MSTP alumni track record and NIH evaluation

[adesua]

Is there a centralized location for getting this information or does one have to contact the schools directly?

Thanks.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[coldchemist]

I would love to find out this information as well...but doubt it would be easy to get it. Organizations like NIH and the major accrediting bodies seem to be extremely reluctant to give out anything that might be construed as a sanctioned ranking system.

 

[Newquagmire]

When I asked Bert Shapiro for NIH stuff, he told me to get government authorization to release the information as public material. In other words: by the time you get it, it won't be of use to you.

MSTP track records can generally be found on individual school's websites. There are also dozens of journal papers on this.

 

[Habari]

the 'where are they now' mstp graduate booklets are only available through program offices. the Tri-I program has a bound book which one can ask for, as does yale and a few other schools. regardless what they say, they all have a list compiled - but you will find that some schools are oddly reluctant to give theirs out [columbia said 'it is not reflective of where we would like to be']. some program websites list where some graduates matched [washU is a notable exception that lists where all alumn are on their website].

When I asked Bert Shapiro for NIH stuff, he told me to get government authorization to release the information as public material. In other words: by the time you get it, it won't be of use to you.

that was an odd way for dr. shapiro to put it; the nih feedback it not at all available to anybody but the school and the reviewers. i have had the oppounity to look at one briefly [not at my school - at another]; they are almost purely qualitative in nature - essentially feedback to a competitive grant application. some programs will give excerpts from their review [this is for our program - last year the only program to recieve an increase in the # of funded seats - all other programs stayed the same or lost; this was due to nih budget constraints]:


"This is a very strong program with outstanding leadership provided by the Program Director, Dr. Olaf Andersen, who has pulled together three independent institutions into a unified MST Program that offers students a wide variety of very exciting cutting edge research training opportunities with renowned scientists many of whom are at the top of their fields. The faculty is very dedicated to the success of the program and there are many collaborative efforts that broaden student training. The complicated administrative challenges of bringing three disparate institutions together to work as a single unit in training MD-PhD students is skillfully handled by the program director with the assistance of several program committees.

The trainees represent some of the best MD-PhD students across the country and they are working on interesting and important projects. Many students are publishing papers in high profile journals and by their own description are doing hypothesis driven basic investigation. The graduates include a large number of current leaders in academic medicine.

The training program is well structured, students are carefully mentored, and there are special enrichment activities provided for the students. Institutional support is very strong."

http://www.med.cornell.edu/mdphd/home.html

 

[adesua]

Thanks y'all for your replies.

Oh wow!
So Cornell was the only school to have a raise in the number of MD/PhD spots. Is this quotable - or is this another piece of info that is supposed to be kept a secret?

Good night.

 

[Habari]

it's hardly secret if it's on here ...

 

[noy]

Here is the link to get anything from Shapiro:

NIH FOIA Info

 

[chef]

http://medicine.ucsd.edu/mstp/alumni/

http://swnt240.swmed.edu/gradschool/webpages/mstp_history.htm

http://www.mdphd.pitt.edu/alumni_list.asp

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/mdphd/trackrecord.htm

 

[Neuronix]

Originally posted by adesua
So Cornell was the only school to have a raise in the number of MD/PhD spots. Is this quotable - or is this another piece of info that is supposed to be kept a secret?

Interesting. Duke and UChicago both claimed to have the highest grant score and Cornell has an increase in amount of funding? Confusing. But then again, this is what we have to put up with as people being fed small, subjectively chosen, amounts of objective information by people trying to sell their schools.

For those who have never heard how the NIH grant review system works, here's my quick attempt to explain it. Because this is a NIH grant, programs are reviewed once every five years and given a grant score, something like research grants. The NIH sends out this big site review team and takes into account lots of factors for writing their reviews.

When everything is done, the scores are used to decide which programs get more money, which stay the same, and which get less money or probation. Like a research grant, the higher your score, the more likely it is to get funded, depending on the research budget.

I wonder if I could get grant reviews by the FOIA. I can't see why that would be "classified" somehow that the public would not be able to get to.

 

[surge]

Originally posted by Neuronix
The NIH sends out this big site review team and takes into account lots of factors for writing their reviews.

It should be interesting, we're meeting with the team in a couple of weeks since our grant is due for renewal. We get to eat lunch with Rod Ulane, Paul Insel, and Olaf Andersen.

 

[Maebea]

Originally posted by Neuronix
Interesting. Duke and UChicago both claimed to have the highest grant score and Cornell has an increase in amount of funding? Confusing. But then again, this is what we have to put up with as people being fed small, subjectively chosen, amounts of objective information by people trying to sell their schools.

For those who have never heard how the NIH grant review system works, here's my quick attempt to explain it. Because this is a NIH grant, programs are reviewed once every five years and given a grant score, something like research grants. The NIH sends out this big site review team and takes into account lots of factors for writing their reviews.

When everything is done, the scores are used to decide which programs get more money, which stay the same, and which get less money or probation. Like a research grant, the higher your score, the more likely it is to get funded, depending on the research budget.

I wonder if I could get grant reviews by the FOIA. I can't see why that would be "classified" somehow that the public would not be able to get to.

Neuronix is fairly accurate in his description of the review process for training grants. My only quibble is that the priority scores given grants is inverted. That is, on a scale of 100 to 500, the lower the score the better. Also, the statement about site reviews was not entirely correct; site visit teams are now only sent out if the NIH has concerns about a program or if the program leadership has changed.

As far as the claims by Duke, Chicago, etc. that they have the best program according to the NIH, that is simply not true. The NIH does not have any sort of numeric ranking of programs by priority scores or by any other method. In general terms, a program that has a priority score of 150 is more meritorius than a program that has a score of 300, but it is debatable whether a 150 is better than a 160 or a 175. I do not know what the current payline is on NIGMS training grants (the payline is the cutoff for funding), but I believe that any score under 200 is bankable. These priority scores are subjective judgements, made over a period of 5 years by a group whose membership changes constantly. They are probably a little bit better than the figure skating judging at the Olympics, but they are by no means definitive.

Duke, Chicago, Cornell, etc., will all provide you with an opportunity to achieve you goal of becoming a physician-scientist. Cornell's achievement of receiving additional funding is substantial, given 1) the tight NIH training budget, 2) the fact that the program was on the rocks a decade ago and in danger of lapsing. Olaf Anderson has done a tremendous job in transforming this into a premiere program. (Nancy Andrews did a similar job at Harvard, taking over a program that was on probation and putting it back on track.) Still, you should not read too much into this. The passage that Habari quoted from the NIH's review of the Tri-Instutional Program is nearly verbatim to that given to my program. This demonstrates that either my program is as good as Cornell's, or that the NIH is as good at cutting & pasting text in grant reviews as students are in filling out MD/PhD applications.

In the end, you need to make an individual decision about which program will suit you best, regardless of what common wisdom, US News, grandma, or the false claims of NIH ranking say. If it turns out the University of Cincinnati MSTP is the best fit for you, you should go there, rather than taking a risk at being miserable at Duke for 7 or 8 years just because of US News or because the people at Duke make claims about nonexistent NIH rankings. As a MD/PhD, the world of academic medicine is wide open to you, regardless of whether your degree is from Duke, Cincinnati, Penn State or Stanford.

 

[adesua]

Originally posted by Maebea
This demonstrates that either my program is as good as Cornell's, or that the NIH is as good at cutting & pasting text in grant reviews as students are in filling out MD/PhD applications.

ha ha ... Good one Maebea...