Medical What is the criteria for MD/PhD?

[Goro]

I hope to apply next cycle and my interest is in medical research. Right now I have 750+ hours working in a cognitive studies lab with one publishing credit and probably at least one more before I apply. I also have the traditional MD clinical volunteering (250+ hours) and general volunteering, some with and some without using my EMT training (400+). Working on shadowing, tough during COVID. Stats are 3.8 GPA, 3.7 SGPA (highly ranked pre-med private school) with a 519 MCAT. Are there any distinguishing characteristics that MD/PhD programs are searching for in applicants beyond the traditional MD criteria that I should explore? Also any suggestions on target schools would be welcome. Any advice you have is great as I don't know who's taken this path.Thank you in advance, I really appreciate it.

My understanding is that they look for superstars with evidence of research productivity.

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[TheBoneDoctah]

Gotta have research production. Pubs, conferences, etc.

 

[AlteredScale]

You need to show a commitment to research. The MD PhD is focused on building physician scientists who want to thrive in a career in research as supposed to clinic medicine.

You don't need top tier, high IF papers to be considered. But for top tiers MSTP programs you will definitely need a very very strong application.

Focus on programs offering MSTP which will provide funding for room and board through the entirety of your training.

Make sure you research the labs available at each program and that they have an area that you are interested in.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Agreeing with the above, but I also want to know why you want to be a physician-scientist. You can be a scientist, you can be a physician doing research. Why MD/PhD? What do you expect from a strong mentor/PI? This track is meant to help train leaders in academic medicine, so how will you ultimately seek insight into becoming a dean, or a CEO of a pharma company, etc.?

 

[lord999]

I don't necessarily think you have to be a superstar in the undergraduate for the top schools, but you do have to have a sustained and productive commitment. This is field dependent. Productive means a regular set of presentations, abstracts, and possibly a paper or two (whether it has to be first/last authored is very dependent on the field, in many fields, that is simply not possible). You also have to qualify for the regular prerequisites for the PhD that you are in, and depending on the school you go to, that may require some graduate classes before application. It helps if your lab PI has a relationship with NIH GPP or NIGMS to help guide you through that process.

At least in a couple of fields with formal T32 Institutional programs, there are internal specifics that you need to be aware of before applying. If you field of study happens to be at an institution with a running T32 for that subject, you probably want to figure out what the baseline requirements are.

Cognitive Studies either falls in NIMH or Neuroscience territory, so there is a fairly established standard for what the PhD route would take if you kept at that for the MD/PhD. It's too broad a field to give specific school advice without knowing particulars.