Funding Question

[mudphud hero]

---

Members do not see this ad.

If one program offers all 8 years with everything covered, and then another program says, all your med school stuff is covered, but your graduate portion is completely out of your PI's grants, should I go to the school where everything is covered? I feel like the PI funding the grad portion basically gives them no incentive to take MD/PhD students and you may have a harder time entering a popular lab. What's your take on this guys and gals.

 

[URHere]

It is the norm for MD/PhD students (and PhD students, for that matter) to be paid out of their PI's grants from the second year of graduate school onward. In general, the school and the PhD departments are only responsible for funding new students during their first year while they rotate and consider potential labs. In fact, I've never heard of a program paying for students from a separate pool of money for the duration of the PhD years. Are you sure that you understood these two schools correctly? My guess would be that the "fully funded" school still relys on PI grants to support students, but that their wording is a little less clear.

For what it's worth, since PhD-only students will also require support from PI grants, there is no disadvantage to taking MD/PhD students.

 

[mudphud hero]

Ok that is a good way to look at it. I guess the NIH training grant is for the 4 years of med school + 1 year PhD training then. Also I too don't think there is a school like that that covers all 8 years, I just created two extreme scenarios to make any potential differences clearer, but apparently there is no difference. Thanks for the feedback.👍

 

[bd4727]

Ok that is a good way to look at it. I guess the NIH training grant is for the 4 years of med school + 1 year PhD training then. Also I too don't think there is a school like that that covers all 8 years, I just created two extreme scenarios to make any potential differences clearer, but apparently there is no difference. Thanks for the feedback.👍

You are correct-- the NIH training grant is for a specific number of months, and it is basically equivalent to 4 years of med school and 1 year of graduate school. Technically, the school can break up those ~5 years of funding however they want, but basically there is no such thing as an MSTP that will have you covered from their training grant for all 8 years.

I know this because if you apply for an F30 and receive it, you can only take money from them for the number of months that you have left on the MSTP training grant (or some weird thing like that which I still don't completely understand), but anyway it works out that you are never on a MD/PhD training grant for more than a certain amount of time and it is not all 8 years.

 

[24thGrade]

I cannot comment on other schools, but at my MSTP our PhD-years funding is covered completely for the first two years by our program. It makes getting into the lab of our choice REALLY easy and leaves the PIs feeling less upset if we leave faster than a typical PhD student. I think we are definitely not the norm though. As others have said, definitely clarify with the earlier school you mentioned about them covering all years of your training...

 

[Nonsense1]

A PI I used to work for had told me that it would cost him more to have a MD/PhD student than it would for a regular graduate student.

Is that just a school specific thing (maybe the MD/PhD students there are given a higher stipend then the other graduate students?) or is there more to what you cost a PI than just your stipend?