Compilation of MSTP Programs with average GPA/MCAT/Ranking/GPP/Stipend

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TTile said:
Hey guys,

I've actually been independently putting a similar list together on the MSTP wikipedia page. Since wikipedia is probably the first source potential applicants will look at, any help with citations, etc. would be extremely helpful.
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just looked at it. very cool. :thumbup:
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I appreciate those who are trying to help, but someone keeps disorganizing the list with no rhyme or reason. I will remove public editing if this continues without explanation as to what you are tying to accomplish. I posted initially to give back to this community. Please do not ruin it for others.
 
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Hey kfre, where did you get the MCAT/GPA values for the permanent version? Are they MD/PhD or MD only?
 
phonyreal98 said:
Hey kfre, where did you get the MCAT/GPA values for the permanent version? Are they MD/PhD or MD only?
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My apologies. I really had not taken the time to update that version, and it is thus inaccurate. I created it because I feared I may lose the information if it was made public public, but Google docs gives me enough control on this end.
 
smh...what fool messed with the google doc its all disorganized now
 
I just saw this list. LOL at the totally bogus "average time to graduation" numbers.

Try 7-12 years for basically every program for mix/max. If any program tells you their "average" time to graduation is less than 8.5 years they are lying (or really fudging their numbers, such as omitting certain people).

Also I can't see how the mean GPAs are more than 3.9. How is this even possible? Only valedictorians going into MSTP these days???? Are people graduating with a 4.6 GPA? Same for MCAT... has there been serious creep or what?
 
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gbwillner said:
Also I can't see how the mean GPAs are more than 3.9. How is this even possible? Only valedictorians going into MSTP these days???? Are people graduating with a 4.6 GPA? Same for MCAT... has there been serious creep or what?
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The scale is still the same with 4.0 as maximum, but there are just more supermen and superwomen these days. I think at least half of the premeds on SDN are valedictorians :rolleyes:
 
gbwillner said:
I just saw this list. LOL at the totally bogus "average time to graduation" numbers.

Try 7-12 years for basically every program for mix/max. If any program tells you their "average" time to graduation is less than 8.5 years they are lying (or really fudging their numbers, such as omitting certain people).

Also I can't see how the mean GPAs are more than 3.9. How is this even possible? Only valedictorians going into MSTP these days???? Are people graduating with a 4.6 GPA? Same for MCAT... has there been serious creep or what?
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12 years? That cannot be right. Maybe for one individual. Every institution said 7-9 years, and the NIH has cracked down on the length to graduation times. 12 years is a ridiculous amount of time.
 
kfre2435 said:
12 years? That cannot be right. Maybe for one individual.
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I've met several 10+ year individuals in my time. Just last week I met a new-ish faculty member (almost entirely clinical) who took 13 years for the combined program. He regrets doing the MD/PhD program, but it's one of these things where once you're in it, you're kind of stuck. He's the second 13 year combined degree graduate I've met.

Every institution said 7-9 years
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The average nationally is about 8 years. Some finish in 7. Almost nobody finishes in 6. 9 is not uncommon. 10 is not that uncommon. Every institution wants to put a happy smiley face on their program for recruiting and make the people who took longer look like outliers. i.e. this used to happen and doesn't anymore, or that person you heard about (and we're not telling you about the others...) had special circumstances that made them take longer. Yeah. Right.

the NIH has cracked down on the length to graduation times.
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Supposedly. The programs that are often considered the biggest offenders are still MSTP regardless. They told me the same things when I applied (10+ years are outliers, the NIH looks down upon it, there were problems in the past we fixed, etc), but the reality is that the average time for graduation for MD/PhDs continues to trend upwards.
 
Neuronix said:
Supposedly. The programs that are often considered the biggest offenders are still MSTP regardless. They told me the same things when I applied (10+ years are outliers, the NIH looks down upon it, there were problems in the past we fixed, etc), but the reality is that the average time for graduation for MD/PhDs continues to trend upwards.
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What schools would you say are the worst offenders? Which schools are better at expediting students?
 
