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MD/PhD dilemma...reapply after acceptance?
- Thread starter Rayne
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For what it is worth,
1. Research interest matters little to the mentors with which you work with. I don't think this can be overemphasized.
2. I am can bank most of my money on a MSTP program having a usually fabulous selection of thesis labs to choose from and great mentors. (The school got the MSTP grant for a reason) Now, this is not going to go across the board and put great mentors doing what you want to do at all (or even most) schools. But odds are, there are still going to be good faculty in the same or a similar department. Hence...
3. The difference between in working in an NMR v. crystallography lab, or bacteriology v. virology, or micro dept. v. immuno dept. is actually pretty minimal in the long scheme of your training. I don't know the specificity of what you define your current "field" as. However, I am betting you can find a plethora of future mentors if you branch out a bit. How drastic that is, that depends on your situation.
4. The point of going through all these different steps in training has a variety of reasons. One of which is that it forces you to learn new things, meet new people, and take different steps. Because, part of the award is for you to learn new stuff and do different things, not just doing some solid techniques that you have done a ton in the past. The NIH and other fellowship funding agencies view stepping outside of your previous comfort zone as positive. Just something that I keep in mind when I get in similar sorts of situations and faced with doing something that I have no experience doing.
5. Three years of research is not enough to make a career decision on, especially when you have just scratched the surface in undergrad. Look at the open road, and not the light at the end of the tunnel. Most scientists will switch directions more than once in their life.
6. Reapplying is hard and risky. Because you haven't been really working on it during the previous app cycle, you won't be able to make significant improvements in your app by June or August. You will be asked about why you didn't take one of two acceptances. Don't apply to schools next time that you wouldn't be happy at for MD-only or don't have research options for MD/PhD if you try a mulligan. Don't get stuck on single mentors, focus on good departments and collections of mentors.
Just some food for thought. Good luck!
1. Research interest matters little to the mentors with which you work with. I don't think this can be overemphasized.
2. I am can bank most of my money on a MSTP program having a usually fabulous selection of thesis labs to choose from and great mentors. (The school got the MSTP grant for a reason) Now, this is not going to go across the board and put great mentors doing what you want to do at all (or even most) schools. But odds are, there are still going to be good faculty in the same or a similar department. Hence...
3. The difference between in working in an NMR v. crystallography lab, or bacteriology v. virology, or micro dept. v. immuno dept. is actually pretty minimal in the long scheme of your training. I don't know the specificity of what you define your current "field" as. However, I am betting you can find a plethora of future mentors if you branch out a bit. How drastic that is, that depends on your situation.
4. The point of going through all these different steps in training has a variety of reasons. One of which is that it forces you to learn new things, meet new people, and take different steps. Because, part of the award is for you to learn new stuff and do different things, not just doing some solid techniques that you have done a ton in the past. The NIH and other fellowship funding agencies view stepping outside of your previous comfort zone as positive. Just something that I keep in mind when I get in similar sorts of situations and faced with doing something that I have no experience doing.
5. Three years of research is not enough to make a career decision on, especially when you have just scratched the surface in undergrad. Look at the open road, and not the light at the end of the tunnel. Most scientists will switch directions more than once in their life.
6. Reapplying is hard and risky. Because you haven't been really working on it during the previous app cycle, you won't be able to make significant improvements in your app by June or August. You will be asked about why you didn't take one of two acceptances. Don't apply to schools next time that you wouldn't be happy at for MD-only or don't have research options for MD/PhD if you try a mulligan. Don't get stuck on single mentors, focus on good departments and collections of mentors.
Just some food for thought. Good luck!
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With your stats the old saying applies: beggars can't be choosers. It is a fully-funded program right? If so, Take the wonderful opportunity you have. It is too risky to do otherwise. You can and will branch out on your research.
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Can you aim me later? I'd like to get more details about your situation. I know we talked before and my impression is you're making a mountain out of a mole hill.
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Don't reapply, the risk outweighs the benefit. If you talk to PIs in your general field of interest, some of them may be open to let you deviate a little from their usual line of work and pursue you "focused" field of interest.
Yes this is good advice. Also, you have not even sat in a single medical school class yet. How do you know that there isn't something out there you haven't ever heard about that will totally open your mind to an area you find fascinating?
It sounds to me that unless you have a masters or something in your field, you are being way too narrow minded about the PhD phase of training. Even if you did already have a masters (or 3+ yrs experience as you do) many would argue the best thing for your career would be to switch into a new field where you could incorporate some of the things you already know how to do but they are not commonplace approaches in this new field. This is essentially what people are advised to do when going from PhD to Post-doc.
