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On December 05 2012 00:08 Zaranth wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2012 13:24 HotGlueGun wrote:
Is the medical school process similiar to PhD process? I don't think so. From what I know of medical school, the first two years are very coursework intensive. Then next two years are more clinical. You're in and out in four years and in debt up to your eyeballs. Actually us grad students make fun of the med students as taking the easy way, for what it's worth. I TA'd a med school course on Human Genetics and the students were pretty average. Basically, Med School is good for you if you can memorize a ton of information and regurgitate it. Grad school is good for you if you want to learn to think. burnNote to med students: Yes you have a lot of work to do and yes it's hard.
IMO I've thought of it as the top 5-10% of your class tries to go into research, the next 30% go into med/dental/pharm, etc. Then the rest are often left to switch majors.
I know that it's not really true, but basically I think that the people in researchers have tons more dedication to learning the topic than those in healthcare fields.
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@KOFgokuon: I am finishing up - I plan to graduate in late summer/early fall of 2013.
@sechkie: I think people in research are really interested in discovering new things and expanding knowledge. Healthcare is much different. It's about taking things that are already known and applying them to medicine. I don't think it has anything to do with grades or percentages in school as much as it has to do with attitude.
Edit: 300th post :-D
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On November 18 2012 02:55 micronesia wrote:
Although everyone's experience will vary (depending on school, discipline, etc) just reading the experience of someone who has been through it recently seems like it can be very helpful. I am interested to see part 5, although I wish there was one for physics.
Anything in particular you would like to know about physics grad school? I'm in my first year, so I won't be as knowledgeable as Zaranth, but I can answer questions about some of the basics.
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United States24484 Posts
On December 09 2012 09:20 Aldrovandi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2012 02:55 micronesia wrote:
Although everyone's experience will vary (depending on school, discipline, etc) just reading the experience of someone who has been through it recently seems like it can be very helpful. I am interested to see part 5, although I wish there was one for physics. Anything in particular you would like to know about physics grad school? I'm in my first year, so I won't be as knowledgeable as Zaranth, but I can answer questions about some of the basics.
The hardest part to get information on is the equivalent of 'part 5.' If you actually get a phd in physics, what are your options specifically? This is my current knowledge:
1) Do post docs for a few years (low pay but necessary for better academic appointments later like professor if you can land it, and even then your pay is crap until you work your way up the ladder)
2) Get hired by some company (I have no idea doing what, or what type of companies, or how the starting salary etc would be, how or in demand this is)
3) Work some menial job for low pay because you can't get anything good.
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On December 09 2012 12:40 micronesia wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On December 09 2012 09:20 Aldrovandi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2012 02:55 micronesia wrote:
Although everyone's experience will vary (depending on school, discipline, etc) just reading the experience of someone who has been through it recently seems like it can be very helpful. I am interested to see part 5, although I wish there was one for physics. Anything in particular you would like to know about physics grad school? I'm in my first year, so I won't be as knowledgeable as Zaranth, but I can answer questions about some of the basics. The hardest part to get information on is the equivalent of 'part 5.' If you actually get a phd in physics, what are your options specifically? This is my current knowledge: 1) Do post docs for a few years (low pay but necessary for better academic appointments later like professor if you can land it, and even then your pay is crap until you work your way up the ladder)
So my understanding of it is that a lot of your options are going to depend on what your focus and specific research is. Postdocs are an option for everyone, but as you mentioned, the pay is pretty abysmal given how much training you have and how much work you are expected to put in. Postdocs at national laboratories might have it a little better than postdocs at universities (they seemed a little happier at least.) Going into military research is also an option, just depends on whatever moral qualms you may have about that kind of work.
2) Get hired by some company (I have no idea doing what, or what type of companies, or how the starting salary etc would be, how or in demand this is)
Going into the private sector to do research is a lot more reasonable for people doing research in fields with direct applications - materials science, condensed matter (semiconductor research!), and optics. Stuff like chemical/biophysics I think can also get you a job in medical research, but I'm not really familiar with any of it.
