Neurology in Med School

[rmsteinberg]

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Hi there,

I am a neuroscience PhD who will be taking a few post-bac courses and applying to med school next year, looking to specialize in neurology. After volunteering at a state psychiatric hospital for a year, I have become interested in schizophrenia and senile dementia research. I'd like to attend a med school with research opportunities in both/either of those fields, but don't know if this should be a strong consideration determing which schools I apply to. I have been told that trying to specialize while in med school is not very productive, and that I should wait until residency. Any advice on this issue?

Also, in PhD programs, an applicant's chances for admission are increased if he/she contacts potential faculty advisors during the application process to discuss research possibilities--does this strategy apply to med school admissions at all? I.e. would it help my admission chances at all to contact faculty specializing in neurology who I'm interested in doing research with?

I appreciate your advice,

Rebecca

 

[IBleedGreen]

Hi there,

I am a neuroscience PhD who will be taking a few post-bac courses and applying to med school next year, looking to specialize in neurology. After volunteering at a state psychiatric hospital for a year, I have become interested in schizophrenia and senile dementia research. I'd like to attend a med school with research opportunities in both/either of those fields, but don't know if this should be a strong consideration determing which schools I apply to. I have been told that trying to specialize while in med school is not very productive, and that I should wait until residency. Any advice on this issue?

Also, in PhD programs, an applicant's chances for admission are increased if he/she contacts potential faculty advisors during the application process to discuss research possibilities--does this strategy apply to med school admissions at all? I.e. would it help my admission chances at all to contact faculty specializing in neurology who I'm interested in doing research with?

I appreciate your advice,

Rebecca

I'm actually doing an MD/PhD in Neuroscience, so I'll give you my two cents. I agree there's not a ton of time for specialization in med school. However, if you are really interested in pursuing research (my school has time in the 1st two years for research, but there isn't much free time in the clinical years), then I'd suggest looking at the faculty of med schools you're interested in to see if there are any in that field. Of course, other schools may have more or less flexible schedules allowing for research time. If you are certain that you want to go into Neurology, then at the very least I think you should look for schools with great neuro programs. I would think that would help once you start applying for residency.

As far as contacting faculty, I can only see two ways that would help.
1) If you did some work with a faculty member prior to applying, so they were willing to write a recommendation for you
2) If they serve on the medical school admissions committee. Still, I don't know if even this would help you much.

Personally I wouldn't contact particular faculty about pursuing research until I got accepted. But if it's just to get information about research possibilities at the school and not to set up a project, then I'd suggest contacting the department chair.

Hope this helped. Anyone else, correct me if things are different at your schools.