Online Master's Degrees

[distressedpremed]

Hey guys,

I'm currently looking for any advice or suggestions into online masters degrees. 

I don't think that I'll be able to take a year off to do research in my program and I think that I'll have to do concurrently with residency. I'll most likely be self-funded as well. 

Does anyone have any suggestions on any particular masters degrees that people have completed during residency that were online? 

Thanks! 

[Bluberblubo]

I've actually been thinking about doing this as well, but then someone I spoke to asked me "why" I wanted to do a masters degree? Is it for the sake of doing another degree or do I actually want to do something with the degree i.e. masters in education because you want to work in an academic centre vs mba because you want to do management stuff etc. 

Definitely something to think about before you go ahead and do one, because it obviously will take a lot of time and money. Also, would be worthwhile to know what your program is. Not to talk down on some programs, but realistically you will have more time to do masters in path/psych/family vs general surg/internal etc 

Really what you should decide is why you want a degree first and then you can go ahead and do one if it will help you achieve your goals

[NeuroD]

4 minutes ago, skyuppercutt said:

I've actually been thinking about doing this as well, but then someone I spoke to asked me "why" I wanted to do a masters degree? Is it for the sake of doing another degree or do I actually want to do something with the degree i.e. masters in education because you want to work in an academic centre vs mba because you want to do management stuff etc. 

Definitely something to think about before you go ahead and do one, because it obviously will take a lot of time and money. Also, would be worthwhile to know what your program is. Not to talk down on some programs, but realistically you will have more time to do masters in path/psych/family vs general surg/internal etc 

Really what you should decide is why you want a degree first and then you can go ahead and do one if it will help you achieve your goals

Agreed. Too many people are getting too many degrees for no reason. Lots of opportunity cost without much benefit. I'm not say that's you, but make sure it isn't. You can achieve so much of what a degree gets you, without the stamp from the school. If you need the stamp to move up in your career, that's one thing. If it's just to pursue an interest/develop a competency, rethink it.

[NLengr]

3 hours ago, PhD2MD said:

Agreed. Too many people are getting too many degrees for no reason. Lots of opportunity cost without much benefit. I'm not say that's you, but make sure it isn't. You can achieve so much of what a degree gets you, without the stamp from the school. If you need the stamp to move up in your career, that's one thing. If it's just to pursue an interest/develop a competency, rethink it.

Lots of people are getting masters because most academic centers are demanding you have them, even if they are completely unrelated to practice and you will never use them in your career.

People get them to check a box. It's typical university non sensical BS. 

[distressedpremed]

I'm partially interested in statistics and data analysis (I did some when I was working in research) and I would like to have a larger skillset in the area. 

It is also in case I need to apply for academic center positions in the future. 

Paging @rmorelan on any thoughts? 

[rmorelan]

2 minutes ago, distressedpremed said:

I'm partially interested in statistics and data analysis (I did some when I was working in research) and I would like to have a larger skillset in the area. 

It is also in case I need to apply for academic center positions in the future. 

Paging @rmorelan on any thoughts? 

and you want to do this online without extending the duration of your residency? 

you are basically saying you want a degree in epidemiology or public health which is a common and not a bad choice at all. Covers exactly the topics you are mentioning - and often those can be a combination of both a thesis (basically the research you were doing to do as a resident anyway) and some course work. 

If done as a part of the clinical scientist stream they are often fully funded - possible at the expense of a  year do parts of it. If you don't want to do that often you can fit it into a residency program still in various ways with program support. 

how important is this degree to you? How much would you spend - many people do a similar online degree as staff at come big places to boost their CV etc. There are many programs out there to support such moves as a result. 

Another type of degree is a Masters of Education - of which there are several options as well (not what you are asking about but in general a common online degree)

[distressedpremed]

13 minutes ago, rmorelan said:

and you want to do this online without extending the duration of your residency? 

you are basically saying you want a degree in epidemiology or public health which is a common and not a bad choice at all. Covers exactly the topics you are mentioning - and often those can be a combination of both a thesis (basically the research you were doing to do as a resident anyway) and some course work. 

If done as a part of the clinical scientist stream they are often fully funded - possible at the expense of a  year do parts of it. If you don't want to do that often you can fit it into a residency program still in various ways with program support. 

how important is this degree to you? How much would you spend - many people do a similar online degree as staff at come big places to boost their CV etc. There are many programs out there to support such moves as a result. 

Another type of degree is a Masters of Education - of which there are several options as well (not what you are asking about but in general a common online degree)

Hey R - thanks for commenting. I want to do this online because I'm in a small program and just bringing this up with my coresidents means that there will be more call for everyone when I'm not there. I'm probably not at a stage yet where I want to do that, hence the lean towards concurrent degrees without taking time off. 

For instance, some data science masters even from EDx https://www.edx.org/masters/online-master-data-science-uc-san-diego#curriculum  I've been looking into. 