For people doing stuff like HEP/particle physics it's possible to focus on programming and go to Wall St. as a quant after you finish your Ph.D., they'll have you doing numerical modelling. This supposedly pays really well, the tradeoff is that there's no physics involved. I don't know that this is specifically a particle physicist thing, more a "good at math and programming" thing.
Because you learn a ton of instrumentation techniques and have to build a lot of research equipment yourself, some people go off to be high-level technicians at instrumentation companies or found their own device manufacturing companies. I know one postdoc who was collaborating with my undergraduate advisor ended up starting a company selling vibrators.
3) Work some menial job for low pay because you can't get anything good.
As far as working a menial job goes, I once asked a professor in undergrad if I would be able to get a job with a PhD in physics. He said, "if you have a PhD in physics you will always have a job available to you somewhere, it's just a question of whether it's the job you want." Menial job might be an option, but it won't be the only one.
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Reading this makes me depressed about my ambition to get a doctorate one day.
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Ignoring volunteer/research work, extracurriculars, letters of recommendation, what type of college GPA is necessary to get into a good grad/med school?
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@micronesia: there's actually a lot one can do with a PhD - sorry it's taking me to long to get to part 5 ... but it's important to remember that we are not defined by our technical abilities. We love to think that we are skilled because of the techniques we know, when in reality we can learn how to do any technique. It's better to think about other abilities that PhDs have and companies want: things like working under pressure, high levels of self-motivation, communication skills (presenting, writing, etc), ability to think on your feet, ability to think critically, ability to work well with others, etc...
@Praetorial: yeah it's not for everyone. The bad part is once you start, it can take a really long time to finish, and then you'll be 30.
@HotGlueGun: I had something like a 3.3/4.0 (check part 1 for exact numbers). GPA is actually not that critical - the research experience and letters of recommendation are more influential. A steady GPA that shows you're not failing courses should be enough.
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On December 10 2012 23:49 Zaranth wrote:
@Praetorial: yeah it's not for everyone. The bad part is once you start, it can take a really long time to finish, and then you'll be 30.
haha not as bad as my MD/PhD goals... I mean I'm really excited about it but it's still depressing to think how old i'm going to be when i get out of school, not even taking residency and stuff into account. and I'm applying without having taken any time off
@HotGlueGun: I had something like a 3.3/4.0 (check part 1 for exact numbers). GPA is actually not that critical - the research experience and letters of recommendation are more influential. A steady GPA that shows you're not failing courses should be enough.
This is definitely true for grad school, but for medical school it might be a bit different - I can't really give a good number for what GPA you need, but you do need a relatively good GPA to get your foot in the door (getting a secondary application/interview invitation). But the difference between say a 3.7 and a 4.0 generally won't matter much, although it generally depends on the school (for example, from what I've heard and seen WashU's med school emphasizes numbers a lot more than most schools, and considering how laid-back my interview was there I think that's fairly accurate)
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On December 01 2012 23:03 epoc wrote:
Two grades? A and B?America fuck yeah?
This is every grad school everywhere btw
I'm in a doctoral program for clinical psychology and a B- gets me kicked out of the program
luckily there's remediation options and such in case it does happen but like hell i'm going to let myself get a b- in any of my classes
On November 18 2012 17:41 galtdunn wrote:
These make me not want to do it... sounds like so much stress/pressure/work.
I don't know what you thought getting a doctorate was like but I assure you it's not just sitting there braindead like undergrad is
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Med school is very different from graduate school and you'll see a lot of variability from country to country in the training you get in both.
Med school memorization only gets you so far really. You'll look good on a few written multiple choice tests and when people pimp you on rounds, but your performance on the wards will be dictated by the efficiency with which you collect information and your organizational skills. Once you're in the hospitals/clinics, its all about how you categorize the information into problems and the steps you're going to undertake to address each problem.
