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Anyone considering this or in a program now? What are your thoughts on these programs?

 

 

I wouldn't even apply until after I did my Master's but was just thinking the last couple of days about applying to programs like this.

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I know a couple of MD/PhD's at Toronto.

 

The program is kind of weird, you start year 1 with the MD class, then you spend the next 5 years completing your PhD, then you rejoin the 2nd year class (usually, you complete your defense during "2nd year", so you have the title doctor already), and year 3 and 4 are your clerkship years as normal. It is odd to have such a long interruption though.

 

But I'm not sure how other schools do it.

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MD/PhD certainly is a difficult program, because your early medical experience gets diluted by your graduate studies. Even for people in medical school who di a straight MD find it very challenging to recall knowledge in the clinical years from their pre-clinical years.

 

However, many people are in this program, but just have to know that it is a difficult program as either MD or PhD program is difficult.

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They do have those... from what I hear, there's lots of opportunities to do a M.Sc. or a PHD one inside the MD program. I think almost every school in canada has some sort of research component available to MD students these days, if you wanted to pursue it.

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I know a couple of MD/PhD's at Toronto.

 

The program is kind of weird, you start year 1 with the MD class, then you spend the next 5 years completing your PhD, then you rejoin the 2nd year class (usually, you complete your defense during "2nd year", so you have the title doctor already), and year 3 and 4 are your clerkship years as normal. It is odd to have such a long interruption though.

 

But I'm not sure how other schools do it.

 

so the 2nd year class is actually the 7th year ? :confused:

weird indeed, but it's pretty cool to have a M.D ph.d at the end of your name though :D

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so the 2nd year class is actually the 7th year ? :confused:

weird indeed, but it's pretty cool to have a M.D ph.d at the end of your name though :D

 

AFAIK, the MD/PhD program at UT works like this:

 

Year 1 - with the rest of the first years

Year 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - working on your PhD

Year 6 - while working on your dissertation, you are also in Year 2 with the MD's

Year 7 and 8 - Clerkship

 

Some get away with working on their PhD's for only 4 years.

 

It's a long haul, but worth it for many

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shannn is largely correct.

 

See: http://www.utoronto.ca/mdphd/about.htm

 

"Students accepted into the combined program may pursue the dual degrees via either a sequential or an integrated route. In the sequential model, students with a four-year Bachelor's degree enter the medical program on a full-time basis and graduate school on a part-time basis. After completion of the basic science component of medical school (one and a half years), the student undertakes full-time graduate work until completion of the PhD. The student then returns to complete medical school.

 

For a more integrated approach, students with a four-year Bachelor's degree will enter the MD/PhD program, and within a period not exceeding six years, complete the requirements of the first two years of the MD program, and all requirements of the PhD program. During this time, opportunity for curriculum integration will be pursued on an individual basis. The student then returns to medical school to complete the clinical clerkship years three and four.

 

The MD/PhD degrees are obtained in an average of eight years. The length of graduate training is variable and depends largely on departmental requirements and the time needed to complete a dissertation. MD/PhD students are eligible for financial assistance from various sources. A limited number of MD/PhD studentships from the Canadian Institute of Health Research are available on a competitive basis which provide funding for six years, beginning in the second year of the students program. The Program also offers CIHR/Rx&D studentship awards to selected students. During the period of full time graduate study, students may be eligible for U of T Open Fellowships, OGS awards, or funding from external agencies. Supervisors may also provide stipends from operating grants to support an MD/PhD student. Stipends for third and fourth year medical school are also available for MD/PhD students."

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I think I would separately apply to medicine and do a PhD later, or vice versa, if this were something that interested me. Doing a simultaneous MD/PhD just seems confusing and complicated...

 

Edit: Also, if you're going to wait four years in between your first and second year of medicine.... the curriculum CAN significantly change in that amount of time.

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I have a friend in the MD/PhD program at UWO, he is very research oriented (MRI stuff) and will probably mostly be doing research during his career.

 

The program at UWO is 7 years, so you only have 3 to complete a PhD, but you work on your PhD during the summers of year 1 and 2 of Meds.