IMHO, you are way to early in your training to have your sights so narrowly focused that you couldn't find any PI at an MSTP-funded institution, which by definition has tons of great quality biomedical research going on across departments.
With your stats it might be even harder to re-apply MD-only, because MSTPs will tend to weigh your research experience more than MD-only. I would just take what you have. All MSTP programs will have great research, sometimes you just have to keep your mind open. Either way best of luck!
AMCAS displays fields that show whether an individual has previousl applied or previously matriculated. There is no field that indicates whether you have previously turned down an admissions offer. A particularly anal admissions office that had waitlisted you might have stored the information that you were offered a position at another institution (schools can see where waitlisted applicants are holding acceptances for a window of time beginning in late March), but that is really a lot of trouble. You can probably be assured that only the school that you turned down will know this.
Having said that, I think you should be careful about giving up an acceptance this year in the hopes of doing better next year. It is hard to know for certain why a program did not accept you. Yes, the MCAT is below the mean, but nearly every program has students with low-30's MCATs. A higher MCAT score and an additional year of research will not hurt, but you do not know whether it will be enough to get you in next year. Given the current funding climate, there is a possibility that rograms may accept fewer students next year. We just do not know what is going to happen on that front.
Finally, I would echo the thoughts of others and say that you should not get too hung up on specific research projects. Conventional wisdom is that you should pick the mentor, not the project. Two years after you finish your PhD, no one will care what you did.
Having said that, I think you should be careful about giving up an acceptance this year in the hopes of doing better next year. It is hard to know for certain why a program did not accept you. Yes, the MCAT is below the mean, but nearly every program has students with low-30's MCATs. A higher MCAT score and an additional year of research will not hurt, but you do not know whether it will be enough to get you in next year. Given the current funding climate, there is a possibility that rograms may accept fewer students next year. We just do not know what is going to happen on that front.
Finally, I would echo the thoughts of others and say that you should not get too hung up on specific research projects. Conventional wisdom is that you should pick the mentor, not the project. Two years after you finish your PhD, no one will care what you did.
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Take what you have and run with it. Do not delay your career further and risk not getting accepted next cycle. Two other general pieces of advice:
1.) Do not get obsessed with a project, field, or department. You need a good mentor. If you were interested in neuroscience and immunology and the only good mentors were in bacteriology, I'd say get your PhD with one of the bacteriologists and then take what you learned there (which will have some overlap with neuroscience and give you a very different perspective, too) and use it in a later stage of your career when you're more independent, such as during a post-doc.
2.) Don't apply to things you have no desire of accepting. It generates these sorts of dilemmas and takes away opportunities from people who would appreciate them more than you do. When I knew I had been accepted to a school whose program I preferred over a whole bunch of other programs, I cancelled my interviews and withdrew my applications from those places. And when Wash U MSTP did not grant me an interview but Wash U MD was actively asking me for permission to grant me an interview, I refused because I knew I wanted the MD/PhD (at least at that point) more than just the MD.
1.) Do not get obsessed with a project, field, or department. You need a good mentor. If you were interested in neuroscience and immunology and the only good mentors were in bacteriology, I'd say get your PhD with one of the bacteriologists and then take what you learned there (which will have some overlap with neuroscience and give you a very different perspective, too) and use it in a later stage of your career when you're more independent, such as during a post-doc.
2.) Don't apply to things you have no desire of accepting. It generates these sorts of dilemmas and takes away opportunities from people who would appreciate them more than you do. When I knew I had been accepted to a school whose program I preferred over a whole bunch of other programs, I cancelled my interviews and withdrew my applications from those places. And when Wash U MSTP did not grant me an interview but Wash U MD was actively asking me for permission to grant me an interview, I refused because I knew I wanted the MD/PhD (at least at that point) more than just the MD.
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I'm considering doing the same thing. Would it be possible to defer admission for a year (that is, hold on to the offer you got) while reapplying for OTHER schools? So that way, even if you don't get in anywhere you can still go to the school that accepted you?
Many schools have, as a condition of deferral, a requirement that you withdraw your applications from all other programs, and agree not to reapply during the deferral year. You should ask about the deferral policies before you put yourself into a bad situation. If we found that someone on deferral was applying to other schools in the next admissions cycle, we would immediately void the acceptance with no questions asked.
Years ago, when electronic transfer of information was a concept, not a reality, a slick character obtained a deferral from our program and two others, despite this prohibition. When the programs informally exchanged admissions lists in the summer it was discovered what he had done. Two programs immediately voided his acceptance. The third program, which, unlike the other two, was not a "Top 30" program, forgave the transgression. The point of this story is that programs do stand by their rules.