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I agree that 7-9 years is pretty standard for a combined degree. From my entering class, we'll be about 25%/50%/25% for 7/8/9 years. I'd say hope for 7, plan for 8, and be prepared for 9. I do know several 10 year grads (also one 12-year grad, but it takes a horrible confluence of circumstances for that to happen usually).

I'm not sure of the data on time to degree for MD/PhD grads, although I do know it has been going up for all biomedical sciences PhDs. At my program, time has been decreasing but that is more us regressing to the mean (we had a bit of a reputation--lots of 10+ year grads a decade ago).
 
Let's not forget:

The average PhD (for grad students) is roughly 6 years

An MD is 4 years.

Together that would be 10 years assuming no overlap. And that is the case at some programs.

There are really only a few ways you get a PhD in less time. These are:
1. you work you ass off, and your experiments work
2. you get handed a softball project (that may require someone else to do the thinking for you)
3. your standards for graduation are less than for other students
4. You make no mistakes (in addition to the above).

You can't count on these things. If anything goes wrong, like your project is unsuccessful, or your PI skips town or whatever, you will add time. Some programs will give you no quarter for course or graduation requirements compared to other students (and rightfully so).

I've known one person with a 14 year degree. Maybe HE was the exception- he made a lot of mistakes, including switching labs 3 times. I doubt he does any science now. Maybe he was a fool for sticking it out so long. But I know lots of people who did it in 10 years who did absolutely nothing wrong. Either their first lab experience or project did not work out. It is NOT uncommon. In all my time I've only known 2 people who finished in 6 years- one did a BS project and had NO intention of doing science later on (was let out by a PI and department that didn't care) and went into Ortho, and the other person busted her ass off and everything worked like magic for her. I've also known relatively few people who finished in 7. Think about it. 1 year of coursework, you do your qualifying exam- and in 2 years of actual work you get a PhD. That's pretty amazing. It does happen, but I say requires a lot of luck mixed with the above scenarios. 8 years means you busted your ass off. I finished in 8, and was only the second person in my class of 8 to finish (the other being the 6 year guy). So I have a hard time believing 8 is "average". In that time I was quite successful, and only had a handful of projects not be successfully completed. I left with my name on 3 1st author papers and on 7 total publications. This was important for later on, where those that hire you care about how many publications you did.

My sample size is roughly 100 MSTP students, by the way.
 
gbwillner said:
Think about it. 1 year of coursework, you do your qualifying exam- and in 2 years of actual work you get a PhD. That's pretty amazing. It does happen, but I say requires a lot of luck mixed with the above scenarios. 8 years means you busted your ass off. I finished in 8, and was only the second person in my class of 8 to finish (the other being the 6 year guy).

So I have a hard time believing 8 is "average".

My sample size is roughly 100 MSTP students, by the way.
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There are structural changes at some programs that can bend the graduation time by about a year or so. In my program, I only needed to take one additional graduate school class after medical school to meet all my coursework requirements. One class, not one year. Additionally, many programs cut time out of either the last 2 years or first 2 years, adding around half a year to a whole year of research time. A 7 year student at my program has around 3.67 years of essentially full-time PhD research (minus a class or 3 depending on the department). An 8 year student has 4.67 years of full-time PhD research- that is a lot of time in the lab, especially if you are busting it most of the time. No md/phd student has teaching requirements, either. Still, 8 years is the most common graduation time, but 7 is very frequent. Current average graduation time is between 8 and 8.5, certainly not above 8.5.
 
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Public editorial access has been revoked. People are making nonsensical changes.

PM me any changes you want to see.
 
It is unfortunate that you removed non-MSTP MD/PhD programs of mid to large size. Although there are 109 MD/PhD programs in the nation, and 44 of them are MSTP, there are many students who need to know about those programs on the fringe of becoming MSTP. Some of these programs might have better overall quality, or be stronger in particular research areas, than some of the low-tier MSTPs.

My truly "biased" 2 cent opinion as MD/PhD Director of a large non-MSTP MD/PhD program.
 
gbwillner said:
I just saw this list. LOL at the totally bogus "average time to graduation" numbers.