Example: 65 year old female with a past medical history of coronary artery disease, dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes on insulin and she is a long term smoker. She complains of shortness of breath and chest pain. You have a certain approach for how you'll collect information, examine the patient and do your investigations. You want to address infectious and cardiac causes while keeping an open mind for other dangerous and less dangerous possibilities like pulmonary emboli, cancer, gastric reflux. Does the patient have a pneumonia, is the patient in heart failure and if so why, is there a combination of problems occurring at this time, etc. Each possiblity needs to be addressed individually. Medicine is ultimately a lot more about management. Once you understand how to organize yourself and manage your patients and their issues in a given field, it becomes fairly straightforward.
Research: a couple details I want to add to the OP's excellent post: PhDs don't necessarily have to take 7-8 years. You can grind out a good PhD in 4-5, but that requires a lot of hard work, persistence and luck. Do not underestimate the power of luck in research. The project you start working on most likely won't be the project you end up writing your thesis about. Despite your best efforts and rigor as a scientist, you may not get into Nature or Cell because your work is not the topic of the day. As you go through your PhD, the first couple years you end up doing a lot of trouble shooting and in the middle years you collect data and really once you hit your first paper, you should have an understanding of what it is you need to push a study forward and at the same time, you'll find data flows much more smoothly. Barring any disaster, once you publish your first paper, your following studies and thesis should be out within a 1.5-2 years after and you should be defending. You eventually learn how to think about research and how to organize yourself along what people will expect you to present to publish. The really hard part of the PhD is getting over that initial really aggravating, discouraging hurdle where nothing works and nothing makes sense and then understanding that reviewers will wipe their asses with your paper before handing it back to you. Research can be pretty ungrateful work.
I want to emphasize the OP's point that the most important part to your PhD is the lab that you select. You need to have a good dynamic with your boss. Your relationship is essential as your boss will decide the pace at which s/he reads your papers, approves your going to conferences and you can't pass your defense unless s/he's happy. You want to make sure you have ressources in your lab you can rely on because odds are, your boss won't be there too often for you and you'll be on your own to figure out what is going on and how to get things done. Having people help you learn how to do experiments, give talks, write papers and to bounce ideas from is essential for your success.
Committees are not so scary if you know how to stack them in your favor if your school allows. You want people that are familiar with your field and won't have an invested interest in sinking you. The quals is really as bad as it gets as its one of the earliest times you get challenged. As you go to conferences, write papers, have more committee meetings you'll find people will keep asking you the same questions over and over. By the time you defend, you should already have answered 2/3 of the questions people will be asking many times already. Remember: almost no one will ever ask a question to which they don't already know the answer. God forbid THEY look stupid at YOUR talk.
Writing the thesis is really about writing the introduction to your thesis. You recycle your publications as the main body of your work and you add in an introduction and a discussion at the end. The introduction will be a broad review of what your work is based on (which you can later turn into a publication or 2) and it will be the most awful experience you will ever have had. Just stay home for a month and do nothing but write. Its basically a long tedious text that almost no one will ever read again where you have 2-3 references for every single sentence you write. Do not go fishing for references later. The discussion is intellectual masturbation.
In medicine and research, transferable skills go a long way. I agree with the OP's later comments. The subject of a PhD doesn't really matter because ultimately, the PhD reflects your acquisition of a certain number of skills. I can talk to people in different fields about their work because the way you think about things is the same. The subject matter is important, but its pretty easy to orient yourself around the logic behind their work. A PhD really reflects your ability to synthesize a body of work independently, the ability to ask a precise question, pick apart an idea and communicate information to both a scientific and a lay audience (and as easy as that is to say, it takes years of practice to do). These skills will serve you well regardless of whether you go into government, industry or continue as a post doc to try to become a PI yourself.
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I only got three years for my PhD in molecular biology, it's a hell of a grind!
The above post talking about luck is so true. GLHF to all of you who engange in this sort of career.
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Looking back at it, I truly enjoyed my time in getting a master's degree in biostatistics. Ye gods, it was hard, though.
