<p>So D1 is currently a senior undergraduate and just finished her honors thesis. She’s wanted to go to medical school and has been working steadily in that direction for years now. Her ug major is biochemistry.</p>
<p>One of the faculty members on her review panel told her her thesis was the best he’d seen in a long time and that going to med school was an obvious waste of research talent. He is encouraging her to pursue a Ph.D in biochem instead of practicing medicine. Knowing how difficult being admitted to an allopathic med school can be, D1 has planned to stay with research if she cannot get into med school. Other faculty members of her review panel have reinforced this statement with offers of positions in their labs once she enters grad school.</p>
<p>Comments? I’d like to hear from those who’ve been in a similar circumstance. Is D1 focusing on the wrong thing?</p>
<p>Your daughter should be focusing on what she wants to do, not on what she can do straight out of undergrad. Of course professors will tell her not to go into medicine. After all, who wants to lose a perfectly good future colleague to a higher paying field?</p>
<p>And really, while it is hard to get into MD programs, it’s not like it’s impossible. Plenty of people do it, and if your daughter is good enough to get that kind of praise from her professors, then she’s good enough for at least one MD program. There are plenty of backdoors to go through if the front door refuses to open.</p>
<p>And there’s always the dreaded DO option…DUH DUH DUH! :)</p>
<p>Congratulations to your D! What great kudos from her profs.</p>
<p>I have a young (well, no longer all that young) friend who was pre-med at Harvard, graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude. He was very eager to do medical research; But when push came to shove, he went for the MD degree, because he felt there was more money to be had in practicing medicine than in doing medical research. Fast forward ten years after starting his career as a OB-GYN, he’s decided to drastically curtail his hours to spend more time with his kids but also because he is frustrated with the red tape. </p>
<p>Another consideration: Ph.D. students tend to be supported financially; not so medical students, from what I know. </p>
<p>EDIT: If she is interested in allopathic programs, there are quite a lot of doctors at the Harvard teaching hospitals who are involved in these programs.</p>
<p>Yes, my child had a similar situation, as well as a good job offer from a previous internship. It was agonizing making the decision. He was admitted to an excellent and prestigious grad program and decided to at least get his Master degree and then consider med school. He is hesitant about the length of time med school involves, as he wants to be something like a neurosurgeon or orthopoedic surgeon, which involve long residencies. He will reassess in one year after completing the Master’s.</p>
<p>Well, unless she is at Harvard, no self respecting professor encourages a student to be a grad at their undergrad school. I.e., it better be the best school in the field. </p>
<p>I don’t know that that’s really true. I know plenty of Berkeley and UCLA grads who did just fine at the same schools. I think that academic incest is more common than people let on.</p>
<p>I think she should get a good look at what it’s like to be an MD today because it’s anything but easy money and short hours. Your heart really should be in it for you will be one of many unhappy MDs. In what other field do you work so long and hard for the degree in return for mediocre pay and bad hours?</p>
<p>To become an academic researcher, one usually must spend 5 or more years working very hard as a graduate student followed by several years of low paid postdoctoral work. After that, it is very difficult to obtain a tenure track position and one is under constant pressure to publish and to obtain funding through grants. It is a very difficult career path, so I would not choose it as a default because becoming a physician is hard and has “mediocre pay and bad hours”.</p>
<p>Ari, when you figure out your hourly pay, it’s mediocre in the eyes of most of my 50 something year old MD friends. It is less money that most all of them could have made doing something else that comes with more perks at our age. Our college roomates are all more financially secure.</p>
<p>I love being a doctor, but the reality is it is not the high pay and comfortable life that many perceive for many MDs.</p>
<p>I agree that on an hourly basis, it’s not going to make you rich. But “mediocre” is also a bit of an overstatement. I bet there are many PhDs who’d love to get the kind of money that MDs get. Of course, there are MDs who’d love to get what people in bigmoney firms are getting.</p>
<p>But in the end, doctors are doing a lot better than most. Of course, we can get into opportunity cost and the loans, but then we have all sorts of complicated variables to take care of…</p>
<p>I actually had a similar situation many years ago. Professors encouraged me to get a Ph.D., which I did. Things have worked out well, but my guess now is that things would have worked out even better if I had taken the time to listen more to myself and less to my professors.</p>
<p>(I’m a second-year PhD student in developmental neurobiology.)</p>
<p>I wouldn’t advise anyone to go to a PhD program in biology as a backup plan. It’s not a great idea to go to a PhD program in anything unless you absolutely can’t live without doing it – a PhD is a tough row to hoe, and you have to really want to do it to get through it without losing your sanity.</p>
<p>If she really wants to go to med school and doesn’t get in this year, I would advise that she take a one- or two-year technician position in a laboratory that interests her. At the end of a year or two, she’ll know whether she wants to pursue a PhD path or an MD path.</p>
<p>parent2noles - what sort of career does your D want? If she wants to practice medicine then the choice is clear –> M.D.</p>
<p>But if she wants to do research then the question becomes what sort of of research? If she wants to do hardcore biochemistry, say isolating new enzymes and figuring out their kinetics for example, then a Ph.D. is the way to go. But if she wants to do largely medical research, involving patients, then she’d be better off with an M.D. degree, or ideally with both (there are a lot of MD/PhD programs around).</p>
<p>She can have a career doing medical research with a Ph.D., but it will be harder to get grants funded, and it will be harder to be respected by the MDs too. I know it only too well. I’ve been doing medical research with a Ph.D. degree in an MD-dominated field for most of my career.</p>
<p>Actually, my friends and I have our Big Chill moments when we talk about what we might have done. I’m being honest in saying my MD friends are acknowledged in our group to work the hardest for the least among professionals.</p>