I think it's important because I want to have some personal "branding" or better skills for academic positions in the future. I think that I'm happy doing data entry and some basic analysis, but it'll be nice to work in consultation with data scientists and statisticians where you can speak the same language or even run similar analysis (or in some cases, be able to do it yourself). 

[rmorelan]

6 minutes ago, distressedpremed said:

Hey R - thanks for commenting. I want to do this online because I'm in a small program and just bringing this up with my coresidents means that there will be more call for everyone when I'm not there. I'm probably not at a stage yet where I want to do that, hence the lean towards concurrent degrees without taking time off. 

For instance, some data science masters even from EDx https://www.edx.org/masters/online-master-data-science-uc-san-diego#curriculum  I've been looking into. 

I think it's important because I want to have some personal "branding" or better skills for academic positions in the future. I think that I'm happy doing data entry and some basic analysis, but it'll be nice to work in consultation with data scientists and statisticians where you can speak the same language or even run similar analysis (or in some cases, be able to do it yourself). 

sure - although I will point out purely for discussion purposes that often you can still do call during such training years anyway so there isn't necessarily an impact on the call schedule (and since you end up doing the same total amount of call in the end it doesn't hurt you either - this is all just something that is worked out basically). I don't know your particular situation mind you but always try to expand the possibilities to their limits so any decision is made with all things explored

Data scientist would be another variation on the same thing - really often not much difference between masters in epidemiology, public health, data science or applied statistics. 

One area you didn't mention is that someone with that background also makes a good reviewer of papers - which leads to editorship and so on academics - obviously useful ha. 

There are a ton of similar programs - I have an option of doing Harvard's MPH in epidemiology (it is highly subsidized for me which is good because it is nasty expensive ha). There are a bunch of these out there to chose from and we can try to explore them all as well. 

First I will say the key I will say is not just the degree - it is finding a large data source related your specialty that you can use to practice the various things you are learning and build them up to a thesis which is applying that data in a practical clinical way - that way you yes get the degree but equally importantly you get a string of quality publications out of it as well and things merge together. You also then are the master of a particular important dataset - which greatly improves your chances of getting hired at the place you are doing your residency in particularly - you use that data set over and over to pump out paper after paper, and attach yourself to anyone else using that data as well. That is the academic approach to success - ha never do one thing when you can do 3 things at the same time. You talked about branding - that is how branding is done. 

 

[distressedpremed]

44 minutes ago, rmorelan said:

sure - although I will point out purely for discussion purposes that often you can still do call during such training years anyway so there isn't necessarily an impact on the call schedule (and since you end up doing the same total amount of call in the end it doesn't hurt you either - this is all just something that is worked out basically). I don't know your particular situation mind you but always try to expand the possibilities to their limits so any decision is made with all things explored

Data scientist would be another variation on the same thing - really often not much difference between masters in epidemiology, public health, data science or applied statistics. 

One area you didn't mention is that someone with that background also makes a good reviewer of papers - which leads to editorship and so on academics - obviously useful ha. 

There are a ton of similar programs - I have an option of doing Harvard's MPH in epidemiology (it is highly subsidized for me which is good because it is nasty expensive ha). There are a bunch of these out there to chose from and we can try to explore them all as well. 

First I will say the key I will say is not just the degree - it is finding a large data source related your specialty that you can use to practice the various things you are learning and build them up to a thesis which is applying that data in a practical clinical way - that way you yes get the degree but equally importantly you get a string of quality publications out of it as well and things merge together. You also then are the master of a particular important dataset - which greatly improves your chances of getting hired at the place you are doing your residency in particularly - you use that data set over and over to pump out paper after paper, and attach yourself to anyone else using that data as well. That is the academic approach to success - ha never do one thing when you can do 3 things at the same time. You talked about branding - that is how branding is done. 

 

Completely agree especially with the last paragraph, R. Thanks for the mentorship. Now it's just more about getting started and making sure I have the financial resources to back it up as well. 

[NLengr]

On 10/13/2018 at 11:48 PM, rmorelan said:

You also then are the master of a particular important dataset - which greatly improves your chances of getting hired at the place you are doing your residency in particularly - you use that data set over and over to pump out paper after paper, and attach yourself to anyone else using that data as well. That is the academic approach to success - ha never do one thing when you can do 3 things at the same time. You talked about branding - that is how branding is done. 

 

Oh academia. Such BS. Hahaha

Can't surgerize worth a God damn, but I can work a data set like an SOB.  

[Edict]

On 10/13/2018 at 9:35 PM, distressedpremed said:

I'm partially interested in statistics and data analysis (I did some when I was working in research) and I would like to have a larger skillset in the area. 

It is also in case I need to apply for academic center positions in the future. 

Paging @rmorelan on any thoughts? 

If you are willing to do it part time or distance learning Harvard offers some great MPHs that can be done that way. 

[JCM857]

@rmorelan how did you manage to get funding for the Harvard MPH?