I'll say this now, as I don't expect to remember to swing by for part 5 -- surround yourself with brilliant people even after you graduate! That's the best way to keep learning, and to keep work in your field interesting.
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Very interesting series of posts!
Just one remark: even though it is mentionned in part 1, it's not always clear that you are talking about biology + in the US kind of PhD. There is a *lot* of variance about everything you say, with respect to field and location.
I am currently getting my phd in computer science in France, and, just to point a few major differences:
-no qualifiers, no intense coursework during 1st year (this is more or less done before)
-no "lab rotation"; again this is done in other ways
-duration = 3 years for most people
-these things are very different for my friends getting their phd in the same university but different field
-etc..
to the author: maybe remind people, sometimes, that the information you give is very specific to field/location?
to people reading: if you consider getting your phd in a different country/field, and want accurate information, it may be good to look elsewhere.
Again, thank you for sharing all this info, I'm too lazy to do the same for my field/country.
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The thread applies to most PhD programs (at least, the sciences and engineering) in North America, much less in Europe. Differences, for example, can include that some programs in the UK force you to graduate after 3-4 years, regardless of publications. Its like a master's in the US where you write, submit and defend. Something to keep in mind with these programs is that publications are the currency of academia and that I have heard several influential academics outright say that many European PhDs were not competitive in North America as a result.
The US programs, more than the Canadian programs, can have the rotations across the first year where you see what lab fits you by spending a semester there.
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That is pretty good info! Thanks. I have a BSc in bio and decided to go do another one in computer science instead of going to grad school because I want a job and $$$ easily. Later down the road though, I want to go back and get a PhD in bio/bioinformatic so it's good to know.
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On December 17 2012 00:51 Dr.Sin wrote:
The thread applies to most PhD programs (at least, the sciences and engineering) in North America, much less in Europe. Differences, for example, can include that some programs in the UK force you to graduate after 3-4 years, regardless of publications. Its like a master's in the US where you write, submit and defend. Something to keep in mind with these programs is that publications are the currency of academia and that I have heard several influential academics outright say that many European PhDs were not competitive in North America as a result.
One thing worth noting though: to start a PhD in France (and in many other European countries), you first need to complete a master program, with usually a 6 months research internship. Also, in science, many people here have gone through "classes prepa", that give in two years the equivalent of an American masters student's level in mathematics/physics.
Bottom line: even though the PhD program itself only lasts 3 to 4 years, we don't need to spend time rotating/studying for quals/getting "basic" advanced classes, etc, because this has been done in a slightly different way before. We start doing research/publishing right away.
That being said, 3 years *is* a short time, and if you want to pursue academia after, you are expected to go through 1 or 2 years of postdoc in a different lab/country. Universities around here might not want to hire somebody who spend 5 years in the same lab.
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I'm a second year in biology.
There are of course even variations between schools. Where I am we had very minimal coursework and the exams are relatively informal affairs.
PhD is indeed a different animal in US vs Europe. But as someone said before, if you are looking to stay in academia what matters is your publications, not where you got the degree and what was involved.
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Publications matter (I'd say they're the most important, think we can agree on that) but to say where you went and what was involved doesn't matter is quite naive.
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Europe definitely has a different system for their PhD process. Here in the US no masters is required, so for the first few years of graduate school we are basically doing a masters. The differences begin before that step too. In college, a degree in the US is much more general. Though we declare a major and minor, we also have to take "general education" courses such as English, Social Studies, etc. I gather that in Europe the collegiate courses are strictly about a specific discipline with no need to take classes outside that field.
Publications are important, but the lab you do your research in is probably just as important. Your PI has a huge influence over your career. If your PI is working on the forefront of the field, doing cutting edge research, and is well known in the community, you'll have a better chance at securing a good post-doc. Also the management style of the PI is critical to your success. I would say that the name/prestige of the school is not that important, but who you are working with will definitely affect your future career.
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EPT
