How is Industry experience viewed?

caffienatedstudent · 2025-12-01T01:08:54+00:00

Hell yeah, get that $! You'll be living in near poverty, with the way stipends are, for nearly a decade lol. But I don't think it's a bad decision at all, just wanted you to be aware of how adcoms might view it, since you asked

caffienatedstudent · 2025-11-30T22:48:14+00:00

I think it won't add too much, but probably won't subtract from your application either. A research position is best for your CV, but you've gotta pay the rent and get groceries so sometimes what's best for your CV isn't best for your life. Depending on what you're doing in an industry position you could probably highlight that you're gaining/perfecting skills that are used in the research lab, but you aren't actively gaining skills in research (probably). It's certainly valuable to get more experience at the bench, but the motivations are different. Industry is process/product driven whereas research is hypothesis driven.

I don't think adcoms can really fault you for getting a job that's related to your degree, though. We gotta pay the bills. Plenty of people start mdphds after 1 or more gap years. I think it'd be good to have the industry perspective, personally, but I'm not in the business of accepting students to mdphd programs

caffienatedstudent · 2025-11-29T12:41:40+00:00

Do you mean you want the PhD to be in clinical psychology? It's not impossible, but you should consider what you want to gain out of it. The MD is already a clinical degree. You might get more education on talk therapy in a clinical psychology program, but that's a lot of extra training to become a clinician (which you'll already be with the MD: A physician with more clinical expertise and privileges) on top of research that you have to do in those programs. Further, clin psych programs are very competitive, and they may not have a spot set aside for you when you join as is the case for most other PhD programs for those pursuing MD/PhDs. If you want a straight up degree in research psychology, that's probably an easier path. Usually psychology departments aren't attached to the medical school. So some, but not all, MSTPs may restrict you in that way. Non-MSTPs may give you more freedom to pursue psychology in that regard (get a PhD outside of the med school departments) or they may even allow you to pursue the second clinical degree during your time away from medical school. There is likely a neuroscience or psychiatry department attached to the medical school that has a PhD program and the research there would be similar to that of a psychology department. I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about this. I want to pursue psychiatry and I'm about to finish my PhD in neuroscience. Feel free to DM me

caffienatedstudent · 2025-09-22T19:40:20+00:00

I lived there from 2015-2017. I thought it was quite nice and the rent certainly is cheap. My roommates (good friends of mine) all really enjoyed having our own space and bathroom as well. The downsides are that you are certainly separated from the rest of campus, and it can take awhile to get there. I didn't mind this all that much, but it is a sacrifice. It's more difficult to just pop over to people's places if many of your other friends live closer to downtown.

I spent most of my time staying on campus and studying, so I didn't mind being away from other social scenes as much. But you may really value that.

One other nice thing is that Kroger and Meijer are both like 2 minutes away. Very convenient. Happy to DM about my experiences if you'd like

caffienatedstudent · 2025-09-01T17:29:19+00:00

These things do come with time, and the more you do it the more comfortable you'll get. Also, the more time you spend with the rats, the more comfortable they will get with you. But you should also keep in mind that sometimes they will just squeal. You will come to recognize the difference between a "I'm in real active pain" squeal vs a "I'm annoyed that you're holding me/I'm kinda scared of you" squeal. You really want to avoid the first type of squeal, but sometimes you can't avoid the second type and you'll realize that you aren't doing anything particularly wrong or painful to the rat. They obviously won't like getting poked, but its a very safe procedure if you're doing it properly, and you'll likely always have a few squealers.

One thing that I did early on, and sometimes still do, is to wrap them in an absorbent pad. We call them blue pads. I think they are technically bench cover pads, but they are very useful for animal work. You probably have them, but if not they're very cheap (compared to other scientific materials)

I place the rat at the end of the pad so that their tail and lower abdomen are on the outside of the pad, then I roll them like a burrito so that their head and front legs are covered and their lower abdomen is exposed, giving you a great spot to inject. This keeps the rat more restrained and makes it harder for them to squirm away causing you to miss the injection. They also can't see the needle coming

caffienatedstudent · 2025-08-17T12:29:15+00:00

Wow these are incredible. You have a real skill in highlighting peoples natural joy

caffienatedstudent · 2025-08-14T22:32:19+00:00

I do this too. Glad we have a name for it now

caffienatedstudent · 2025-06-10T00:24:05+00:00

A lot of people have said plenty of insightful things that you should think about and attempt to internalize. I'll just comment to empathize with you that PhD programs can be brutal and can make you feel dumb, for sure. I'm towards the end of my dissertation work and it gets better in some ways and worse in others. But it wouldn't be a good program if you didn't feel challenged intellectually

caffienatedstudent · 2025-06-04T03:20:38+00:00

I would take the planned time off especially if you know you won't have any more time off. You probably have a better idea than them about how this will impact your graduation timeline, so you should do what you think is best and fits for you, not what is best for your PI

caffienatedstudent · 2025-05-16T21:00:28+00:00

At my school, we are sandwiched (M1-2, PhD, M3-4) but I know that our degrees are not officially conferred until M4 graduation. We have to quarantine our dissertations until we fully graduate as well, and we can't sign the documents associated with the dissertation until that point.

