GPP: Life, Diversity, and Roots

[alacast]

Just from searching in the forum, it seems like ever since NIH's Graduate Partnerships Program got started, there have been two or three threads about it every year. This year is no exception. 🙂

The whole program, especially in relation to MSTP, is fairly "loosely" (read: poorly) organized, and even more loosely explained on its websites. However, I think I've got it down. For an applying MSTP student, you can simultaneously apply to the GPP, indicating two places you'd like to do your PhD. If accepted to both an MSTP program and GPP, you can do your MD at the (US) MSTP school and your PhD split between NIH and a (US or Euro). This, of course, assumes your MSTP school is happy with all this. They have no reason to be, except that they want to not annoy NIH.

I really value diversity of experience, both in education and in life. The opportunity to train and research at not one but three different institutions and experience life in not one but up to three parts of the globe seems GREAT. If you can do your PhD overseas, all the better! But that's talking about one element of life, and ignoring some other things that matter.

When you live in a city for 7-8 years, you set down roots. You meet people, you foster relationships, and you become part of a community. That place becomes home. When you're only in a place for two years, or splitting four years between two places, it's much more difficult to reap the social and emotional rewards of connecting with that place. It's possible, and it certainly happens, but it's not the same deal.

However, there's also that fact that in an MD/PhD program, you may very well be too busy to do much in the social realm. That depends a lot on the individual student, but many of the grad students I know who have been in my town for 5 years have less connection to the area and the people in it than I, who has also been here 5 years.

So, what do you think? Is the GPP so schizophrenic as to be deleterious to your personal health? Will you be too busy for it to matter? Will the advantages of working in multiple institutions overshadow the negatives? Or are there no advantages to doing the GPP? And what's it like to work with the NIH, anyway? 🙂 I appreciate thoughts from folks all along the MSTP time line!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[bd4727]

However, there's also that fact that in an MD/PhD program, you may very well be too busy to do much in the social realm. That depends a lot on the individual student, but many of the grad students I know who have been in my town for 5 years have less connection to the area and the people in it than I, who has also been here 5 years.

This is very personal. No one is so busy they can't enjoy a social life, explore the city they live in, etc unless they choose to make themselves that busy. It just comes down to how the individual is.

So, what do you think? Is the GPP so schizophrenic as to be deleterious to your personal health? Will the advantages of working in multiple institutions overshadow the negatives? Or are there no advantages to doing the GPP? And what's it like to work with the NIH, anyway? 🙂 I appreciate thoughts from folks all along the MSTP time line!

The program is not for everyone. If you need a lot of guidance, meetings, and people telling you what steps to do next, GPP is not for you. This is entirely reasonable and I don't mean to make it sound like this is an immature or bad thing. If you will get anxious without having all the steps well laid out for you, and you then just need to jump through the hoops, GPP can and will drive you crazy because the philosophy is very laissez-faire.

However, If you want to create your own curriculum/path/etc and just have everyone else get out of your way, then GPP is one of the only programs I know of that provide that type of training.

Will you be too busy for it to matter?

Only if that is how you decide to spend your time.

Will the advantages of working in multiple institutions overshadow the negatives? Or are there no advantages to doing the GPP?

There are advantages and disadvantages to all decisions. You need to weight them against each other by taking into account your personality and learning style and trying to figure out what type of situation is a better fit for you and will put you in a position to do best.

And what's it like to work with the NIH, anyway?

For the most part, it is somewhat similar to an academic campus in regard to setup and operations. (ie Institutes are similar to depatments, heirarchy is parallel, etc). There are major differences as well, both positive and negative. Some positives off the top of my head: money is much less tight generally, strength in every area of science on one campus, most clinical trials of anywhere in the world. Some negatives off top of my head: not a "college atmosphere," government red tape for everything you want to do (ie setting up travel), main focus is not to train phd students so you have to put in a little extra administrative/leg work for some things.


Anyway, PM me if you have any more specific questions I can shed some light on.

 

[alacast]

Thanks for the thoughts!

Just as an administrative question, I've heard it said that doing an MSTP with the GPP means you have to do your PhD overseas. I haven't seen anything on the program website to indicate this, however. While I'm certainly interested in Oxbridge and Sweden, I'm also eying Brown, which does not have an MSTP. Is what I've heard true?

Thanks!

 

[itsallthesame]

Brown has an MD/PhD program that is not MSTP. They are weird about letting people in though. This cycle they did not accept external applications (eg, you already had to be enrolled in the medical school or an incoming student through the bacc/md to apply).

I'm curious as to the advantage for the medical schools here? I can't see how a school would want to give up one of it's MSTP spots and have the student not even do their PhD there, especially if they have to pick up the tab for M3/4. Anyone care to shed some light?

 

[alacast]

As I understand it, it's largely because NIH asked them to.

