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Need expert advice...post doc
- Thread starter Hampster10
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I am an MD/PhD grad who finished my 3rd/4th years of medical school in ~14 months. I then did a 10 month post-doc. I worked under the Chair of my Rad Onc department and felt that the exeperience was invaluable in helping me match well. Based on my experience I would offer you the following advice:
1. The only thing that really matters in terms of the length of your post-doc is research productivity. If you can churn out a good manuscript in 1 year then that is probably good enough. Of course, the problem is that you would have to start the application process a few months after your post-doc begins. Likely, you will not have publishable data so early.
2. Your goal is to get into Rad Onc residency so you should really do Rad Onc research. Preferably, said research should be with the chair or influential faculty of the department you want to match into. I see this not possible in your situation. I would recommend you consider doing a post-doc elsewhere under the above arrangement. It shouldn't be too hard to obtain a funded post-doc at an outside institution.
3. You can, and likely will, match following a productive post-doc. If you apply with little/no research, it will be difficult to match.
1. The only thing that really matters in terms of the length of your post-doc is research productivity. If you can churn out a good manuscript in 1 year then that is probably good enough. Of course, the problem is that you would have to start the application process a few months after your post-doc begins. Likely, you will not have publishable data so early.
2. Your goal is to get into Rad Onc residency so you should really do Rad Onc research. Preferably, said research should be with the chair or influential faculty of the department you want to match into. I see this not possible in your situation. I would recommend you consider doing a post-doc elsewhere under the above arrangement. It shouldn't be too hard to obtain a funded post-doc at an outside institution.
3. You can, and likely will, match following a productive post-doc. If you apply with little/no research, it will be difficult to match.
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if you are planning on spending a whole year doing research to get into radonc, you should try to do radonc research, even if it means going to another institution. even if you do this research project, getting into your home institution is going to be tough. unless you plan on doing IM, apply widely.
Are you graduating this May? You did not mention whether you are currently an MSIII or MSIV, but since you have already completed Step 2 and are talking about a "post-doc", I assume that you are a graduating MSIV. If you happen to be an MSIII, I would recommend you taking a leave of absence from med school and go into a VERY productive radiation oncology lab (preferably not at your home institution), and return back to medical school only after you have 1-2 first author pubs.
If you are graduating this May, then you should wrap your mind around a 2-year commitment. I know that does not sound good, but 2 years is nothing, especially since you will be competing against MD/PhD's who have spent 3-5 years in the lab. In a perfect world I would recommend you not graduating from medical school until after you finish the research, so that you could in theory return and have some clinical rotations prior to internship, but the salary difference between a med student ($26K) and a post-doc ($45K) is substantial.
If you need recommendations on institutions and laboratories to work in, then you can surely get lots of advice from this forum where there is never a scarcity of opinions. Good luck!
Agree with what everyone else has said. Funded spots are kind of hard to come by at this point in time because of the the recession crunch. Just wondering what are the extremely productive institutions and laboratories people here recommend working at and whether anyone knows whether funded positions are available there for a year or two.
D
deleted254819
Look into Kevin Camphausen's lab at the NIH. He's the intramural director of rad onc there and does mostly CNS research. Hugely productive and he's incredibly respected and connected in the field. Plus he's a huge big ten football fan and a pretty cool guy overall. I don't know if you need to be HHMI or NIH-Scholar research fellow to work there, but the few people I know that have spent time there matched at top top places (MSKCC & Harvard), despite coming from middle of the road med schools.
Also check out the labs at the big programs in your area. I'd do some pubmed searching and find out who's productive, or just email the PD, explain your interest, and see if they could recommend a PI in their department who you could contact.
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I've taken courses with McBride and his lab at UCLA. It's a solid department.
