MD/PhD primary essay question

[friendlybear]

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Hey all, I've got a question about essays for the MD/PhD applicant:

I read the essays of successful applicants to medical school (the kaplan essay book and mcgraw-hill book) and saw how some of them really went into depth about their research abilities. From what I understand, these were personal statements (personal comments) for people who probably were just applying straight MD but they might as well have been the "Why do you want to go into an MD/PhD" essay question's answer.

Obviously, talking about research in the personal comments helped these applicants a lot. Are we supposed to save all our research discussion for the MD/PhD essay? Would it be wise for me to just talk a lot about research in my personal comments, as well as my MD/PhD essay? My clinical work (the alternative here to discuss in personal comments) is not as decorated as my research work.

 

[dmblue]

Hey all, I've got a question about essays for the MD/PhD applicant:

I read the essays of successful applicants to medical school (the kaplan essay book and mcgraw-hill book) and saw how some of them really went into depth about their research abilities. From what I understand, these were personal statements (personal comments) for people who probably were just applying straight MD but they might as well have been the "Why do you want to go into an MD/PhD" essay question's answer.

Obviously, talking about research in the personal comments helped these applicants a lot. Are we supposed to save all our research discussion for the MD/PhD essay? Would it be wise for me to just talk a lot about research in my personal comments, as well as my MD/PhD essay? My clinical work (the alternative here to discuss in personal comments) is not as decorated as my research work.

I split mine in two. I spoke about my clinical experiences and then my research experiences, and I talked about how they both motivated me to pursue medicine. It worked for me.

 

[sleepy425]

Hey all, I've got a question about essays for the MD/PhD applicant:

I read the essays of successful applicants to medical school (the kaplan essay book and mcgraw-hill book) and saw how some of them really went into depth about their research abilities. From what I understand, these were personal statements (personal comments) for people who probably were just applying straight MD but they might as well have been the "Why do you want to go into an MD/PhD" essay question's answer.

Obviously, talking about research in the personal comments helped these applicants a lot. Are we supposed to save all our research discussion for the MD/PhD essay? Would it be wise for me to just talk a lot about research in my personal comments, as well as my MD/PhD essay? My clinical work (the alternative here to discuss in personal comments) is not as decorated as my research work.

For my regular personal statement, I talked about how I got interested in academic medicine (as opposed to private practice). I incorporated research by talking about how the research strengthened my interest in medicine because it showed me the connections between basic science and medicine more clearly. Then I talked about how shadowing in the academic setting made it clear that, in academics, basic science research was directly incorporated into teaching residents, and how I liked the environment that created.

So then for my MD/PhD essay, I basically talked about how I decided to do MD/PhD. So I explained that I had originally been interested in academic medicine, then did research and loved it, then reconciled the two by deciding on biomedical research. Then I realized that there were a lot of ways to have a career in biomedical research, most notably MD who does research, PhD who does medically related research, and MD/PhD. I explained how I explored each track and how I understood the pros and cons of each, and how the MD/PhD minimized the cons that were particularly important to me.

So that's a way to do it. Use the research in the personal statement to explain how that affected your interest in clinical medicine. Then, in the MD/PhD essay, explain how you decided to pursue medically related research (if that's why you want MD/PhD, although for social sciences PhDs--which I wholeheartedly support btw--it's not going to be basic science research, but whatever's appropriate for your field), and then explain how you chose the combined degree track over other tracks. I'm sure there are other good ways to approach this though