 

[bd4727]

Thanks for the thoughts!

Just as an administrative question, I've heard it said that doing an MSTP with the GPP means you have to do your PhD overseas. I haven't seen anything on the program website to indicate this, however. While I'm certainly interested in Oxbridge and Sweden, I'm also eying Brown, which does not have an MSTP. Is what I've heard true?

Thanks!

I agree this isn't clear on their website. Here is my best attempt at clarity:


I. The GPP programs are stand-alone PhD programs. That is what they were created for and that is the majority of their students.

II. There are mutiple GPP programs that result in you getting your PhD from various schools. NIH does not have PhD granting accrediation. No one recieves a PhD "from the NIH." The programs are broken into 2 subgroups:

a. Institutional Partnerships- Institutional Programs basically just means a formal program structure and agreement has been set up between NIH and a US University or NIH and Oxford, Cambridge, or Karolinska Institute. They each have their own applications, admissions committees, etc.

b. Individiaul Partnerships- Basically a formal agreement has not previously been made between NIH and school x, but you can approach NIH if your school is okay with it and try to set something up. Some schools have had multiple students do individial partnerships but have never gone ahead and formalized an "Institutional Partnership."

III. Institutional Programs
A. Foreign universities: the biggest Institutional Partnership program (I think) is the NIH-Oxford/Cambridge program. In this program, you spend about half your time in an NIH lab and half your time in a lab at either Oxford or Cambridge. So you have 2 PI mentors, and the idea is to work on synergistic experiments that contribute to 1 cohesive PhD dissertation. Your PhD will be awarded from either Oxford or Cambridge. The entire duration of the program, you are completely enrolled in Ox or Cam just like any other student doing a normal PhD through Ox/Cam (ie you are in a college, can stay in student housing, etc etc). There is a similar program in at the Karolinska institute in Sweden. You can only do a Phd in neuroscience. I don't know a lot about that one otherwise. Recently students doing Marshall and other type programs have somehow been able to piggyback on the OxCam to do their PhD from say University College London.

B. US universities: there are mutiple other Institutional Programs between NIH and US universities that are all fairly similar in structure (UNC, Brown, Penn, Hopkins a few others I don't remember). For these, you typically take your graduate classes at the University then move to NIH and do all of your PhD under a PI in the intramural program of NIH. Some of these programs have restrictions as to what field you can do your PhD in (ie Penn = Immuno only) whereas others you can do your PhD in any field (Georgetown). At the conclusion, your PhD is awarded from the university.

IV. Individual Programs
Like I said above, similar to institutional programs but formal agreement/admission process is not in place.

V. MSTP
a. In 2001, a complimentary program was added that allows students to obtain their PhD from any of these GPP programs as part of MSTP training. In this case, you are a medical student in the MSTP of some university and then you are a student in the respective GPP during your PhD years.

b. Foreign Institutional programs: There are a few MSTP schools that have declined to participate (I think Cornell, UCSF, maybe some others). Some other schools have agreed to participate with restrictions (ie you can only "transfer into the GPP" after starting out as a traiditional MSTP, not full stipend funding--I will adress this in the next post, etc). The majority of schools have agreed to participate fully, although because of the infancy of the program only a handful have actually had students (see the "current students" section of Ox/Cam website).

c. US Institutional Programs: I am not aware of a student at an MSTP school participating in any of the US university GPP programs. I may be wrong but I don't think I am. Even if some people do, it is very rare. Schools with MSTP's have, to my knowledge, only agreed to participate in the Ox/Cam and Karolinska GPPs.

d. Individual Partnerships: there are many students at non-MSTP schools participating in "individual partnerships." In this case, student will do MD at medical school x. They will conduct their research at NIH intramural campus and at the conclusion receive their PhD degree from medical school x. My impression is that this type of agreement often grows out of an MD-only student who went to NIH to do HHMI, then wanted to turn it into a full PhD. Exactly how the funding for this works I am not 100% sure about, but I believe they receive tuition and stipend support during MD years 3 and 4 from NIH directly reimbursing the medical school. I am not sure if you can apply to do this straight out of undergrad-- you may have to do it only once you have already started MD.

e. I am not sure if you can do MD at a non-MSTP medical school X, join GPP through a US institutional program different from your current medical school (say medical school Y) and receive your PhD from Y, then go back to medical school X. You can definetly NOT do this at MSTP schools.

f. MSTP funding: I will discuss this in a separate post. Long story short, the specifics are complicated but most student's stipends/benefits are no different than any other in their respective MSTP.

 

[bd4727]

As I understand it, it's largely because NIH asked them to.

This has been talked about before in other posts if I recall. Here is how the funding works:

- Basically, MSTPs can opt in or not [the debate about if their is pressure, whether overt or otherwise, on MSTPs to opt in can be debated elsewhere]

- NIH will reimburse the MSTP each year for each individual student that is in the MSTP during MD years. The amount that NIH will reimburse is capped for both tuition and stipend. I do not remember the exact number, but it is something like 25k for tuition and 15k for stipend. NIH pays everything during PhD years.

