leave of absence - how easy is it to get?

[phatlineman]

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Anyone heard of people taking a leave of absence to do something like a year-long internship, or another degree like MBA? How likely would program directors let you do it and between what years would you do it (after M2, after finishing the PhD, after M3, etc).

 

[Ombret]

This is not common and would most likely make people wonder if you were failing out of your program, going nuts or otherwise trying to disappear for a year. If you have a career plan lined up that requires MD/PhD/MBA, cool, but this sounds a little insane to me.

 

[Neuronix]

I did it and it wasn't hard. I even suspended my grant for 10 months. I don't know if residency program directors noticed or cared.

It's totally going to depend on the program's feelings on the topic. I did mine after the PhD, and I basically did a mini-postdoc which to me felt like an extension of grad school. I mean, who cares if I take a year out and finish in 8 years (the national average) instead of 7 years?!

 

[Ombret]

Neuronix, that is interesting; I have to say that my comments were not meant to apply to postdocing which is really an extension of the training you were already in and is easily justified on scientific and professional grounds.

 

[Neuronix]

Neuronix, that is interesting; I have to say that my comments were not meant to apply to postdocing which is really an extension of the training you were already in and is easily justified on scientific and professional grounds.

No offense taken here. I certainly was a bit nervous about how residency directors might perceive this time off. I know it's common for personal leave of absence to be interpreted by outsiders as the student was either crazy or failing and needed extra time.

I'll explain a bit more for the curious. I had a hard time getting out of my PhD lab which was very frustrating for me. By the time I was allowed to return to clinics by my lab (and by extension, committee), I had missed the deadline for returning to clinics, still had a thesis to finish editing and some papers in review. My timeline, which my PI and committee had both agreed on, had me finishing 3-6 months sooner. Yet as that time approached, additional, seemingly ridiculous and never agreed upon requirements kept being inserted into my committee meetings until the MD/PhD program director offered to help me get out, and the environment became openly hostile.

So there I was with a few weeks worth of work and about 10 months of time to kill where I didn't want to stay in my current lab. I joined a lab elsewhere where I could learn other techniques not offered at my home institution, in a location where I really wanted to go for residency. I did learn a lot and had a great time, though it didn't help me get residency there. My research was in a different department than the one I matched in, and unfortunately that's a handicap in many specialties IMO.