Try 7-12 years for basically every program for mix/max. If any program tells you their "average" time to graduation is less than 8.5 years they are lying (or really fudging their numbers, such as omitting certain people).

Also I can't see how the mean GPAs are more than 3.9. How is this even possible? Only valedictorians going into MSTP these days???? Are people graduating with a 4.6 GPA? Same for MCAT... has there been serious creep or what?
Click to expand...

It's only the top 10 schools with crazy competition that have 3.9+ average GPAs. Is it really that surprising to see that the top 10 programs almost exclusively admit 4.0 students? It's depressing, but that's what it is. Thankfully there are plenty of programs with more sane average GPAs in the 3.7-3.8 range.

As for MCAT scores, the average MSTP MCAT is like, what, 35 or 36? Again, it's not at all surprising that most programs have MCATs around that area. Even in the top 10 schools 37 is the max average, and only three schools have that. And again, it's not surprising that top 10 schools are mostly admitting people with 99th percentile scores. Johns Hopkins can get anyone they want and they've got no shortage of applicants with 4.0 GPAs and 40+ MCAT scores to choose from.

The only reason a lot of these schools don't have averages of 4.0/40 is because they're place a lot of value on other parts of the application like research experience and LORs.
 
Fencer said:
It is unfortunate that you removed non-MSTP MD/PhD programs of mid to large size. Although there are 109 MD/PhD programs in the nation, and 44 of them are MSTP, there are many students who need to know about those programs on the fringe of becoming MSTP. Some of these programs might have better overall quality, or be stronger in particular research areas, than some of the low-tier MSTPs.

My truly "biased" 2 cent opinion as MD/PhD Director of a large non-MSTP MD/PhD program.
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I have no problem including non-MSTP schools; though, I do not have the time nor the patience to sift through 60 more schools for data. I had hoped others would help in that endeavor, but open access just proved to be a mess. I hope to include them at some point, but until such a time I have reverted the list back to its original purpose. Even if I attempted to include some non-MSTP programs, it would be unfair for the ones I left off.
 
.
 
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zaq said:
Am I looking in the wrong places? It seems like the non-Texas, non-MSTP programs aren't very large. Usually around 4-5 people per entering class.
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That's because they're part-PhD programs. PhD programs typically accept very few students per year; some programs accept as few as two students per year. The reason for this is because in order to complete a PhD you need a mentor to guide your research/education for the whole time you're working on your dissertation. As a result, the number of slots open is limited by the number of labs that can take new grad students. It doesn't help either that PhD candidates (including MD/PhD) pay no tuition (because no one in their right mind would ever pay for a PhD) and are instead paid a stipend by the program, so there's a funding issue as well.

The result of all of this is that it's utterly normal for MD/PhD programs to accept less than 10 people per year. Coincidentally, this is also part of the reason why the competition for these programs is so intense despite the fact that there are far fewer applicants to MD/PhD programs than MD programs.
 
OCDOCDOCD said:
That's because they're part-PhD programs. PhD programs typically accept very few students per year; some programs accept as few as two students per year. The reason for this is because in order to complete a PhD you need a mentor to guide your research/education for the whole time you're working on your dissertation. As a result, the number of slots open is limited by the number of labs that can take new grad students. It doesn't help either that PhD candidates (including MD/PhD) pay no tuition (because no one in their right mind would ever pay for a PhD) and are instead paid a stipend by the program, so there's a funding issue as well.
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This is pretty much nonsense for any major research institution. MD/PhD students are spread across many different graduate departments, and by many labs are seen as highly desirable. The larger labs have no problem providing funding to pay these indentured servants, errr graduate students, to produce papers for them for a few years. A good graduate student is an investment in more funding down the road.

The real limitation is finding financing for medical school tuition and stipend while not in graduate school. This is a total of somewhere around $250,000 per student. There is no potential recuperation of that money down the road, considering most of these students will go on to residency and become faculty elsewhere. Thus, you either need MSTP funding, wealthy donors, or a medical school that is partially willing to foot that bill, and typically some combination of those three.
 
