Wash U acceptances question

[adesua]

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I know Wash U sends rejections through out the interview season. Do they also send acceptances through out the interview season. I know their interview offers are rolling but I don't know if their acceptances are rolling as well.
Is there any advantage to interviewing earlier rather than later?

Thanks

 

[astrisize]

Wash U does send out rolling acceptances. A week (just one week!!!) after your interview, they call to let you know if the MSTP is accepting you or not - if yes, then they recommend you for admission to the med school. After that, it's up to the med school. The med school can still technically say no to your admission but they say that your application is about 98% sure after MSTP acceptance. Because Wash U has a great deal of funding, even though there are rolling admissions, there is theoretically no advantage to interviewing earlier vs. later. If they think you're a fit for the program, they accept you. If they don't, they deny admission. They shoot for a class size of 25 but have the funding for more if need be.

Good luck on your interview!

 

[Ahmad04]

Hey, this has absolutely nothing to do with this thread but still, it's kind of cool:

More than 50 new faculty positions will be established as BioMed 21 develops. These new positions will enable the University to recruit or promote faculty who will be successful in competing for outside research funding and philanthropic support. Additionally, the career-development professorships for young faculty committed to BioMed 21, as well as financial support for an additional 50 students earning their Ph.D. or combined M.D./Ph.D. degrees, will assure that BioMed 21 energizes faculty and students at every level of career development.

http://mednews.wustl.edu/medadmin/P...8fb25f5f1ad885f886256de100651f48?OpenDocument

A good 50 new spots for phd or md/phd after their new bldg. is made.

 

[noy]

Also note 50 new faculty. Incredible...

 

[Neuronix]

Just to put things into perspective, every big name school is building new buildings and every school is expanding. Penn for example is currently purchasing 25 acres next to Center City which is earmarked primarily for biomed research. We should expect at least one large new building out of that, but it won't be by 2005. I think that will be more like 2010.

 

[Treg]

You may be surprised to see that despite our socialized health care system, the gov't in Canada still readily provides funds for medical research. Here in Edmonton, there are two major new buildings under construction right outside my window. They should be complete by 2006 and will provide space for over 100 new health researchers (I hope that one of them will be me, once I am done with the MD/PhD in 2008).

Specifically, the Diabetes Institute will be world class.



www.med.ualberta.ca/news-publications/news.cfm

 

[Neuronix]

Now how about a fully-funded MD/PhD program? Or even better, a Canadian equivalent of the MSTP?

 

[Treg]

What we have here is the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR), which is a gov't fund from oil $$. If you get into MD/PhD, you get 6 years of $24,000/yr + $1500/yr supply allowance. You cannot get your scholarship during the first two years of medicine, but you get a tuition break resulting in tuition of $6500/yr (all dollar amounts are canadian). So in all, you get $144,000 - 26,000=$118,000. Not bad, in my opinion. Also, while you are in your grad school portion, you can apply for additional fellowships, such as CIHR, and AHFMR will top up your award up to $7,000. Finally, CIHR has a special graduate scholarship starting this fall that will fund several grad students to the tune of $35,000/yr. Can you believe that???

I am just curious, what is the typical MSTP stipend? I know that typical grad school stipends in the US back when I was looking are around $16,000-20,000.

😉

Treg

 

[coldchemist]

University of Pittsburgh is around $18,000 per year. I've heard that other programs go as high as $25,000 per year. There is also variation within programs, depending on the student's year.

 

[Neuronix]

MSTPs have full tuition and fee waivers for all years of study plus a stipend of between $18,500 and $25,000/yr. This is my definition for a "fully-funded" program. To the chagrin of some, I am not aware of any such programs in Osteopathy or Canada that match this level of support. Penn's stipend this year is $23,000, however it will be going up to $25,000 next year. If you assume $38,000/yr for medical school tuition/fees, that's around $350,000US invested per student. This also does not take into account that American money is more valuable than Canadian money.

Here you can also apply for a number of different fellowships and training grants that may net you a significant amount of money above your stipend. However, the exact amount you will see in your pocket depends on the graduate program and fellowship in question.

The AHFMR is similar to programs that are partially-funded here in the states. On top of the 33 MSTPs and the other programs that are fully-funded, we have a number of programs that are similar to the AHFMR in that they provide funding for grad school and the last two years of med school. Nevertheless, I wonder if that is only open to residents of or students in Alberta? In any case, I think it would be unfortunate to have to apply for money once in a program to survive. Sure, it looks good on your application, but it's certainly not necessary to do here.

In the end, my point is that it seems unfortunate that Canada is not putting nearly the same amount of investment into their students that the USA is putting into theirs. Of course there are still options in Canada for pursing the MD/PhD, but they aren't as attractive or numerous. I wonder if this will hurt research there far into the future.

 

[Treg]

I completely agree with you that Canada should have more fully funded programs, and as far as I can tell, none of the Canadian universities do it. I think that the difference is that the government subsidizes med school in general, resulting in a much lower tuition for all students, even than most US state schools. I guess that they view it as a better investment into the socialized health care system. The main benefit that I see here is that you have a lot of flexibility in how you obtain the combined degrees. You can do the traditional 2 yrs MD/3 yrs PhD/2 yrs MD, or you can enter from grad school (like me) after 1, 2, or 3 years of the PhD, finishing up later on. Alberta is especially unique in that you can do your grad studies portion at any university in the world as part of the MD/PhD.

I am American and considered both countries carefully for their respective programs. In the end, I opted for Canada for personal reasons, and it has been really interesting to see how the two countries compare.

Boy we have degenerated this thread-😀 😀

Treg

 

[ImmunoANT]

Originally posted by Neuronix


Here you can also apply for a number of different fellowships and training grants that may net you a significant amount of money above your stipend. However, the exact amount you will see in your pocket depends on the graduate program and fellowship in question.

Hi Neuronix, could you please elaborate a bit more on what other fellowships and grants available to MSTP trainees? Thank you very much. 🙂 🙂 🙂

- ImmunoANT

 

[Neuronix]

MSTP students are exempt from most (all?) of the public fellowships and HHMI money floating around because they know we're already getting alot of funding. However, I know MSTP students who have successfully obtained private funding. I can't remember the exact sources of money now, but I know there's been threads on this on the past. Maybe someone can help me out with specific examples.