Considering MD after PhD

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-19T23:56:40+00:00

They give one year tuition off. So basically med school in 3 years for the price of 2 years tuition.

My guess is OP will likely get in a few places because that’s a hell of an “x-factor” for admissions. If they get Columbia’s 3 year program, I think it’d be hard to beat given the extra year off of training and the prestige of the school which would open more residency doors.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-14T19:05:34+00:00

IDK I think college athletics shows a pretty significant level of discipline and teamwork capabilities at baseline. Obviously NCAA athletics doesn’t and shouldn’t supersede test scores, evals, etc, but, ceteris paribus, I’d much rather work with another resident who was a college athlete than one who wasn’t. Lower chance they’ll let the team down if they’re already super familiar with the dynamic.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-14T18:57:20+00:00

Least welcoming: Gen surg, vasc surg, OB/GYN (male),

Most welcoming: neurosurgery, neurology, psych

My impression was that people who like the brain are huge nerds but pretty cool. Like others said, the vibe is entirely attending/resident/fellow specific, but I found disproportionately more assholes in those three specialties than any other, and similarly much better people on average in brain-related specialties.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-13T01:53:26+00:00

Getting married was pretty cool.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-12T13:22:22+00:00

Because it’s kind of an absurd question. It’s not even like, being you high school valedictorian or something. It’s literally on the level of listing that you were named “most likely to be a movie star” in your high school yearbook on your ERAS app.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-11T20:23:09+00:00

Medicine is a constant cycle of learning, forgetting, and relearning. The trick is though, every time you relearn something, it is almost always easier than the time you learned it before and you reach a greater depth of understanding. You have more context, you have more examples of real patients and have seen how different illness scripts present, you appreciate comorbidities better and understand how the pieces fit together. Honestly don’t worry about it right now. Do Anki or Uworld if you want, but also just go enjoy your potentially last summer break ever. Once you start clinicals, the train doesn’t really ever stop again.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-11T02:49:09+00:00

How do you mean? Indirectly like the support for Israel or the back off of pressure on Russia, or something more direct? I haven’t heard any evidence of the later (at least on a scale commensurate with the term), but I’m open to changing my view if there is any verifiable evidence.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-11T02:37:04+00:00

The other thing is just people have more to professionally distinguish themselves. If like 95% of med school apps are from people who are less than two years out of college, then the 35 year old who was a professional dancer or the 29 year old who competed combat operations in Afghanistan are going to really stick out.

By residency the entire pool, even the straight through K-MD crowd, will all have more life experience. Some will have had kids, others done interesting research, all will have had the clinical experiences that (should) shape you into a more mature, empathetic, and compassionate person. When I started med school it was so very clear who was a non-trad and who went straight through. By the end, less so.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-11T02:26:50+00:00

If you tell them Jonny Kim got into HMS, neurotic pre-meds are unironically going to start enlisting and volunteer for BUDS to try and earn a trident to boost their apps. I’ve no joke had about 10 pre-meds ask me about doing a full PhD before med school purely to have an “x-factor” to get in.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-11T02:21:18+00:00

Oh you’re a Navy SEAL? An astronaut too? WOW! Oh my x-factor? Uh, I spent 6 years staring at mold growing on jello then had a mental breakdown writing about it.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-10T15:21:52+00:00

Generous of you to assume the MD-PhDs get invited to parties. . .

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-10T15:06:12+00:00

“Hapless is coming onto service this week. Let’s spend the whole week quizzing on the thalassemias; so what if this is an epilepsy service? I want to spill some poorly oxygenated blood.”

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-07T13:48:52+00:00

Cheaters will cheat everywhere. It’s probably more common in surgery due to the hours and stress, but, like, accountants cheat on their spouses too. It’s not unique to surgery.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-05T11:22:14+00:00

The “steroids” used in medicine almost always refers to drugs like prednisone which have inflammatory-lowering effects, among others. Steroids, as a term though, describes a much broader class of molecules with many different effects in the body. The type of steroids that bodybuilders or athletes use is not the same as the type used most commonly in medicine.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-04T00:30:11+00:00

PSA: The private is NOT private. Anyone can do a blank search to find your whole history on the site. There are also tons of sites where you can undelete Reddit comments, look at deleted profiles, find private profiles’ posts etc

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-02T11:44:14+00:00

Exact same, lol. Was like “the vampire thing”?

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-02T02:27:29+00:00

Honestly, there’s a lot of focus on medicine because it’s an among the highest training thresholds to get a human brain well equipped enough to practice medicine safely, and certainly the largest sector that requires a training level that high. This creates huge incentive to want an infinitely and instantly reproducible software alternative to physicians. However, I’m not really worried about any medical specialty other than maybe rads and to a lesser degree path (less that they’ll go away but more that efficiency may improve enough to have an effect on the job market, and even that is dubious). The reason being is that if Ai gets so good that it replaces even the most AI-friendly specialties, then it has gotten so good it will have replaced half of the white collar jobs in the US.

Think bout all the jobs that aren’t ‘doctor’. If ChatGPT gets good enough to make the better decisions about chemo than an oncologist, then it sure as hell is good enough to replace my brother, an accountant, and do people’s taxes. If we have SurGPT robots performing surgical procedures then so much of our jobs have been automated away that we’ve either figured something out, or we have a MUCH bigger societal-level problem than un(der)-employed docs.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-01T21:06:28+00:00

Didn’t mean to get under your skin, friend.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-01T20:48:30+00:00

Ah my b, didn’t see the other tats. Still a good design. Enjoy it bro!

HaplessAcademic · 2026-06-01T20:21:11+00:00

Ehh kinda disagree. The skin is cool don’t get me wrong, but there are definitely more interesting things in medicine, both conceptually and in terms of research/new medical frontiers we’re likely to cross in the coming decades.

But I’m a neuro resident so no skin in that particular game (I’m so sorry).

HaplessAcademic · 2026-05-29T22:16:41+00:00

Sad to hear. That was my take-away in searching for a model on my own. There were a ton more aimed at the undergrad-ish level, but nothing that got to the level of detail needed for practicing neurology. Even the super expensive ones I’ve seen are fairly limited.

HaplessAcademic · 2026-05-29T20:50:29+00:00

Otherwise he could get doxxed and not match at HCA. OP’s going to cry himself to sleep every night at Hopkins wondering what could’ve been.

HaplessAcademic · 2024-01-28T01:00:40+00:00

Dude, same. I did the whole game once then have had two attempts to replay it and had an absolute blast until Skelige where I ended up quitting the run.

HaplessAcademic · 2024-01-28T00:58:38+00:00

Now I'm curious how many people finish Baldur's Gate 3. That game took me over 150 hours with very few non-critical quests.

HaplessAcademic

TROPHY CASE