Question about amcas for MD/PhD applicants

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dave613

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When the amcas asks about why we want to be a doctor, should we discuss our MD/PhD goals, or just focus on the clinical doctor thing?

Thanks

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dave613 said:
When the amcas asks about why we want to be a doctor, should we discuss our MD/PhD goals, or just focus on the clinical doctor thing?

Thanks

You have 3 essays to write if you're applying MD/PhD. Your personal statement should reflect your interest in research and indicate that you're applying MD/PhD but it should not be a restatement of what you write in your why MD/PhD essay. The third essay is about your research experience. Personally, in my personal statement I alluded to specific experiences and points in my research that made me want to pursue academic medicine. I hope this helps, if not PM me with more questions and I'll try to help.
 
Though you should most certainly give a good, complete coherent and cohesive answer why you want to practice medicine (not just why you want to have medical knowledge influence your research). At a lot of schools you need to get through the MD committee sooner or later and if they just can't get a picture of why you want to practice medicine, the MSTP committee's going to have a very hard time indeed pulling your application through.
 
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My personal statement was about my desire to practice medicine. I put in one sentence about MD/PhD (something like "blah blah blah led to my decision to puruse medicine, and in particular, an MD/PhD"). The MD/PhD essay and the research essay should give you sufficient time to talk about research, so I feel that the regular ps is best suited for discussing your interest in medicine. I basically wrote it as though I were a regular MD applicant.

And I got very positive feedback about my essays from interviewers, so I think this tactic worked just fine.
 
Thundrstorm said:
My personal statement was about my desire to practice medicine. I put in one sentence about MD/PhD (something like "blah blah blah led to my decision to puruse medicine, and in particular, an MD/PhD"). The MD/PhD essay and the research essay should give you sufficient time to talk about research, so I feel that the regular ps is best suited for discussing your interest in medicine. I basically wrote it as though I were a regular MD applicant.

And I got very positive feedback about my essays from interviewers, so I think this tactic worked just fine.

I did the same thing as Thundrstorm and got similar postive feedback. Focus on your clinical experiences and the influences on your decision to practice medicine. In the conclusion, refer to your desire to pursue MD/PhD.
 
One of the hardest things to do is convey your entire philosophy, life goals, and experiences on a couple of two-dimensional sheets of paper. I think the essays are really important in this process. When a person reads your three essays together, they should get a full image of you. Make sure everything fits together to represent you. Also, continue to distinguish between what you really want and what admissions wants to see, which is not always easy to do. There is a way to play the admissions game, but in the end you would save yourself a lot of time and heartache, if you know exactly what you want (or don't want) for your life in making this final decision.

Good luck. Don't stress...just do your best.
 
I'm applying this cycle, and I've taken the personal statement to mean "why i want to get an MD". So I made research play into it, but I tried to focus on the reasons for wanting to practice, in terms of interacting with patients, etc. It seems like we have plenty of space to talk about research in other essays. Good luck!
 
mac921 said:
One of the hardest things to do is convey your entire philosophy, life goals, and experiences on a couple of two-dimensional sheets of paper. I think the essays are really important in this process. When a person reads your three essays together, they should get a full image of you. Make sure everything fits together to represent you. Also, continue to distinguish between what you really want and what admissions wants to see, which is not always easy to do. There is a way to play the admissions game, but in the end you would save yourself a lot of time and heartache, if you know exactly what you want (or don't want) for your life in making this final decision.

Good luck. Don't stress...just do your best.
Your point about the 3 essays fitting together is a good one. I definitely had a common theme running through my essays (that I carried into relevant secondaries). I talked about health disparities in my MD statement, tying in a public health experience and a personal experience. In my MD/PhD essay, I talked about how my research interests (specifically infectious diseases) were tied into public health and underserved populations. And in my research essay, I spoke about each research experience in a more scientific way, but I summed up the statement by showing how each experience had led me to my current area of interest (infectious diseases). In this way, all of my essays pointed toward a common theme/goal and did not contradict each other. And when I spoke to interviewers, their feedback demonstrated that they got the main point that I was trying to make.
 
Thanks guys.

I really appreciate it!
 
Hey,

I have a questions:

if any of you have some time, could you take a look at my essays for me?

Thanks,
Dave
 
dave613 said:
Hey,

I have a questions:

if any of you have some time, could you take a look at my essays for me?

Thanks,
Dave
If you're not in a rush, I can look at your essays and get back to you on Monday. I have a presentation monday morning, so I'm busy until then, but I can take a look on monday afternoon. PM me if you want.
 
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