 

Western is pretty flexible with its program, most people do 2 med -> 3 phd -> 2 clerkship, but you can do 4 med -> 3 phd or 3 phd -> 4 med if you want to do meds as a straight shot (I think I would, I'd be worried about forgetting everything when I got to that first day of clerkship).

 

As it stands my friend and I will be in the same clerkship years, so I'll let you know in 2 years how his MD/PhD went :D

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  • 3 months later...

The length of time it takes to do a PhD depends a lot on your department and what kind of research you're doing, but from what I've seen people who have taken 6+ years either have been screwed over by their department or supervisor in numerous ways, have run into horrible problems with their research, or have a lot of family responsibilities and have to do things like work full-time outside of school to support their kids. Someone who's been working on a PhD forever is much more likely to be in a situation like that than to just be a slacker. It's just so hard to predict how much time your research is going to take. And some PhD programs still have two or three years of coursework that's mainly unrelated to your research that you have to get out of the way. Three years is reasonable if you don't have to take a ton of classes and your research goes pretty smoothly.

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  • 1 year later...
The length of time it takes to do a PhD depends a lot on your department and what kind of research you're doing, but from what I've seen people who have taken 6+ years either have been screwed over by their department or supervisor in numerous ways, have run into horrible problems with their research, or have a lot of family responsibilities and have to do things like work full-time outside of school to support their kids. Someone who's been working on a PhD forever is much more likely to be in a situation like that than to just be a slacker. It's just so hard to predict how much time your research is going to take. And some PhD programs still have two or three years of coursework that's mainly unrelated to your research that you have to get out of the way. Three years is reasonable if you don't have to take a ton of classes and your research goes pretty smoothly.

 

Just to comment, I believe most PhD's, even if things are going well and what not, take at least 4 years to complete. IMO you have to be super genius to complete it in 3 years. I know a lot of graduate students (especially PhDs in my lab) who question the rigor of the PhD component of the MD/PhD program, saying that it is easy and that is not a real "PhD." This is because most schools (with the exception of Toronto) like Ottawa, Western, Mac & Queens all push students in their program to finish within the 3 years time frame. I know someone in a MD/PhD program who changed their research field after 1 year of their PhD and are still graduating on time. Was this MD/PhD person that much productive in research than other graduate students to finish it within 2 years? Probably not, but because they are in medical school, they get rushed through a PhD. Not saying that it can't be done in 3 years if you are really productive but it seems if you were just to pursue a PhD, it would take much longer to complete and thus would be "harder." I highly doubt that a lot of MD/PhD students are that much more productive in terms of research than just straight up graduate students to finish is such a small time frame (3 years vs 5-6 years). Just my 2 cents.

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To add my thoughts:

 

Some MD/PhD students start the program with an MSc under their belt already (like me). I won't take as long to finish my PhD because 1. I already understand what graduate school is like and how to write and publish a paper 2. I already have a lot of training in my field and won't have to repeat it 3. I know exactly what studies I want to conduct / things I want to make and don't need time to explore that, in the way I needed it during my MSc. Other students start with only undergrad research and they may take longer to learn the ropes.

 

How long a PhD also varies by degree/faculty. Sometimes you get a crappy project that doesn't work out. Other fields you can produce papers very quickly and get in and out. I've heard its very difficult to publish in chemistry/chemical engineering, but I know it's a lot easier to publish in a field like clinical studies, where a friend of mine pushed out 3 papers in a single year as these are more focused on case reports rather than studies with a large n number.

 

I've heard the discussions about how the PhD component at some schools are "rushed through" like at Western. From talking to actual supervisors of MD/PhD students at Western (where I did my MSc), I'm going to have to agree this is clearly the case for some students where they wanted them in and out in 3 years. However, this I was assured is not the case at UofT, where some students have taken 7 years to do their PhD component.

 

For MD/PhD students at UofT, we have a clinical skills refresher course we take before we are reintegrated back into the medical curriculum for medicine year II, so that we get caught up again. I've heard from some faculty members that MD/PhD students dominate in clerkship awards so we have to be doing something right.

