MD Research Requirements for MSTP Students

[babykarat]

From looking into different MSTPs I've noticed that some MD programs either require or encourage research and/or writing a thesis (e.g. Yale, Harvard, UCSF Distinction program). Does anyone know if these requirements also apply to MSTP students? Do MSTP students use the MD thesis to do more clinical than basic research?

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[Seihai]

From the programs I've seen, most will have the PhD portion of your MD-PhD satisfy your "thesis" or "scholarly" requirement on the MD side, since it would often be redundant otherwise.

 

[Lucca]

From the programs I've seen, most will have the PhD portion of your MD-PhD satisfy your "thesis" or "scholarly" requirement on the MD side, since it would often be redundant otherwise.

Yah it has been my experience that the PhD just overrides all of those requirements.

 

[Fluorescentboy]

Yah it has been my experience that the PhD just overrides all of those requirements.

That's interesting, so at a place like Duke, if all goes right, you could do a 6 year MD/PhD.

Doubt it happens often if ever.

 

[Seihai]

That's interesting, so at a place like Duke, if all goes right, you could do a 6 year MD/PhD.

Doubt it happens often if ever.

According to Stanford's website, apparently their students take 6 or 8 years (Frequently Asked Questions), so it does seem possible to do a 6-year MD-PhD, but it probably highly depends on your PhD field.

I expect computational PhDs (like bioinformatics or computational biology) would be on the lower end of that range, though it might be boosted by the higher number of needed classes.

 

[Fluorescentboy]

According to Stanford's website, apparently their students take 6 or 8 years (Frequently Asked Questions), so it does seem possible to do a 6-year MD-PhD, but it probably highly depends on your PhD field.

I expect computational PhDs (like bioinformatics or computational biology) would be on the lower end of that range, though it might be boosted by the higher number of needed classes.

I mean even if you take 0-2 classes a lot of stuff has to go right for a three year PhD. It happens but not something you can exactly force or plan for.

I think it also depends on your background, some people start where they left off which is way different than pivoting to a new field.

 

[Lucca]

That's interesting, so at a place like Duke, if all goes right, you could do a 6 year MD/PhD.

Doubt it happens often if ever.

It does happen at some places but yah obviously it depends mostly on how the PhD goes and the nature of the work. Ask for the average graduation time from PDs when you are interviewing. If they don’t know or won’t tell you then run away as fast as you can. Most will show you a graph during one of the interview days as this is a pretty FAQ. The Avgs do range from 7-8.5 yrs.

 

[Fencer]

Unfortunately, the national MD/PhD average (from 2 years ago) from graduating students (real not reported data) was close to 8.6 years. My programs data has been at 7.91 years (last >20 graduates) with 31% finishing at 7 years.

 

[Seihai]

Unfortunately, the national MD/PhD average (from 2 years ago) from graduating students (real not reported data) was close to 8.6 years. My programs data has been at 7.91 years (last >20 graduates) with 31% finishing at 7 years.

I'm curious - do you have statistics/distributions on what PhDs are awarded, and if there's an average graduation breakdown for each of those PhDs? I'm really interested to see if there are in fact certain PhDs that lead to longer research years versus shorter research years, or if the distribution is basically uniform across subject, since there appear to be mitigating factors for many PhDs that bring them all closer to the average.

 

[Fluorescentboy]

I'm curious - do you have statistics/distributions on what PhDs are awarded, and if there's an average graduation breakdown for each of those PhDs? I'm really interested to see if there are in fact certain PhDs that lead to longer research years versus shorter research years, or if the distribution is basically uniform across subject, since there appear to be mitigating factors for many PhDs that bring them all closer to the average.

I don't know the distribution but I think you're right. Part of it I would imagine is how many courses the program is willing to waive. Some graduate programs will waive most or all, some will have you taking just as many classes as a normal student.

If you end up only taking a semester or two or light courses it could easily mean hundreds of more hours in the lab vs taking a full courseload.

Probably also depends on the project, something like developing a mouse model could take a long time vs using something more established.

 

[Fencer]

No. It was a dataset that only had matriculation and graduation dates reported to AAMC. Clearly a mouse model experiment will take longer than a drosophila model, or computational analysis of metadata. In science, you also get lucky, throw the dice with your experiments, and rarely produce a high quality research manuscript. When you evaluate a lab with a track record, you see how quickly the students graduate and what their productivity is.