-Obviously, almost all schools tuition is more than 25k and all schools stipends are higher than 15k. So there is a significant financial investment on the part of the MSTP even though the student will not be doing PhD work in the MSTPs labs.

-4 tiers of MSTPs have developed:

http://gpp.nih.gov/Prospective/InstitutionalPartnerships/MSTPatNIH/MSTPParticipants.htm

1. Completely participate in NIH GPP- they are willing to pick up the extra costs to them for having a MSTP student do a GPP

2. Not participate at all- off the top of my head: UCSF, Cornell, Michigan (maybe 1 or 2 others)

3. Participate but will not cover the extra part of stipend/ extra part of tution and stipend/ extra part of tuition/ any other combo-
See website for list of exactly which schools have what restrictions. Example is Duke and Harvard. They will not cover the extra stipend or tuition. Believe it or not, there are students in the program currently who still participate through these schools and take out loans to cover the difference themselves.

4. Participate and cover full tuition but you must start off as only an MSTP student at that school (ie transfer into GPP only)- NIH calls this "track 2." Example is UW Seattle.

- Note that programs who have agreed to participate "in theory" can decline to let any one particular student do GPP or in one year may not have the extra funding to do it for anyone. This happened to me at one school I was interested in. They basically said that in theory they support the program but didn't want to let me do it that year.




- The merits of this way of training and reimbursing can be debated ad nauseum. My 2 cents: obviously the MSTP is taking a financial hit upfront. Some probably participate anyway because they are afraid of NIH. Some probably participate because their program directors don't mind taking the hit for a number of reasons. The reasons my program director told me: it will help better science which is the ultimate goal, the extra money is all coming from NIH grant anyway, he/she spent time at NIH and thinks it's a great place to train.

There are pros and cons to the way everything is done and paid for. I agree the reimbursement system is a little screwy and probably even predatory on the part of NIH. This is certainly not the only funding arena in which NIH has the upper hand and thus influences program's decisions. In venture capital, they call this the Golden Rule, as in the man with the gold rules.

- From a student's prospective though, it is a really great program and a novel and very intriguing way of doing science. Importantly, I haven't received any negativity from my MSTP director/admins because of doing the GPP track instead of the traditional MSTP. The philosophical issues are a separate beast in my mind.

 

[alacast]

Thanks for all that information, bd! I have some other questions about the specifics of PhD research in Europe, but I'll shoot you a PM.

 

[Neuronix]

Good thread on increasingly common topic gets stickied 👍

 

[Xiao Yu]

Has anyone on this board done the GPP MSTP track going from a PhD to an MD? If so I'd love to hear from you!

 

[bd4727]

Has anyone on this board done the GPP MSTP track going from a PhD to an MD? If so I'd love to hear from you!

I am not sure. I haven't. There is a message board on the Ox/Cam website where you can send a post to a google group and the students in the program will respond back. I would suggest doing that to get in touch with someone directly.

I will say, however, that lots of students do the program that way.

 

[alacast]

lots of students do the program that way.

Really? That sounds quite odd. They're just regular PhD students at OxCam, then they decide they want an MD, and then apply for GPP? That seems like a very roundabout way to get to that destination. Do they just change their mind about research after a few years at OxCam?

 

[bd4727]

Really? That sounds quite odd. They're just regular PhD students at OxCam, then they decide they want an MD, and then apply for GPP? That seems like a very roundabout way to get to that destination. Do they just change their mind about research after a few years at OxCam?

Well, basically the MSTP program came into existence after the OxCam program. So a lot of people joined then. Occasionally, yes some people will decide they want to do MD too. Because the 2 programs are essentially run by the same people its pretty easy to do.

 

[NeuroChaos]

Is GRE required for GPP?
From their website:
"The GRE General Test is required for all Institutional Partnerships. Karolinska Institutet, University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge partnerships will accept MCAT score in lieu of a GRE score. "


This does not make sense. Non of the MSTP sites (except Brown) require GRE. Y is GRE required when we are essentially applying to the same programs but following a different path?

Can any one clarify?

 

[bd4727]

Is GRE required for GPP?
From their website:
"The GRE General Test is required for all Institutional Partnerships. Karolinska Institutet, University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge partnerships will accept MCAT score in lieu of a GRE score. "


This does not make sense. Non of the MSTP sites (except Brown) require GRE. Y is GRE required when we are essentially applying to the same programs but following a different path?

Can any one clarify?

No, you do NOT need to take the GRE to do the MSTP pathway of GPPs. I am assuming that statement applies to people doing PhD-only pathway.

 

[StilgarMD]

why is this no longer sticky o_o