Neuronix said:
This is pretty much nonsense for any major research institution.... The real limitation is finding financing for medical school tuition and stipend while not in graduate school. This is a total of somewhere around $250,000 per student. There is no potential recuperation of that money down the road [by the medical school footing the bill]....Thus, you either need MSTP funding, wealthy donors, or a medical school that is partially willing to foot that bill, and typically some combination of those three.
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These comments are accurate. One additional wrinkle, for the typical MSTP, the NIH T32 MSTP grant only covers 10-25% of the actual cost of the program. Thus, medical schools with fully funded MD/PhD programs are making big financial commitments when you matriculate.

Think as an accountant for a second, and examine the 8 year expenditure of a program:
If you have 40 students in a MD/PhD program, the school is funding 10 Million (over ~8 years) to support the medical education of these students. The graduate education comes out from grants or "seeding money" (with ROI in later grants) for research, but it is another 6-7 Million or so. The NIH MSTP grant might be supporting a program of this size at the tune of less than 2 Million (over the same 8 year period). For a typical program, > 90% of expenses are stipend, tuition and fees.
 
12 year MD/PhD students definitely do exist--I know because I'm one of them. My first mentor left at the end of my 4th year of grad school and I had to switch labs and start a completely new project over in a completely new area and a new model system. Took me 4 years in that lab to graduate--that was despite working 6-7 days/week, often 10-16 hours days (usually less on weekends) and just having a project that didn't want to cooperate (and a mentor who refused to let me switch projects). Eventually I managed to make it all work, but it definitely wasn't easy. When you enter an MD/PhD program, you definitely hope that things go your way and you're one of the ones who finishes in 7-8 years, but you also have to be prepared for things that are beyond your control. Oh, and then my second mentor left as well (before I graduated and in spite of reasonable assurances when I joined the lab that he didn't plan to leave). I at least still graduated, but I'm still struggling to get some things published because of that.
 
There is no reason why a PhD should take more than 5-6 years, except in extreme cases. But somehow we've decided PhDs should be earned in 50 years although there are political and socio-dynamic reasons for this. I met an MSTP student in year 8 who didn't have anything 'worthwhile" to show for grad school and was still battling with his projects and his very poor big-name PI mentor. I hear he is still in lab.

This brings me to mentorship. Most PIs are poor mentors. A good or excellent mentor is very hard to find. Things get worse if you have a risky/challenging project, you are the primary technical AND intellectual driver of the project, the project was designed from scratch, your PI is new to a major aspect of your project, and/or you don't have a senior postdoc or student to help you. I had all these problems to varying degrees, however my own mentor was good, although not excellent. If my mentor were outright terrible, I could've spent an additional year or two in graduate school. I escaped with the PhD in 6 yrs.

And always have at least two projects. I had three. The results from one were negative (uninteresting to publish), and the other two have been combined into one manuscript currently in preparation.
 
I am sorry to hear your story of a 12 year MD/PhD. Your program director was ineffective. One of the main duties of the MD/PhD program director is to keep students on track. To do that, you do not only need to keep meeting students often, but also to be brutally honest about their advancement and prospects. The PD also needs to have a lot of cloud in campus to help students get out of a bad situation early enough in their training. In my program, all students are formally reviewed by an independent panel every 6 months. In addition, I meet with them individually every 6 months and twice a month in small groups. We also require a F30/31 submission within first 18 months of PhD work. If the study section raises questions about the mentor and/or the project, I meet with the student and mentor individually. In at least a recent case, I enable a student to leave the lab of a basic science "chair" after 1 year because of these concerns, and help her get into a lab where she is now making considerable progress toward her project. One of the key aspects of getting into a MD/PhD program is the commitment and quality of your PD. ;) Obvious commercial... Look forward to your applications for the 2014 cycle. Congratulations to those interviewing this year.
 
