Current PhD Student, Applying Next Year

Nontraditional Premed Discussion
1

Hello other older premeds!

PhD student here with about two years left, after which I will be applying for medical school. There are several pieces to the PhD which have left me with questions and I’m left wondering where those pieces fit on the application. Any help would be appreciated!

The first is where do I put grades for classes I took during the graduate program and do those classes count towards the overall GPA?

The second is job shadowing experience. I know this is very important to have (and thank you so much Ryan for having eShadowing! I love it!) and COVID seems to be less of a problem as does the specialty. I am interested in becoming an Infectious Disease physician and when I have asked around it seems that this particular field, at least where I am located, usually does not allow for people who are not medical students to shadow. Now throughout the PhD we certainly meet with ID docs and even meet with docs who collect patient samples for us, but with limited time do I really need to go and shadow doctors from other fields when my heart really won’t be in it although given the times I think most of them would be extremely busy?

My third question ties back to three specific experiences within the PhD. I will list my PhD as an “experience” on the application but is it clinical if the PhD itself is studying infectious diseases (Pseudmonas, Strep, Staph, etc.)? The second question is minor but do I really have to list hours for the PhD? I feel silly writing down something like 20,000 hours. I guess if you were a dentist or someone else applying you would have that too. The third and final question is within the PhD I go to weekly seminars hosted by the ID department at a nearby medical school. There ID docs present cases and give updates on research within the scope of infectious diseases. Can I list this as an experience on the application (I’ve been going for years) and is it clinical? I would say it might be clinical because I directly see doctors show cases but also not because it’s in a conference room and not in a traditional clinical setting.

Thank you very much for reading and as well as your input!

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AMCAS will list your GPAs out by year. Your PhD gpa will be considered graduate.

Reach out to doctors. You never know if they’ll say yes or not. You should shadow irl, not just eShadowing.

Your research will count as research. It is not clinical experience. Yes, you need to write your hours. You can write 20,000 hours over your 5? years as a PhD.

You can possibly list your ID seminars as shadowing? I’m not too sure where that goes under.

**I am not an ADCOM. Simply giving advice based on my experience.

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Thank you so much! That was really helpful, I will have to look more into shadowing.