MD Summer research fellowship in field I'm not too interested in but lot of $$$ vs summer research fellowship in field I like but little $$$

[lonely_cytochrome]

Basically one fellowship (the project is in a specialty I don't plan on pursuing) is twice the amount of money the other one is (project is in a field I do plan on pursuing for now). Both institutions are very prestigious within their fields. Any comments or advice? Sorry for the vagueness, rather keep it anonymous for now.

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[Frogger27]

Basically one fellowship (the project is in a specialty I don't plan on pursuing) is twice the amount of money the other one is (project is in a field I do plan on pursuing for now). Both institutions are very prestigious within their fields. Any comments or advice? Sorry for the vagueness, rather keep it anonymous for now.

How is your financial situation is the real question?

 

[SurfingDoctor]

Basically one fellowship (the project is in a specialty I don't plan on pursuing) is twice the amount of money the other one is (project is in a field I do plan on pursuing for now). Both institutions are very prestigious within their fields. Any comments or advice? Sorry for the vagueness, rather keep it anonymous for now.

Why would anyone pick something they don't want to do, in a field they don't want to pursue, that likely won't help them as much for more money over something that is the opposite?

Are you talking life changing sums of money here?

 

[phuynh94]

I took a paid research fellowship in a specialty I had no interest in pursuing (and disclosed this to PI) over an unpaid opportunity in a field I planned on applying into.

Reasons:

• I needed to support my COL that year, since I would lose my "student" status and thus lose access to federal student loans.
• There was an aspect of the paid fellowship that interested me, and something I hoped to integrate into my desired specialty.

It ended up working well. I had a productive fellowship year, did a couple of side and unpaid projects in my desired specialty, and matched into my specialty of choice. I did get a lot of questions about taking a year to do something fairly different, but it worked out!