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I have a friend in the MD/PhD program at UWO, he is very research oriented (MRI stuff) and will probably mostly be doing research during his career.

 

The program at UWO is 7 years, so you only have 3 to complete a PhD, but you work on your PhD during the summers of year 1 and 2 of Meds.

 

Western is pretty flexible with its program, most people do 2 med -> 3 phd -> 2 clerkship, but you can do 4 med -> 3 phd or 3 phd -> 4 med if you want to do meds as a straight shot (I think I would, I'd be worried about forgetting everything when I got to that first day of clerkship).

 

As it stands my friend and I will be in the same clerkship years, so I'll let you know in 2 years how his MD/PhD went :D

 

I know who he is :P :P medical imaging is a very small world...also he won quite a large award recently!

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To add my thoughts:

 

Some MD/PhD students start the program with an MSc under their belt already (like me). I won't take as long to finish my PhD because 1. I already understand what graduate school is like and how to write and publish a paper 2. I already have a lot of training in my field and won't have to repeat it 3. I know exactly what studies I want to conduct / things I want to make and don't need time to explore that, in the way I needed it during my MSc. Other students start with only undergrad research and they may take longer to learn the ropes.

 

How long a PhD also varies by degree/faculty. Sometimes you get a crappy project that doesn't work out. Other fields you can produce papers very quickly and get in and out. I've heard its very difficult to publish in chemistry/chemical engineering, but I know it's a lot easier to publish in a field like clinical studies, where a friend of mine pushed out 3 papers in a single year as these are more focused on case reports rather than studies with a large n number.

 

I've heard the discussions about how the PhD component at some schools are "rushed through" like at Western. From talking to actual supervisors of MD/PhD students at Western (where I did my MSc), I'm going to have to agree this is clearly the case for some students where they wanted them in and out in 3 years. However, this I was assured is not the case at UofT, where some students have taken 7 years to do their PhD component.

 

For MD/PhD students at UofT, we have a clinical skills refresher course we take before we are reintegrated back into the medical curriculum for medicine year II, so that we get caught up again. I've heard from some faculty members that MD/PhD students dominate in clerkship awards so we have to be doing something right.

 

Hey, I totally agree with you. UofT is the only exception to this MD/PhD fast track PhD - the average duration of the program is ~ 9 years.

 

But I'm going to have to say it's going to take you at least 4 years, despite your previous research experience to get that PhD. And it's not because your not productive at research but Toronto is just like that, I have rarely seen any PhD candidates get out in 3 years at Toronto because they are just very thorough with everything.

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Hey, I totally agree with you. UofT is the only exception to this MD/PhD fast track PhD - the average duration of the program is ~ 9 years.

 

But I'm going to have to say it's going to take you at least 4 years, despite your previous research experience to get that PhD. And it's not because your not productive at research but Toronto is just like that, I have rarely seen any PhD candidates get out in 3 years at Toronto because they are just very thorough with everything.

 

We'll see :-) I'll get back to you on this one. My friend in the program is on track to graduate in 3 at the moment....I'd like to emulate her and also finish in 3. It's a doable goal for my faculty/area if you work really really hard and are motivated to do so. 4 will be my max, I won't let it get longer than that.

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We'll see :-) I'll get back to you on this one. My friend in the program is on track to graduate in 3 at the moment....I'd like to emulate her and also finish in 3. It's a doable goal for my faculty/area if you work really really hard and are motivated to do so. 4 will be my max, I won't let it get longer than that.

 

What department Epidemiology?

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it angers me when people think that MD/PhD's get an easy way out. Sure, they may be exceptions to the rule, but I'd like to think it is not the norm.

 

At Calgary, I'm allowed 8 years to complete my program (3 of them being med, leaving up to 5 for graduate school). In my opinion, a motivated and hard working PhD student should be able to finish in 4, barring any unforeseen circumstance it can be pushed to 5.

 

I initially hesitated from telling my supervisory committee that I'm tacking a medical degree onto my program (which I'm not planning on starting until after I defend my thesis). I hope and expect to be treated like the rest of the graduate students in my department.

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