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Fencer said:
I am sorry to hear your story of a 12 year MD/PhD. Your program director was ineffective. One of the main duties of the MD/PhD program director is to keep students on track. To do that, you do not only need to keep meeting students often, but also to be brutally honest about their advancement and prospects. The PD also needs to have a lot of cloud in campus to help students get out of a bad situation early enough in their training. In my program, all students are formally reviewed by an independent panel every 6 months. In addition, I meet with them individually every 6 months and twice a month in small groups. We also require a F30/31 submission within first 18 months of PhD work. If the study section raises questions about the mentor and/or the project, I meet with the student and mentor individually. In at least a recent case, I enable a student to leave the lab of a basic science "chair" after 1 year because of these concerns, and help her get into a lab where she is now making considerable progress toward her project. One of the key aspects of getting into a MD/PhD program is the commitment and quality of your PD. ;) Obvious commercial... Look forward to your applications for the 2014 cycle. Congratulations to those interviewing these year.
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Do you mind if I ask what school you are PD of?
 
Fencer said:
I am sorry to hear your story of a 12 year MD/PhD. Your program director was ineffective. One of the main duties of the MD/PhD program director is to keep students on track. To do that, you do not only need to keep meeting students often, but also to be brutally honest about their advancement and prospects. The PD also needs to have a lot of cloud in campus to help students get out of a bad situation early enough in their training. In my program, all students are formally reviewed by an independent panel every 6 months. In addition, I meet with them individually every 6 months and twice a month in small groups. We also require a F30/31 submission within first 18 months of PhD work. If the study section raises questions about the mentor and/or the project, I meet with the student and mentor individually. In at least a recent case, I enable a student to leave the lab of a basic science "chair" after 1 year because of these concerns, and help her get into a lab where she is now making considerable progress toward her project. One of the key aspects of getting into a MD/PhD program is the commitment and quality of your PD. ;) Obvious commercial... Look forward to your applications for the 2014 cycle. Congratulations to those interviewing these year.
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Thanks; however, I don't want to give the impression that my PD is bad. Our PD is actually really interested in students' success and does periodically meet with them. My first mentor leaving happened very suddenly and was completely unexpected by everybody. In my second lab, my mentor was overall supportive then and made sure that I got permission before he left. My PD did have frequent contact with my mentor, constantly checking in on me.....and I knew that I could always meet with the PD if I wanted to. There have been some complications associated with him leaving, but not the time to degree. I do think that things would have been very different if my first mentor hadn't left.....but I can't control that.
 
Yikes.... based on the GPA here I'm wondering if I'm barking up the wrong tree entirely. As a non-trad struggling to pull up a 3.2 over the next couple of years, I'm thinking my chances are shot already. Or I need to make sure I get some stuff published between now and then. *Sigh* Reality blows.
 
Anyone know why the US News and Report rankings or so different for "Medical School Research" and "Biological Research"? for example, the compilation at the beginning of this thread has Penn tied for #2, which it is on here:

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankings...schools/top-medical-schools/research-rankings

But if you go to their grad school research rankings, they are tied with 4 schools for #20:
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankings...-science-schools/biological-sciences-rankings

Why the difference?
 
Look at the methodologies:

Med school research ranking:
20% Peer assessment score
20% Residency director score
15% NIH funding
15% Research $$ per faculty member
13% Mean MCAT score
6% Mean ugrad GPA
1% Acceptance rate
10% Student:Faculty ratio

Grad school ranking:
Rankings of doctoral programs in the doctoral Ph.D. sciences are based solely on the results of surveys sent to academics in biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, earth sciences, mathematics, physics, and statistics during fall 2009. (From US News & World Report)
 
*re la esponja
I'm never sure what to tell people who really want to do MD/PhD but are uncertain about applying because of grades/test scores. On the one hand my program's administrative director likes to tell prospective applicants that the range of GPA and MCAT of accepted students is very wide (something like 28-43 MCAT, 3.0-4.0 GPA). The implication is that they should apply. I think that's rather misleading, our average is something like 3.9, 37. That one super-low GPA is the only one in the program. If anything the median scores are higher than the averages to compensate for those one or two students.
On the other hand I hate to discourage you, you could be the next greatest researcher out there. Ask the program directors of the schools you are looking at for their median GPA for accepted students to find programs that are truly realistic for you. Feel free to apply to schools outside of your range if you can afford it and you are realistic about your chances. Have a backup plan if it all doesn't work out. Consider PhD only if you are passionate about research.
 
