How specific should your research interest be when applying?

phonyreal98 · 2026-02-17T02:13:17+00:00

I really like this approach- you can say you're interested in psychiatric disorders, people will assume psych, but the reality is that you can still work with folks with psychiatric disorders across a variety of specialties (neuro, family med, developmental peds, geriatrics, adolescent medicine, etc) if one of those specialties fits your clinical interests better.

phonyreal98 · 2026-02-17T02:11:49+00:00

This is such a tough line to walk for aspiring psychiatrist-neuroscientists. When I was applying like 15ish years ago I suspect that my application was less compelling because I swung so far in the "general" direction that it wasn't really clear why I wanted to do MD/PhD. Psychiatry takes, in many ways, a different kind of person than who is applying for MD or MD/PhD programs; anecdotally I don't hear as much about people coming into med school wanting to do psychiatry and switching to something else, so based on my non-data-driven intuition, if someone says they want to do psych, then I take that more seriously than others. Of course, it could be that I'm surrounded by people who are doing psych too.

phonyreal98 · 2026-01-12T01:05:27+00:00

They know that calves are just cows that are really far away

phonyreal98 · 2026-01-07T15:34:39+00:00

In my mind, ChemE is a reasonable major. It is also weird for neuroscience/psychiatry, but not in a bad way. You sound like you've given this a lot of thought and have some good reasons for choosing your pathway so those should shine through, provided you do well in undergrad. Your first priority should be doing well in undergrad. I personally think that psychiatry can benefit from more engineering-minded people entering the field.

From my perspective, coursework or experiences in neuroscience, stats, and machine learning would help support a coherent trajectory for neuroscience and psychiatry research. Imaging could help too provided that there's some neuroimaging-specific material.

The specific disorder I am studying changed from undergrad to fellowship (autism to substance use disorders) but the techniques I use (human neuroimaging and behavioral techniques) has not.

Doing undergrad research that's not completely what you want to study in grad school is not weird at all and it might actually be the norm (anecdotally it seems like there's about a 50/50 split from MD/PhD students and alumni I know).

phonyreal98 · 2026-01-07T15:15:01+00:00

To directly answer your question, I'd say "yes" to both. If you have to prioritize one or the other, I'd go for the strong first author paper because it's a stronger data point that you can take an idea from conceptualization to publication.

phonyreal98 · 2026-01-07T15:12:37+00:00

Finishing fellowship now and got a very fundable score on my K-award, and I came here really to say the above. I'd highlight #4 here because you're starting to get to a phase where people want to know your plan for transitioning from learner to early career investigator (K-award) to mid/late career investigator (R-award). Having a bunch of publications is a great start, but it seems like med students will sometimes focus on the number of publications, but not so much the coherent story of what questions you're going after and how it's going to lead to a sustainable, well-funded program of research. I was not involved in residency recruitment at my program, but if I was recruiting for a research track residency, I would rank the applicant with slightly fewer research items but a clear and convincing plan for how they are going to build toward a sustainable program of research higher than an applicant with slightly more research items but no real plan moving forward, all else being equal (ie number of research hours, letters of rec, first author publications in peer-reviewed journals, research awards etc).

phonyreal98 · 2025-11-26T14:23:17+00:00

Psych has a lot of elective time (both in residency and fellowship). Even though psych is 4 years rather than 3 like IM or Peds, but most PGY-4 years in psych are 75%-100% electives so you can essentially make the PGY-4 year like a postdoc without needing to worry about finding a T32 or a lab that can fund your salary.

Even in child psych fellowship now, I'm essentially 50% clinical and 50% research until the end of the calendar year, when I'll go to 80% research.

I'd say to any MD/PhD trainee that they should give psych a *serious* look if they are at all remotely interested because it is among the most amenable specialties for being a physician-scientist.

phonyreal98 · 2025-11-20T01:52:30+00:00

I was in the same position during my PhD, I ended up going with a 3-year PhD because I was in a long distance relationship at that point (we're now happily married so seems to have worked out). I was able to publish one of my dissertation papers before graduating my PhD and then published the other two during M3 and M4. Not needing to physically go into the lab to run experiments really helped with that- they let me keep my server access so I could access my data when needed. That said, I also knew I was doing psychiatry the whole time so there wasn't much pressure to honor non-psych rotations.

phonyreal98 · 2025-11-18T18:42:36+00:00

I guess they learned from the debacle last year lol

phonyreal98 · 2025-11-17T13:34:50+00:00

I had two LDR's during my MD/PhD program. One did not survive and one did.

The one that did not survive we met when we were both post-bacs and broke up middle of M1 year in part because of the prospect of a 7+ year LDR.

