Backing out of MD/PhD

[connie95]

Is it possible to back out of an MD/PhD program after 2nd year of medical school (before you start your PhD)? How can this happen and what are the consequences?

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[allantois]

It depends on the policies of the school.

 

[Goro]

I knew a fellow who was in the MD/PhD program when I was a post-doc, and he joined out lab. Nice guy, but he would fall asleep in lab meetings. not the best way to impress your PI.

He was eventually kicked out of the MD/PhD program, and became a regular MD student.

 

[Ismet]

As said above, depends on the school, and probably depends if you go to a school with an MSTP program vs a school-funded MD/PhD. I've heard from MSTP's at my school that if you drop out of the program, you don't have to pay back the tuition that had been covered, but I'm not sure how accurate that is. It's not something that you want to plan to do. If you're not sure, you might be better off applying internally during MS2 (and yes, you would have to pay tuition for those first 2 years).

 

[aegistitan]

From MD/PhD matriculants between 1995-2000 (matriculated in these years, so graduated generally between 2002-2010), 73% of matriculants graduated with both degrees (2,582 MD-PhD program enrollees, 1,885 MD-PhD graduates). 23.1% of students (597/2582) completed MD graduation (and did not finish the PhD). 3.9% of students withdrew/were dismissed entirely.

86% of students that did not complete the PhD graduated with an MD.

(See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3874256/)

You are in good company.

It's definitely possible, probably just looked down upon, depends on the program though

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

@neusu has a great post about MD/PhD's in his thread:
[URL="http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/ask-a-neurosurgery-resident-anything.958231/page-21#post-15713490"]Ask a neurosurgery resident anything[/URL]