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LaEsponja said:
Yikes.... based on the GPA here I'm wondering if I'm barking up the wrong tree entirely. As a non-trad struggling to pull up a 3.2 over the next couple of years, I'm thinking my chances are shot already. Or I need to make sure I get some stuff published between now and then. *Sigh* Reality blows.
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Would need more information to decide how best to advise you. Based on what you said: GPA big problem. Publications, not that important. Super high MCAT, very important.
 
I was looking through the MSAR 2013 and, compared to many of the MCAT and GPA averages listed here, the median MCATs and GPAs are often significantly higher (1-2 pts MCAT). For example, Columbia is listed as 37 on the MSAR instead of a 35.8 as listed on this doc. Are numbers really shifting this much in just one cycle or is this a case of average vs. median?
 
MDPhDGuy said:
I was looking through the MSAR 2013 and, compared to many of the MCAT and GPA averages listed here, the median MCATs and GPAs are often significantly higher (1-2 pts MCAT). For example, Columbia is listed as 37 on the MSAR instead of a 35.8 as listed on this doc. Are numbers really shifting this much in just one cycle or is this a case of average vs. median?
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It depends on where these numbers are coming from. MSAR reports only accepted GPA and MCAT, not matriculated. Usually numbers coming from program websites are of matriculating classes, which are lower because they have more high-stat accepted applicants than low-stat accepted applicants withdrawing for other schools.
 
I want to revise this list to be more accurate after I take the MCAT. Averages also change year-to-year.
 
Updated. Though some MCAT/GPA's taken from program websites may still be out of date. Hoping to include more non-MSTP programs as well.
 
I added 5 or 6 schools. Please let me know if anyone wants to see a program added.
 
This is a pretty informative list!

I was wondering if this is a complete list of all funded non-MSTP program and MSTP programs? How can I tell if the school is a non-MSTP program? I thought it was listed under the "GPP support" but I'm not sure.

Thanks!
 
ihatebluescrubs said:
This is a pretty informative list!

I was wondering if this is a complete list of all funded non-MSTP program and MSTP programs? How can I tell if the school is a non-MSTP program? I thought it was listed under the "GPP support" but I'm not sure.

Thanks!
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Thanks! It includes all MSTP schools but not all of the non-MSTP schools (there were simply too many).
 
I never liked that the list was linked to my gmail account. You can access it here from now on. Sorry for any inconvenience.
 
Is the GPA/MCAT supposed to be program average or youngest class average?
 
StilgarMD said:
Anyone know why the US News and Report rankings or so different for "Medical School Research" and "Biological Research"? for example, the compilation at the beginning of this thread has Penn tied for #2, which it is on here:

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankings...schools/top-medical-schools/research-rankings

But if you go to their grad school research rankings, they are tied with 4 schools for #20:
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankings...-science-schools/biological-sciences-rankings

Why the difference?
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In addition to the vastly different methodologies and the fact that USNWR is largely crap (as pointed out above), the difference is also because "biological sciences" goes well beyond biomedical sciences. A biology PhD student might want schools that excel in studying photosynthesis, how bumblebee mating affects pollination patterns, social structure within lion prides or how fish regulate buoyancy. There are probably programs on the biology PhD rankings that have absolutely phenomenal programs that don't really relate to medicine.
 
MSTPlease said:
Is the GPA/MCAT supposed to be program average or youngest class average?
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The matriculating class's average in most cases. Every program that posted stats posted them slightly differently. The information may also be outdated by a year now. Use this list only to give yourself a general idea of the schools. If you are applying please check any and all information against what is listed at that school's website or contact the program directly. If you do find any discrepancies, please contact me and I will make the necessary changes.
 
Do the publications of matriculating students factor into rankings at all?
 
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