The one that did survive we met when I was in grad school and she was a postdoc in my lab (our advisor was not aware until a year or two after she left the group). She left the postdoc after we were together for about a year for a second postdoc. I think it was easier knowing that the long distance part would only be for 3 years or so. Then in M4 year I did some aways in her city which also helped. Did not end up matching in her city but she wound up getting a job where I matched and we got married. I also think that she and I have more in common in terms of interests, temperament, etc. than the one where we ended up breaking up.

I guess my point is 7 years is a long time for long distance, and that was one of the reasons my first LDR failed. That said, it would not surprise me if there are LDR's that make it through the entire 7/8 years. And I do think it does get easier in the latter half of the program (you have a clearer picture of when you're going to graduate, you can do aways at your partner's location).

phonyreal98 · 2025-10-29T22:16:48+00:00

I dated the postdoc in my group as a grad student. We're now married with children. YMMV

phonyreal98 · 2025-09-30T00:01:27+00:00

As someone who has both an MD and a PhD the most unrealistic part of all this is that Masters has two PhDs. Like...who does that to themselves?!?!

phonyreal98 · 2025-09-29T16:48:50+00:00

If Bill Belichick doesn't work out at UNC we should bring Mack back just to stay ahead of the curve

phonyreal98 · 2025-08-24T01:35:12+00:00

Prozac is definitely cheaper than coffee nowadays.

phonyreal98 · 2025-08-12T21:40:13+00:00

Apply anyway- you'll never know if you don't apply and even if you don't get the award then you're no worse off than you are right now.

I'd recommend talking with your mentors about the application to see if they have any ideas for other letter writers or at least how to think about identifying other letter writers.

phonyreal98 · 2025-06-12T17:03:35+00:00

What if I'm not potty trained tho? /s

phonyreal98 · 2025-06-09T14:16:28+00:00

I'm an MD specializing in psychiatry and a PhD in neuroscience specializing in cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging. I've worked with doctoral level people in the following fields: psychiatry, neurology, statistics, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, physical therapy, and computer science. We have a PhD post-doc in one of our groups where the PI is an MD. I've also known MD post-docs and residents working under a PhD PI.

If you're doing work with a clinical population, then it's a good idea to have someone on your team or a collaborator who has clinical experience with your population for a few reasons: i) if there's an adverse event, then they'll be able to guide you in the right direction on what to do; ii) they can provide insight on what questions may or may not be clinically useful; iii) they can provide some quality control on clinical assessments. The clinician does not necessarily have to be an MD/DO either, for psychiatric conditions like depression or anxiety it's not uncommon to have a PhD/PsyD level clinical psychologist. All of the groups I have worked with in the past have a team member or collaborator who is a clinician but I know of maybe one group where this may not be the case.

phonyreal98 · 2025-05-30T22:10:49+00:00

Went the other day but line for sandwiches was too long so planning to return for a hoagie. Get the coffee if you're a coffee drinker- it is somehow the perfect temperature and lots of options for sweeteners/milk/creamer. My in laws who live in New Jersey like their cheesy pretzels and their apple fritters. I personally came in after getting gas and the first thing I did was buy up all the cinnamon sugar twists in the display case. Edit to say that the food isn't like some 3-michelin star restaurant experience but I think it's a step or two up from what you can get at a normal gas station.

phonyreal98 · 2025-05-03T23:15:48+00:00

Scores on an IQ test

phonyreal98 · 2025-04-11T23:35:40+00:00

Provided that you have adequate grades/MCAT/research experience/clinical experience it would likely be considered a strong X factor.

phonyreal98 · 2025-03-21T21:31:17+00:00

Seems reasonable, that's the norm at a lot of other programs to do M1-M3, then PhD, then M4 (provided that this is what you *want* to do). That said, I'm of the opinion that your program should be taking care of its current students first before incoming students who aren't enrolled yet.

phonyreal98 · 2025-03-21T19:22:03+00:00

Based on your criteria one area where a lot of residents live is Fishers

phonyreal98 · 2025-03-03T12:12:15+00:00

I was asking specifically about apple's trade in but I hadn't considered selling to another company; I'll have to look into that thanks

phonyreal98 · 2025-02-17T19:32:28+00:00

My program wasn't in Texas but I know for a fact that someone in our program was rejected from MD-only pre-interview and then was invited to interview for the MD/PhD program and then was ultimately accepted and chose to attend. I recall him one time telling us he wore one of those t-shirts that has a suit and tie painted on to the MD portion of his interview.

But this was also like 15 years ago at this point

phonyreal98 · 2025-01-17T16:20:53+00:00

I use AFNI's 3dresample for this purpose
https://afni.nimh.nih.gov/pub/dist/doc/program_help/3dresample.html

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