laid back phd?

[cypher828]

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How does the phd portion of an mstp program compare to the time spent in med school. Im wondering in terms of time spent in class, in the lab, studying... Is it a more or less intense experience?

 

[IBleedGreen]

How does the phd portion of an mstp program compare to the time spent in med school. Im wondering in terms of time spent in class, in the lab, studying... Is it a more or less intense experience?

I'm not in an MSTP program, but I don't see how that should matter. My experience so far (1st year of the PhD portion) is that the PhD takes a lot more time and effort than the MD. I can't compare to the 3rd and 4th years of med school since I've only completed the first two. For those 2 years though, I didn't have to go to most classes so my schedule was flexible and I almost always got weekends off if I wanted. Now I work 10-12 hour days and most weekends. With that said, I think it ultimately comes down to how productive you want to be during your PhD work.

 

[strangeglove]

I'm not in an MSTP program, but I don't see how that should matter. My experience so far (1st year of the PhD portion) is that the PhD takes a lot more time and effort than the MD. I can't compare to the 3rd and 4th years of med school since I've only completed the first two. For those 2 years though, I didn't have to go to most classes so my schedule was flexible and I almost always got weekends off if I wanted. Now I work 10-12 hour days and most weekends. With that said, I think it ultimately comes down to how productive you want to be during your PhD work.

Being in the last year of an MSTP, I can say that the PhD is actually much more relaxed than the MD part, especially the clinical years. Of course, if you're trying to get your PhD in 2 years or something unrealistic like that, then you will need to work your butt off and basicaly live in the lab. However, if you don't mind taking a little extra time - and nobody really cares if you take 4 years instead of 2 (except, of course, for the people who run your MSTP because they have to answer to the bean counters at NIGMS) - your PhD can be a time to do things like play music, read books, write poetry, get married, have children, etc. These are things that you will never have an opportunity to devote so much time to again in your life as a physician-scientist, until you retire. You can live your life while doing good work in the lab and publishing Science papers, etc. (I know this from personal experience). You can't really do these things during the MD part, since you will have very little flexibility. Sure, you can skip all of your classes (as I did), but that doesn't mean you'll be sleeping in or going white-water rafting every day. Also, you will most likely be studying most weekends if you want to get good grades, which important people (i.e. residency directors) care about more than how long it took you to get your PhD. The clinical years are completely regimented, complete with early hours, long days and regular exams. So, take time to smell the roses during your PhD.

 

[Neuronix]

I'm halfway through the program (middle of PhD) and I'd say that both have their crazy and not so crazy weeks.

As a slight contrast to strangelove, residency directors for the most part don't care at all about your pre-clinical grades. During first year I probably averaged on the order of 30 hours/week since I skipped most classes and barely passed everything. For the record I scored pretty well on the Step I. At our school we do 6 months of clinics before the PhD and that's when it gets rough. During clinics it goes from 40-80hours/week depending on service and amount of time you study. I did "ok" in clinics, probably middle or a little better in my class. Then fourth year can be a vacation depending on how you structure it.

During my PhD I've had 60+ hour weeks where I've slept 2 nights in the lab and I've had 30 hour weeks where I take a pill of fukitall and can't work. Maybe I'm manic that way. I'm hoping to pull off my PhD in 3.5 years so I can be done in a total of 7.

 

[strangeglove]

I'm halfway through the program (middle of PhD) and I'd say that both have their crazy and not so crazy weeks.

As a slight contrast to strangelove, residency directors for the most part don't care at all about your pre-clinical grades.

This really depends on what you want to go into. Highly competetive specialties (which are typically less impressed by PhDs and more impressed by raw medical school performance) do care about your grades in the first 2 years. So, if you want to go into derm or radiation oncology, you may not want to relax too much in your first 2 years, since simply having a PhD will not guarantee you a spot anywhere. If you want to do IM or psych, then by all means relax during your first 2 years of medical school, since most programs are actively recruiting MD-PhDs.

