Kraazy, you stopping that poll at 25 doesn't exactly help out my old-age angst... You should go at least up to 27, I think.

In any case, what are you planning on doing with this deferral? My impression is that physician-scientist will be your career for your entire life... postponing the start of your 40+ year career by one year to travel or something doesn't seem quite as crippling as your alarmist friends are making it out to be.

I don't want to come too strongly on the other side, but I think that a lot of people tend to rush things a bit when it comes to starting their careers. I'll be starting my MD/PhD when I'm 27, but I spent a year traveling in the middle east and then three years in the army... I wouldn't want to trade those four years for four more years doing what I'll be doing for the rest of my life anyway.

 

[dl2dp2]

I tend to disagree with this poster.

You can always travel in your 40s. But the best years in your life is severely limited. Instead of wasting it on going around and smoking pot with some leftist hobo in the himalayas, wouldn't you wan to use it to make the most creative research possible?

Any can travel around the world, but not everyone can do original research. If you are young you can take more risks and the possibility of making a significant discovery is dramatically greater. If you start PhD at 30, spend 7 yrs, do 5 yrs residenc, you'll be 43 before you'll even have a possibility of your own lab. Success stories for such late boomers do exist, but they are the exception rather than the norm. In fact, for faculty jobs, institutions (i know because I know people on the search committee) tend to look unfavorably for people who are over an age threshold. Now this tends to be a penalty for an usually long postdoc, and time before PhD may be overlooked, but as someone who's almost done with a PhD, I strongly caution people who want to go into an MDPhD anywhere after the age 25.

Well Kraazy, you stopping that poll at 25 doesn't exactly help out my old-age angst... You should go at least up to 27, I think.

In any case, what are you planning on doing with this deferral? My impression is that physician-scientist will be your career for your entire life... postponing the start of your 40+ year career by one year to travel or something doesn't seem quite as crippling as your alarmist friends are making it out to be.

I don't want to come too strongly on the other side, but I think that a lot of people tend to rush things a bit when it comes to starting their careers. I'll be starting my MD/PhD when I'm 27, but I spent a year traveling in the middle east and then three years in the army... I wouldn't want to trade those four years for four more years doing what I'll be doing for the rest of my life anyway.

 

[LunderKind]

Well, I turn 25 next week, so that puts me in the eldest category...woot!!

I wouldn't freak out about a year deferral...really, how much difference does it make if you start a year later. We're all, in the most likely situation, going to be graduating at 30+ years of age anyway and getting our first faculty positions at approximately 40.

It's taken me a few years post college to get some perspective about rushing into things, and now it doesn't phase me at all that I'll be starting an ~8 year program at 25. And, since I know it does make a difference, I am female. If one year more will make you an old hag...I guess I'll be an even older hag! (looking for the wrinkly face icon...)

 

[Harlow]

Something that's always quelled my anxiety about not starting right after undergrad is that those involved in medical research seem to keep pumping out great work up until old age. This isn't professional football we're talking about!

I remember watching the movie "Sphere" where Liev Schrieber's character goes on a rant about how in physics/mathematics, many of the "greats" all made their breakthroughs by their 20s. This doesn't seem to be the case in medicine. Yeah, there can be breakthroughs, but there's always more research to do. Lots of the researchers I admire are rather old, having been in it for the long haul and keep busting out papers into their 70s and even 80s. Yeah, you could argue that their students are doing lots of the work. But most of us probably see ourselves in a situation where we eventually have students working for us, building off our ideas as we advise them.

I do remember someone in another thread mentioning that your 20s-30s may be your most productive years. But personally, I don't think that this necessarily has to be true.

 

[Harlow]

In fact, for faculty jobs, institutions (i know because I know people on the search committee) tend to look unfavorably for people who are over an age threshold. Now this tends to be a penalty for an usually long postdoc, and time before PhD may be overlooked, but as someone who's almost done with a PhD, I strongly caution people who want to go into an MDPhD anywhere after the age 25.

Interesting. I guess having to deal with age-ism in actually getting a job is the one downside to starting a little late. But assuming one is able to get a job, I don't think age should be an issue, as I spoke about in my previous post.

 

[solumanculver]

You can always travel in your 40s. But the best years in your life is severely limited. Instead of wasting it on going around and smoking pot with some leftist hobo in the himalayas, wouldn't you want to use it to make the most creative research possible?

Hi, that may be a good point. It seems to me, though, that what's best for your career might not necessarily be what's best for your life.

