First of all, impressive credentials. I wish I had a stronger background myself in CompSci. Somewhere up there, I advocated for it being a track as opposed to an entire class. I can see how it can be a track but to recruit 32 individuals and have enough resources to mentor them through all of this seems like a lot. Also, working on these sorts of projects will not facilitate or go hand-in-hand with the learning of medical material so I'm really doubting the term "engineering-based curriculum" if that's what this truly is. You compared this to research, but then there are tracks for that and those require quite a few years outside of medical school. I just read about the HST program and while the MD program is 4 years, what about the time it'll take to earn that PhD they're talking about. That's hardly the same as a program that is looking to have medical students take on some substantial scholarly programming work in addition to their normal responsibilities. I mentioned teaching programming because I don't know how they're going to screen for all the competencies (MatLab, C++, R, etc. proficiency). I have friends in software engineering and while they describe their jobs as chill, they also admit that if you're incompetent, you'll be fired quickly and these skills aren't necessarily something you can pick up on the fly which necessitates interviews that test very specific coding problem solving-skills. Unless they perfectly recruit students, then there's going to have to be some teaching involved, in addition to the 4 years of medical curriculum. This is all just my opinion and I don't have a strong background in all of this so maybe I'm missing something. Also, sorry if I voiced my opinions strongly, congratulations on your two interviews, and best of luck moving forward. I really do hope you succeed and am very jealous.
Thanks for the congratulations. Harvard's HST MD track isn't a MSTP program and doesn't give you a PhD, it confers only an MD and is traditionally four years, just like all other MD programs. As with most other research-centric MD programs, a decent number of people opt to pursue a PhD as well (7-8 years total) but this is separate and was not what I applied for (I applied exclusively to MD-only programs). Completing the four-year MD program without a PhD still requires writing a thesis and doing substantial research as part of the curriculum itself.
I wasn't comparing the Carle Illinois program to 7-8 year MSTP MD/PhD programs, but to the large number of 4-year MD programs that have a mandatory research thesis requirement (such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Duke, and countless others). In all these programs, the required research component makes up a substantial part of the medical education and
is undertaken in addition to normal responsibilities as part of the 4-year MD. In many of them, you can essentially do the same type of engineering-centric research projects that Carle Illinois chooses to focus on too, yet no one seems to see this as out of the ordinary. The only real difference appears to be Carle Illinois' focus specifically on CS/Engineering-based projects rather than it only forming one of the research options you can choose during your MD, which makes sense given their affiliation with one of the best CS/Engineering schools in the country (UIUC). For comparison, here's
Duke's MD curriculum (where an
entire year in the 4-year program is blocked out for research), and here's
Stanford's MD curriculum, where substantial research is expected to be performed continuously through all four years (alongside
requiring considerable coursework in engineering if you choose bioengineering as your concentration). Both include options to do work identical to what Carle Illinois chooses to focus on, as do many others.
I don't think screening is going to be that big of an issue. After all, you're have to show them directly on your application that you've worked extensively on CS/engineering-centric projects (and likely, they'll probably look for students who have degrees in engineering or CS too). Their requirements page specifically lists "programming" under "suggested experience" rather than a hard requirement, likely because its an inherent part of coming from the type of background that they're looking for. Like the other MD programs that involve CS/engineering, the program doesn't seem to be going after pre-meds with no experience in CS/engineering and training them in CS/engineering, but rather seeking pre-meds who
already have a strong background in CS/Engineering like several other programs do. Even if its a less popular option than the typical bio/chem major choice, this isn't a group that doesn't exist - I mean, i'm one of them, and so are many of the other people who have posted in this thread. It's not like we didn't have to do OChem, Bio, Chem and everything else either - we sat the MCAT and took all the standard pre-reqs like everyone else, its just that what we focused on during our degree (and likewise, the research we opted to undertake) was different.
