MMI Undergraduate Club Minutes, Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Chris showed the club the shirt designs we all voted on and passed around some sample shirts. The order form has been emailed to the club. If you have any questions/want an additional order form, please contact Chris (cawebb@wisc.edu) or Amy (amymeier@wisc.edu).
Keth presented the volunteer activities we have come up with for the club. Relay for Life, Ronald McDonald House, Salvation Army, and the Boys and Girls Club are the four activities we found. They were all presented in an email to the club as well. If you have any questions/want to join one of our teams, please contact Keth (kmpride@wisc.edu) or Amy (amymeier@wisc.edu).
We had a volunteer panel of 4 people of varied backgrounds come and answer questions.
This is the general idea of the questions and the responses to the questions that happened during the meeting. If you DO have any additional questions, all 4 panelists REALLY encouraged you to contact them, because there are a lot of things they wish they would have known before they got into things and they would love to help others succeed.
CAN YOU SWITCH TO MD/PHD DURING MED SCHOOL?
L: You can’t get money for the years you weren’t in the program, but you will get the normal stipend and they will pay for the rest of med school. You should probably make that decision though within the first or second years of med school because the program is laid out: first two years of med school, grad school for 3-6 years, then the last two years of med school.
WHAT DID YOU ALL LOOK FOR WHEN APPLYING TO PROGRAMS?
K: a blanket department that encompassed all the sciences so you could make a decision that wasn’t limited, and good research services (NMR, microarrays, etc). Big 10 schools or big names on either coast are good.
L: flexibility, location, strong and diverse microbiology program
M: strong in the research you want to do with good facilities/well-funded. Size NOT always equivalent to quality.
J: Med schools are very similar. He explained the dynamics of the hospital to us, with the chief of staff, attending physicians, residents, interns, and med students down on the bottom. Every med school treats their med students a bit differently, but it’s tough to be on the bottom regardless of where you are.
K: encouraged you to talk to students during the course of your interview, ask questions about if the lab you want to join will even be there when you attend school, ask if they would do it again, good profs to work with, if the prof is tenured (if not, then your job is at risk and they are less funded).
JOBS FOR PHD vs. MASTERS vs. MD/PHD
K: PhD is over qualified for almost every job. You can get a job in academics (at a smaller or larger university – they will differ in the funding for research and the amount you get to participate in it), industry, government (NIH, CDC, etc), writing government policies, or even go to law school and then be a patent lawyer.
L: The great thing about MD/PHD is that you get to do both research and clinical work. Laura wants to have her own lab and see patients 1-2x week or possibly work for the CDC. An obstacle though is that since you have an MD, labs are required to pay you more and may not want to take you. However it is nice because you can have your own lab and do full-time research if you want. You also have a lot of opportunities to work with the clinical trials of the latest drugs.
ADMISSIONS FOR SCHOOLS
L: med school stresses volunteering, grad school stresses research. She flipped back and forth over her undergraduate career, then decided to give both a shot. You need to have a passion for research, not just be doing it for kicks. The four main things they look at are undergrad GPA, GRE, letters of recommendation, and lab experience. In fact, it is not bad at all to be a technician for 1-2 years between undergrad and graduate school.
J: setting yourself apart is very important. The boards see hundreds of people on interviews, what is it about you that makes you different?
K: Only 10% of experiments work, therefore it’s hard to put someone with no research experience in that position. It’s nice to know that someone is ready to accept the frustration of research and try to wrap their head around the problem. Also, she encouraged you to get to know the committee judging your PhD work.
HOW DO YOU CHOOSE THE MEMBERS OF YOUR PHD COMMITTEE?
K: your main prof should help and recommend them. You should have one with an outside perspective (to make sure you explain the basics clearly). Ask a lot of people about their experiences and don’t be afraid to ask people. You can also change your committee members
THINGS TO BUFFER CHANGE FROM UNDERGRAD TO GRAD/MED SCHOOL?
J: for med school, it’s very similar to undergrad for your first year. Then you feel more medical your second year. Then you are a resident your third and fourth years and it is completely different than undergrad. He recommends you keep in touch with your friends that have moved away, get a hobby, and exercise.
K: classes are completely different in grad school. It’s not about grades anymore, it’s about what you get out of the class. You also have to TA. She also recommends getting a hobby or a pet.
L: She loves her dog. MD is hard because of the sheer volume of information you need to cram into your head. PhD is hard conceptually. They are two totally different kinds of challenging.
M: encouraged you to find the specific research you think is interesting.
K: emphasized how graduate research is NOT what you will do for the rest of your life, so don’t flip out if you don’t work in the exact field you want to. Your post-doctorate work will be much closer to your career focus.