MDPhDs.org Site Blog

Medical students and MD/PhD applicants have likely heard the rumors: the USMLE program sequence will be changing.  This news quickly draws the attention of those starting down the regimen of a MD/PhD program.  Most MD/PhD students currently take 2 years of medical school basic science and the USMLE step 1 exam before heading down the PhD road.  So, what changes are planned and how will these mandates change the order of the MD/PhD program as we know it?

First, the United States Medical Licensing Examination board (USMLE) has been holding hearings and writing the new principles that will guide a new exam structure since 2005.  The process is slow and the future changes still need to be defined, communicated with and approved by medical schools, state medical boards, and national medical boards.  In short, we don’t know the exact language of the changes, but we can guess what the

When will the changes happen?  The earliest year the exam would be affected would be 2011.  The USMLE board expressed the importance of providing a grace period to allow for students who have passed Step 1 to take Step 2.  This means that whatever system is in place when you begin your program, that’s the program that you’ll follow thanks to likely grandfathering clauses.

What’s changing? The full statement of principles are outlined on the USMLE website.  It’s important to note a couple things: clinical skills and basic science knowledge will be tested at the same time, so MSTP students will need some of the third year curriculum to take the test.  And they’ll need to take the exam at least 9 months before they plan to start their residency program.

One change will surely drive changes in the medical school curriculum, and favor MD PhD students.  The board’s recommendations stated:

CEUP [board] recommends that USMLE emphasize the importance of the scientific foundations of medicine in all components of the assessment process. The assessment of these foundations should occur within a clinical context or framework, to the greatest extent possible.

The hope is that this new emphasis on the exam will change the way that physicians are trained–to think more like scientists!

Read the principles of the new changes http://www.usmle.org/General_Information/review.html

The AMCAS essays a huge part of your MD PhD application, and ties together your application. As I researched the previous post, I came across a number of professional services that sought to help medical school applicants write their personal statement for a fee. As a high school student, I received some essay advice from a college counselor, but I was very unsatisfied with the service. The counselor she really didn’t like my essay; however, I made no changes, and got in to my first choice school.

A follow up to the previous post, I wanted how often MD/PhD applicants receive professional essay help–beyond their professors and science colleagues.

Is it effective to seek advice from professional essay/admissions counselors? Fee-for-service arrangements create an access issue: is this fair?  The extent of editing suggestions that some counselors offer border on co-authorship: is this ethical and should AMCAS require disclosures?

For example, a testimonial on theessaydoctor.com suggests that these fee-for-service arrangements have a significant impact on the final wording of the essay:

My professional editor really improved my essay. She made corrections, deletions and included new wording and phrasing that helped me better express my career goals. Being able to communicate with my editor by email to ask further questions was very important. I really think that using your service was invaluable and it helped me achieve my dreams! I can’t believe I am actually an MD/PhD student now!”

- Accepted to the Rutgers University MD/PhD Program and University of Michigan Medical School.

We’re interested in your experiences and thoughts.

Other services:
http://www.theessaydoctor.com/testimonials.php
http://www.statementsofpurpose.com/
http://www.echeat.com/essay.php?t=25900
http://www.essayedge.com/promo/samplework.shtml

If you’re a 2009 MD/PhD applicant, you’re probably well on your way to completing your AMCAS primary application.  Most students submit their applications between the beginning of July and the middle of August (at the very latest). The value of an early start cannot be understated–especially for Texas and east coast schools.

1. Review the objectives for each essay, seek clarification from individual programs, and review example essays.

I found a book on the MD Personal statement mostly unhelpful. I tried the book Medical School Essays That Made a Difference but it didn’t help much. It included many essays that clearly made a negative differences, as the essays authors were rejected by most schools they applied to; in short, these essays were no better than a random assortment of essays. I finally got the ball rolling when I gave up on external inspiration and took a more introspective approach.

2. Start with the Personal Statement. Begin outlining your personal statement, determine how you are going to represent yourself and what angle you are taking. Writing about yourself can be difficult (it took me nearly a month to draft my personal statement), and establishing your narrative and voice can take several iterations–why do you really want to do this? The personal statement should stand on its own and clearly explain your interest in medical school (MD only).

3. Build on your personal statement with the Why MD PhD and research essays. In addition to a personal statement, MD PhD applicants are required to write a short “Why MD PhD statement” and a 10,000 character research statement (~4 pages). The best thing you can do is have these two essays reviewed by your laboratory PI and the post-docs you work around.  While it may be frightening to open yourself up for criticism, they will be able to help you establish clarity more so than most of your peers and people outside the field. In the “Why MD/PhD essay” will be required to carefully bridge the dichotomy between degrees many times over throughout the application process. See the Intransit.us guide for more thoughts on this.

Excellent Resources

• A Personal Statement Handout from the Office of Pre-Professional Programs and Advising of an unknown college (I’d love to be able to credit the original source).
• General Medical School Personal Statement advice from Yahoo/Peterson’s.com
• Helpful tips from Studentdoctor.net
• Jot’s Intransit.us MD PhD application guidbook

We’ve rolled out a news feature that I think many of you will really like.  Modeled on the popular social news site, Digg.com, we’ve installed an open source news application.  I’ve put a few articles up to get things started.  Please register a user name and start an account and start contributing.  I think this offers some advantages over a bulletin board.  Plus, you can subscribe to updates with an RSS feed.  You’ll need to register in order to vote for good stories (SPAM has been a problem).  We especially hope that users will link to new updates on school/program websites as waiting lists progress, as new interview status check pages, etc.

The article categories include Admissions Residency & Postdoc MD PhD Training Programs Science / Discoveries Research Funding.

We hope you find this a useful feature.  As usual, send us feedback and leave comments here on this blog.

-B

Like a garden, a website needs updating and routine maintainence.  I’ve joined the MDPhds.org crew to help make a few updates to the site.  I appreciate Jot’s invitation to pitch in and continue the site.  The ongoing changes are  cosmetic, functional, and will bring new features to the MD/PhD community.  We want to focus on improving the transpearancy of the applications process and have some tools in mind to help you out.

Effective immediately, we’re accepting new program reviews, an important part of the site.  We hope to hear not only from those on the interview trail, but students who have experienced the site first hand.  Jot and Linda had a few guidelines that are important to keep in mind.  Fairness and a sense of journalistic integrity are important on the site.  Reviews will remain anonymous, however, we will indicate whether the reviewer has authenticated through the site.  The review structure/interface will change eventually, but that’s for a later post.  Email us or comment on this blog if you need help.

I’m developing some new tools and am excited about the new features that we’re rolling out.  Hopefully they will come to fruition before school starts–and between some travel and work in my summer vegetable garden.

-B

Before migrating to mdphds.org, the former intransit.us site had 50,000
visitors from 95 countries in its three years.  83.93% of visitors were from
North America.

Some sample inquiries that brought people to this site via various search
engines, aside from specific school names, are as follows:

- how much does an md/phd make
- on being and becoming a physician-scientist
- how long does it take to complete md/phd program
- clinical lab scientist training programs
- best md phd programs

We look forward to addressing some of these questions and having more people
learn from this new site.  Please donate if at all possible, so we can
continue to maintain this server space.

Hi everyone,

Currently working on updating the site and revamping various sections.

Be done soon!

~Linda