Can you take your gap year to take graduate coursework to transfer towards an MSTP?

[SterlingMaloryArcher]

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This is just out of curiosity, but I was wondering if you could earn graduate credits which could be transferred into the PhD portion of an MSTP program to cut down on the time in the MSTP program?

 

[cactusman]

Most credit comes from research and sometimes med school credit counts towards it. I doubt that any transfer credits would have a significant effect on timeline.

 

[SterlingMaloryArcher]

What if a student already had a master's and wanted to bridge the MS to a PhD? For Example, completed this program before matriculating to medical school:

MS-CR Curriculum

 

[SterlingMaloryArcher]

Actually, I already see that this has a focus on clinical research not basic science research so yes I doubt it would help a whole lot.

 

[eteshoe]

Most credit comes from research and sometimes med school credit counts towards it. I doubt that any transfer credits would have a significant effect on timeline.

True for the most part. The PhD program may have the students take a couple of classes though (happened in my case).

What if a student already had a master's and wanted to bridge the MS to a PhD? For Example, completed this program before matriculating to medical school:

MS-CR Curriculum

As someone who finished a MSc before med school, I think I got out of 1 class my department required of its PhD students. Honestly, you're not taking that many classes for most PhD programs, especially if the department feels you have the sufficient background. For example if you weren't a BME major in UG, but wanted that for your PhD, you'll be saddled with taking a bunch of catch-up courses and none (or very few) of your med school courses will be transferred over.

 

[aldol16]

It depends on which PhD department you're doing the PhD portion in. If your PhD will be in the biomedical sciences, I don't think MD/PhDs take many courses on top of the med school curriculum. They might do some electives during the preclinical years that are in the basic sciences to help with their research. But if, say, your PhD is in something like chemistry, most departments will still have you satisfy their course requirements and many of your med school classes may not count. So students will still have to take some courses and if you've taken grad-level chemistry courses before, depending on where you took them, the school may recognize those as fulfilling part of the requirements.