Applying to MSTP after 1st year of med school

[huxley]

I was wondering if there were any current MSTP students out there who applied to the MSTP program after the first year of medical school. I already applied for MD programs, and am realizing now that I still want to continue doing in-depth research as a medical student and I saw that some schools let you apply after your first or second year.

Is it difficult to get into an MSTP program while in medical school?

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[Andrew_Doan]

Originally posted by huxley
I was wondering if there were any current MSTP students out there who applied to the MSTP program after the first year of medical school. I already applied for MD programs, and am realizing now that I still want to continue doing in-depth research as a medical student and I saw that some schools let you apply after your first or second year.

Is it difficult to get into an MSTP program while in medical school?

It is not difficult to get into the MD-PhD track; however, it is difficult to secure MSTP funding, which is available if someone drops out and frees up a funded position.

 

[Neuronix]

Originally posted by Andrew_Doan
It is not difficult to get into the MD-PhD track; however, it is difficult to secure MSTP funding

Actually, this statement really only applies to Hopkins and maybe Baylor as far as MSTPs go. At most schools, including Penn, they give high consideration to research experienced students in their medical school who would like to switch into the MD/PhD program. At Penn or WashU, we're talking about typically a >50% acceptance rate.

At everywhere but the programs I mentioned before, this includes full-funding. The reason is because they typically just take less incoming students that year to pay for the new second year. For example, at Penn this year they were going to take 19 students, but the first year class is 16 as 3 students came out of the MD program. As far as I know, nobody from my class is applying, so class size should be back to 19-20 next year.

Before making a decision on a MD program, I would definately talk to the MD/PhD program to get their feelings on this. Some schools are more receptive to taking their MD students than others. Still, I would say in general that most of the MSTPs (http://www.nigms.nih.gov/funding/mstp.html) are good about this.

 

[Andrew_Doan]

It's been a while since I've contacted MD-PhD programs. It seems to me that more programs are finding private funding sources or have expanded their numbers of NIH funded positions.

Regardless if you get MSTP or not while transferring from a MD to MD-PhD position, most students are likely stuck with at least financing one or two years of med school (I haven't heard of retrospective reimbursement for previous years completed); however, there will be funding for the PhD training and most labs/programs pick up the costs for the last year of medical school. Thus, the funds for PhD training may come from non-MSTP sources, e.g. grants and private funds.

 

[Neuronix]

Originally posted by Andrew_Doan
It's been a while since I've contacted MD-PhD programs. It seems to me that more programs are finding private funding sources or have expanded their numbers of NIH funded positions.

At most MSTPs these days, they won't take a student without funding. There's a couple reasons for this. First, it creates a negative atmosphere among the students to know that some are funded and some are not (e.g. they're better than us). Second, the dropout rate for unfunded students is way higher than for funded students. I'm sure there is more. Hopkins is almost alone among MSTPs in that they still take students without full funding. It's been changing over the years from what I understand, so maybe in the future ALL MSTPs will be fully-funded only.

Most schools are just commiting more of their own money to their programs. They subsidize the students coming from their own med school classes either with extra funding (e.g. WashU always has more cash to throw around) or by taking less students into the first year class.

At most schools, you have no idea where the money is coming from that funds you. I think that the reality these days is that the funds pretty much go into a general pool and then just get distributed. Of course this is an issue for international students, so I'm sure they're kept separate somehow. Again, this issue only seems to matter at Hopkins, where you're competing for funding if you don't get a fully-funded slot (ugh).