Grad Student/Post Doc Quality

[snowonkey]

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So this may come off a bit abrasive, but was curious if anyone else had similar experiences. I go to a top five MD/PhD and am currently in graduate phase. I've rotated though some pretty high powered labs in several departments and the biggest thing I've noticed is that I've found the quality of both grad students and post docs to be.....lacking.

This is not to say that there aren't super high caliber grad students out there- there are. I think though that the glut of top programs has made admissions standards low enough that many grad students just aren't all that hard working or all that bright. The hours that they work are not near what I would've expected and honestly I've seen more than a few crash and burn presentations I wouldn't have expected. It's such a strange comparison to the MD/PhD people I interviewed with and even my MD classmates- it just seems like a totally different caliber of students to where even the post docs seem to have scarcely better qualifications than even 2nd year MD/PhDs. I guess I can see now why the glut of PhDs is such a problem- the admissions standards have had to fall quite a long way.

Has anyone else felt similarly?

 

[Lucca]

This has not been my experience at all. It’s probably very lab dependent and there are some people who are clearly phoning it in on more days than others, even at prestigious places, but in all of the places I’ve worked most people have been very motivated, bright, and very hard workers. In particular I’ve always been impressed with how much more efficient post docs are than PhD students on average at organizing themselves to produce reliable results.

 

[tortuga87]

Felt the same as OP many times. Several people in my MD/PhD class also felt the same.

I think many bright people do not do a PhD nowadays given the abysmal job opportunities in research. Many students instead go to professional schools. Most PhD programs, at least in my field, are filled with international students, and many American students simply don't apply to PhD programs even though they are more than capable of completing such a program. It seems that research is like art in many ways; research is cool, fun and you need talent to do it, but research does not put food on the table at the end of the day

 

[eteshoe]

hmm I've mostly run into ridiculously talented grad students and postdocs. Sure there are the occasional stragglers, but the quality tends to be higher than what I see when I go to large conferences.

 

[Microbug]

Good for you? Everyone approaches work differently, some people prefer more of a work-life balance. Maybe if they’re happy, they can be more productive at work so they can work less hours. Most PhD students I’ve met (from top5 schools to top50) are bright, kind and motivated people. The post comes off as quite judgemental. People can do whatever they want, and if you don’t like them, just surround yourself with people you like. Chill out.

 

[mega_]

i found phd students are actually more into mechanism/how things work than md students. also a lot of md's have very poor math/computational skills compare to phds

 

[dl2dp2]

What you are seeing a real phenomenon but your interpretation is incorrect. It may be true the median overall preparation and skill level, and especially "presentation" (soft skills, etc), of a PhD student (or even a junior postdoc) is slightly lower than a MD/PhD at a comparable institution, but this effect is likely so small (and the direction of the effect likely location specific enough, as others have observed here) that it won't be apparent to you in any casual contexts (i.e. you won't be able to detect it without doing a lot of measurements)... However, the variance of that number is universally (much) higher in the PhD cohort. Hence, extreme values are more frequently seen in the PhD cohort than the MD/PhD cohort. This is almost entirely due to a statistical phenomenon called "bias versus variance" trade off. MD/PhD programs are more competitive for reasons unrelated to the cohort from which they choose (i.e. you are seeing this, but it's not because MD/PhD students are from an INTRINSICALLY better cohort). I hope this makes sense.