As far as creativity goes, though, do you think that our creativity just trickles away like sand in an hourglass as we get older? You don't think that how we live our lives affects how creative we can be? I tend to believe that a youth spent traveling through the third world can clarify our thought and prepare us for a creative research career better than just going from high school to post-doc straight through.

As for ageism in hiring, that may exist, but it seems pretty silly to make important decisions about what to do with your life based on the possibility that somebody important in the future may have a prejudice...

 

[MedRower]

I am also considering deferring. While I've come to grips with the idea that spending a year now means one less year later, I think the point above about how spending a year, experiencing and clarifying one's thoughts, can make the many years of one's career more productive. Actually, for full disclosure, I've already been out of school 1 year, and I think this year has easily been worth 5 years at the end of my career. But this is something I am also actively debating (constantly) in my head.

I remember watching the movie "Sphere" where Liev Schrieber's character goes on a rant about how in physics/mathematics, many of the "greats" all made their breakthroughs by their 20s. This doesn't seem to be the case in medicine.

I think our aim should be for this to be true for medicine, too. What does it say about how a field is structured that when people are their most brilliant, they aren't really contributing? As people pass their 20s, mental function goes down, but thankfully experience goes up throughout our lives, and it our performance doesn't take a nose-dive until our 60s or so. (edit: on average, of course)

 

[deleted174262]

Kraazy - what school did you settle on? Were all your finalists amenable to a 1-year deferral?

 

[seraph524]

Well, I turn 25 next week, so that puts me in the eldest category...woot!!

I wouldn't freak out about a year deferral...really, how much difference does it make if you start a year later. We're all, in the most likely situation, going to be graduating at 30+ years of age anyway and getting our first faculty positions at approximately 40.

It's taken me a few years post college to get some perspective about rushing into things, and now it doesn't phase me at all that I'll be starting an ~8 year program at 25. And, since I know it does make a difference, I am female. If one year more will make you an old hag...I guess I'll be an even older hag! (looking for the wrinkly face icon...)

You look young to me!

 

[LunderKind]

You look young to me!

Thanks, Seraph! I take that as a huge compliment! 😀

 

[magwi11]

As another wrinkley old fart (25, out of school for *3* years) I say do what you need to do. I will be a better student, a better researcher, a better physician because of the things that I learned during my time off, and I think that not taking it would have been a huge mistake. There is something to be said for having done something besides school sometime before you turn 30. So if your programs are open to it, and you can afford it, take the time to be young, you know, while you still are.

 

[Kraazy]

Well Kraazy, you stopping that poll at 25 doesn't exactly help out my old-age angst...

🙂I just picked an age range which I thought would be right around the expected median and didn't want to have 18 options on the poll. Sorry!

You can always travel in your 40s. But the best years in your life is severely limited. Instead of wasting it on going around and smoking pot with some leftist hobo in the himalayas, wouldn't you wan to use it to make the most creative research possible?

Well, I'm not exactly planning to do a whole lot of pot-smoking in the himalayas (but maybe in the amazon...) I actually plan to be quite productive in my year off, and have a few personal projects that I want to work on while traveling and I just think that now is the right time to do this before I sell my soul irrevocably to medicine and science. Also, I will never be able to travel as cheaply as I can now, while I can still tolerate subsisting on tuna and sleeping on floors.

Anyways, good to know there's plenty of other "experienced" MSTPs!

 

[MSTPbound]

I need to decide soon whether I will request a 1-year deferral and several people have expressed concern regarding the fact that MD/PhD training is so long, I should just start ASAP lest I turn into a shriveled-up old hag by the time I graduate (I've already been out of school for 2 years).

I'm not terribly alarmed, but as a matter of curiosity, how old were you (or will you be) at matriculation?

I matriculate in July and I'll be 28 in September.

I got another degree, traveled to a few amazing places, did a few things I really enjoyed, had a taste of a few other career possibilities, got to mature a bit more (I recently found something I wrote when I was 23 - it's amazing how much one can grow and change in five years!) - and found my future wife all before starting the MSTP. I don't feel like I wasted even a second and I certainly don't regret any of it.

You never know what day will be your last day on the planet, so I say it's best to make each one as unforgettable as possible - whether your final career ends up being as long as 40+ years, or as short as 15-20 years.

If you can think of a way to spend a yearlong deferral that will add more meaning and color to your life, I say go for it!

 

[chylo]

I know this is just for MD programs, but this data was reassuring to me (as someone who graduated 3 yrs ago)-

http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2007/age0307.htm

 

[HypoxiaBoy]

I'm 26 baby! ... yeah, the whole "fine wine" cliche totally pertains to this guy.