I will say that the PhD years, though potentially more laid back than the MD years, are in a way more stressful because you must rely on your own motivation and there are fewer clearly defined endpoints. If things aren't going well in the lab, you can't just say "It's okay, this will be over in 4 weeks," like you can with a bad rotation.

 

[Circumflex]

Overall, my time doing the PhD was more relaxed than the MD years. First, you aren't having to study constantly for exams - that's nice. Sure, you do a lot of reading (or should), but at least it is more specific to your interests.

Secondly, your schedule is much more flexible, depending on what kind of research you do. Some weekends I would spend working my tail off while others, I would take the whole weekend to relax. Great times. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of stressful times and long days doing the PhD, but they were nicely balanced out.

 

[greg12345]

I worked just as hard, if not harder, during grad school than in med school...the difference is is that grad is school was much more enjoyable because I had complete control of my time. I CHOSE to work long hours in grad school (trying to get out in 3), rather than being forced to take call q4 o/n on a busy OB service where going without sleep for 30 hours straight was guaranteed every call night. Just the fact that I knew I could just call it quits any time of the day in the lab and relax if I wanted to makes all the difference to me. It was also a different kind of work; the hours in grad school might have been longer, but they were definitely less mentally taxing as I was not struggling to memorize ridiculous amounts of information for the upcoming shelf after a long hard day on the ward.

And don't think that the PhD is a golden ticket into whatever residency you want to go into. Unfortunately medical school grades do matter and you can probably kiss rad onc goodbye if you are not up to par grade wise. And IM is easy, but if you want to go to Mass General or the Brigham so you can get an inroad to the Farber for fellowship...guess what, those IM programs are pretty competitive even with a PhD on your app. Cover your bases and do well both in your PhD and in your med school years. Obviously if you want to go to a non-top-tier IM residency, by all means slack off and enjoy life...just don't be surprised if UCSF, BWH, etc. don't come calling.

 

[Neuronix]

I'm still going to put out that even for Rad Onc preclinical grades matter maybe 1/10 of what the clinical grades matter. For Derm I don't know. For any specialty I'm aware of, your step I scores matter much more than your preclinical grades. For things like class rank/AOA status, your clinical grades matter much more than preclinical grades and at most schools almost entirely determine your class rank/AOA status. For something that matters so little, I'm not going to bust my ass for a year and a half.

I'm going into a competitive specialty, btw. From the sounds of things I won't match! Maybe I made a big mistake OMG! 😉

 

[greg12345]

Oops, I didn't mean to say that preclinical grades matter - they don't. All that matters from that era is your Step I score, which many programs use as a screening tool. Although they might waive that screening tool if you have a PhD. I still think your clinical grades, especially in the clerkship/field you want to go into, are huge. Let's face it, EVERY MSTP'er will match in their chosen field, what I was trying to get at (and didn't do so well) is that it's a question of where on your rank list that happens. If you are doing rad onc where everyone has a PhD or serious research experience, the # of slots is small, and the competition is fierce with a huge % of AOA, lame things like your clinical grades can potentially have a huge effect on where you match. Even in IM, I know people that weren't granted interviews at the top tier places (Hopkins, UCSF, BWH) despite having great PhDs and great test scores...maybe it was b/c they just High Passed IM? Who knows? Admittedly, the non-top tier places (i.e. most of the other top 20 IM programs) will almost embarrass themselves the way they throw themselves at MSTPers and basically beg them to come to their residency program and stay through fellowship to become junior faculty. I'm just saying if you want to shoot the moon, you gotta gun in 3rd year as unfortunate and loathsome as that might be.