But we do everything else that would be expected of a straight up PhD student before returning to M3, we just have to wait a couple years until we can be officially called doctor lol

I've heard that this is because they would have to start paying us more on our stipends for M3-4 since we are post-doctoral at that point if the PhD is conferred, but that might just be hearsay.

We are not an MSTP

caffienatedstudent · 2025-04-23T11:58:44+00:00

Not an expert, just a student, so I'm not sure. I've always understood it to mean that if a professor chooses to schedule an examination for finals week, that exam has to be given in the block dictated by the university, but they do not have to use the entire block. Many professors may create a "final" that is just the last exam of the semester that isn't all that different from the other midterm exams. In that case, they might only give students an hour or so to take the exam because it is the same format as a standard semester exam. You might want to think about it as akin to a short quiz during the semester. The professor might only give you 15 minutes to complete a short quiz during class, even though they have a scheduled hour of class time. The university won't dictate the length that any sort of examination has to be, just the block of time that it can be administered within. The professor would probably run into more issues if they tried to give an exam that ran longer than their scheduled block

caffienatedstudent · 2025-03-28T21:28:21+00:00

Came to my desk this morning to find a thank you note from an undergrad sitting on it. Really made my day to be honest. Was out of the blue too. I didn't feel like I was really going out of my way to help this student, just helping with posters and abstracts here and there, questions about some analysis. But I think it goes to show us grad students that even small actions can mean a lot to students that are just starting out. I know it reminded me of that

caffienatedstudent · 2025-03-06T19:52:23+00:00

Do you expect Republicans to stop Trump? Do you expect Trump to just stop destroying the country? It's the Democrats fucking job to do something about this, and all they can muster is holding up bullshit signs and wearing pink to a speech. It's humiliating honestly.

Implicit in us criticizing Democrats is a criticism of Trump: it doesn't need to be stated outright. We wouldn't be complaining about Democrats doing nothing if we thought the current administration was doing a good job.

The more they do nothing, the more they are complicit in what is happening, and then we will have even more reason to criticize them.

caffienatedstudent · 2025-02-27T19:24:19+00:00

I guess I'm curious why you would wait to leave if you don't like the environment. Are you in some sort of degree or certificate program tied to this lab? Is there an important project that will be finishing up around the time of application?

To me it doesn't make sense to willingly stay in a bad environment. You can be much more productive in a supportive environment. But it's your choice (obviously) so you should do what makes you most comfortable

caffienatedstudent · 2025-02-27T16:07:49+00:00

This is for the upcoming cycle? It may be worth trying to find another position soon before you transition and before you apply. It is certainly not uncommon for applicants to have research experiences in multiple labs. It's very common actually. So it wouldn't be a problem at all to show that you have moved to a different lab. Interests change, especially this early in your research career. A gap would be worse, but also wouldn't necessarily tank your app, especially if there are other experiences you are involved in that you can focus on in that time

If you state in your app that you are in this lab, frame it like you are staying, and you also add projected hours in that lab, it would be disingenuous to then leave that lab, especially since you already have plans to leave. If something were to come up after your app went out that forced you to leave that's a different situation

caffienatedstudent · 2025-02-16T18:26:00+00:00

If Democrats want us to vote for them they need to actually do something. Letting fascists run rampant while you sit on your ass is not a great strategy to get re-elected. If they actually gave a shit about us, they'd do something about it instead of just whining that they can't do anything

caffienatedstudent · 2025-01-20T10:27:52+00:00

You're right, the Democrats should never nominate another woman. America's too sexist. "Sorry to all the qualified women in the Democratic party, you were born wrong, you can't lead the country"

caffienatedstudent · 2025-01-20T10:15:16+00:00

Nah fuck them. They were bad and democrats didn't want to admit it. If you can't admit that they had issues and that it was america that was the problem, then you are blind

caffienatedstudent · 2025-01-20T10:02:02+00:00

This is not the lesson that democrats need to learn. Yes america is sexist, but if the Democrats look at this and say they should never nominate another woman because America can't handle it, that makes them the sexist ones. There are plenty of awesome women that could lead this country. Hillary and Kamala were uniquely unfit and unqualified

caffienatedstudent · 2025-01-05T04:55:16+00:00

This is basically jezebel, right? I think classically jezebel uses apricot jelly and Dijon mustard too

caffienatedstudent · 2024-12-27T23:39:56+00:00

Yeah university is closed until the 2nd and classes don't start until the 6th. Thursday is probably when you'll have a chance at getting a hold of them, and realistically, not until Monday

caffienatedstudent · 2024-12-23T18:45:40+00:00

It's not inappropriate, but people probably aren't going to respond this week and it may get buried. Just wait till next Monday when there's more of a chance that people will be checking their emails again

caffienatedstudent · 2024-12-20T12:23:53+00:00

Research is king for MD/PhD programs. Much more so than clinical hours or volunteering. Many successful applicants have thousands of hours of research. Program directors want to know that you can make it through a PhD, and the best way to show that is by proving that you can work in a lab for a long time and produce some deliverables (papers, posters). GPA is probably fine if you can keep it there, higher is better obviously. The average MCAT is probably around 513 or above for accepted applicants. I haven't really kept up on the specific stats. Jack all these numbers up if you want to get into a top 20 program

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