 

[Doctor&Geek]

Oops, I didn't mean to say that preclinical grades matter - they don't. All that matters from that era is your Step I score, which many programs use as a screening tool. Although they might waive that screening tool if you have a PhD. I still think your clinical grades, especially in the clerkship/field you want to go into, are huge. Let's face it, EVERY MSTP'er will match in their chosen field, what I was trying to get at (and didn't do so well) is that it's a question of where on your rank list that happens. If you are doing rad onc where everyone has a PhD or serious research experience, the # of slots is small, and the competition is fierce with a huge % of AOA, lame things like your clinical grades can potentially have a huge effect on where you match. Even in IM, I know people that weren't granted interviews at the top tier places (Hopkins, UCSF, BWH) despite having great PhDs and great test scores...maybe it was b/c they just High Passed IM? Who knows? Admittedly, the non-top tier places (i.e. most of the other top 20 IM programs) will almost embarrass themselves the way they throw themselves at MSTPers and basically beg them to come to their residency program and stay through fellowship to become junior faculty. I'm just saying if you want to shoot the moon, you gotta gun in 3rd year as unfortunate and loathsome as that might be.

I tend to agree with this - but only if you know you want to be shooting for the moon, especially in certain specialties where the PhD isn't going to be as helpful and where things like Junior AOA are very very helpful (Dermatology & Radiology come to mind). RadOnc is actually very low of the list of specialties that want sky high Step 1's and AOA as a gateway to even getting an interview (see RadOnc forum for further details).

It's a competitive world out there. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by being lazy - your PhD is not your free ticket into your top level residency of choice.

(That said if you're already at a top tier MSTP, chances are you'll be able to make it just about anywhere, given past match results. Just don't try to waltz your way into Harvard RadOnc or Wilmer or NYU derm by waving around your PhD in their face. As Greg writes above, the number of PhDs applying to those institutions is very high, and thus need other metrics to differentiate for the rank list.)

 

[tr]

This is completely dependent on your PI. You can't predict your experience based on those of others; you have to predict it based on the track record of your PI, the potential of your project, and the word of his previous grad students.

For me, med school was far and away more laid-back than grad school. First two years were cake; I did what Neuronix did and took the easy way out, mostly Passes and averaging about a 30-hour week.

PhD was pretty much 60-70-hour workweeks straight through (averaged about a 12-hour day, weekends variable but usually involved some amount of lab work). Output is way more dependent on your project, your skill, and your PI than on the hours you put in though.

Third year med school has been a breeze compared to PhD. There was only one rotation (a medicine sub-I) where I probably touched 80 hours with q5 overnight call. Our school is pretty cush with very little overnight call for students (I did <10 overnights *total*, most calls are till 10 or till midnight). And by the way an 80-hour week with two overnight calls is way easier than a 70-hour week without, as the calls eat up 60 hours, some of the time you may be sleeping, the other days you go home at a normal hour, and you have the post-call day off. (Taking call is so worth it for the post-call day!)

The hours-heavy rotations for me were ob-gyn and surg, each with about a 60-70 hour week (unless there was a weekend call, which would push it to 80-90 hours - but that only happened twice). But that's what I'd been doing in lab anyway; and most of the other rotations were pretty relaxed in terms of hours - mostly around 40-45, some <30.

I don't really get much of a fourth year, which is a shame; but I'm out in 7 and I'm excited to start residency in June.

 

[gbwillner]

I agree with the sentiment that the PhD was far more stressful/difficult.

During clinics, you have easy days followed by call days that can run long. You also have a short day when you are post-call on some rotations. You are also guaranteed a day off every week. The only problem is that it is so regimented. During the PhD years, it's all up to you, so you can have it cush or tough. I worked 50-100 hrs/week, definitely more at the end of the PhD and when publications were coming to fruition, and I never took any weekends off. I knew that if I got that one experiment done tonight, I wouldn't have to do it tomorrow. However, if I didn't feel like getting out of bed before 10 AM on any particular day, I could just take the morning off and no one would care.

I also think that the quality of the PhD is very variable between institutions and departments. I don't think anyone can get a PhD here in 3 years (or even 4) by taking it easy. Those guys get out in 7-9 years.

 

[Kraazy]

your PhD can be a time to do things like play music, read books, write poetry, get married, have children, etc. These are things that you will never have an opportunity to devote so much time to again in your life as a physician-scientist, until you retire.

Yay, MudFud!