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Disclaimer
Notice: The following
information was provided by MD/PhD students,
and is not official data from the MD/PhD
program administration or from APSA. For
official information, please contact the
program administration listed below. If you
are aware of any outdated or incorrect
information on this page, or if you can
think of anything useful to include, please
let us know at
ssh@physicianscientists.org so that we
may improve the page.
University of Pennsylvania
Social
Science/Humanities PhD Field Supported:
Philosophy, History and Sociology of
Science, Anthropology, English,
Sociology/Demography
Description of Program:
Humanities and social science
combined degree students pursue a degree in
two schools, the majority have been in
Wharton and the School of Arts and Science.
At some point during the MD/PhD they are
admitted to the combined degree program and
receive funding for the MD from the combined
degree office at Penn. This may be MSTP
funding or internal, but the students are
not privy to that information. To be
considered a combined degree student,
applicants must apply to the program before
they advance to dissertation status in the
PhD or early in the MD. Penn has extensive
faculty and administrative support for
MD/PhD students including mentoring,
internal research presentations called
‘grand rounds’, and supplemental funding
including funding for conference travel.
Combined degree students are supported by
the combined degree office at Penn no matter
what their PhD department is in. However,
coordination between schools at Penn is
notoriously administratively difficult so
combined degree students outside of the
medical school should be on top of all
paperwork and administrative details of
their funding and degree progress. The
combined degree office in the medical school
is enormously helpful in this matter, but
the student her or himself often has to
facilitate. This includes the application
process.
Structure of Program:
Penn’s program is a Medical
Scientist Training Program (MSTP). Students
can start in either school. Many student in
the School of Arts and Sciences start the
PhD first, often applying while a PhD
student, complete the coursework and exams
to advance to dissertation status, and then
do the first two years of medical school (at
Penn these are not entirely ‘pre-clinical’
since clinical years start in January of the
second year). They then return to
dissertation status, finish the PhD, and
then finish the MD after two years. Some
students have started with the MD for two
years and then finished the PhD before
returning to complete the MD. This depends
however on the PhD program’s ability to
defer PhD acceptances for two years, which
is less possible in SAS. Students in the MD
years are treated as a member of the
entering MD/PhD cohort with the expectation
that they will participate in the combined
degree ‘grand rounds’ and retreats with
everyone else.
Size of incoming joint
MD/PhD class: 20
Number of students in
the social sciences or humanities:
1-2
Number of graduates
from the SSH joint MD/PhD program:
10-20
Application Process:
Students can apply first to
the PhD, then while in graduate school,
apply as a combined degree student to the
medical school before they advance to
dissertation status. Alternatively, they can
apply to the combined degree program and the
PhD program at the same time, the combined
degree program will forward the application
to the PhD department. This type of
coordination is often lacking so the
applicant should provide the PhD department
independently with everything they need to
admit them and do all the customary things
that other PhD applicants do, including
visiting the department independently.
Applicants must remember that they are
really applying separately to the School of
Medicine’s combined degree program and to
the PhD program in either SAS or Wharton or
any of Penn’s other schools. This may mean
that you should visit the campus twice if
the combined degree program’s interviews do
not coincide with the PhD program usual
visiting days. Confirm this with the PhD
program, not only the combined degree
office.
Funding:
Students are funded for both
tuition and stipend by the combined degree
program while in medical school. While doing
the PhD the student is funded by their
department. The combined degree program
funds at the NIH level or above and will
supplement stipends during the PhD that are
lower than this level, which is typically
the case in SAS.
Contact information:
University of Pennsylvania
Medical Scientist Training Program
http://www.med.upenn.edu/mstp/index.shtml
Suite 100 Stemmler Hall
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6087
Lawrence (Skip) Brass, MD,
PhD
Associate Dean and Director
Email:
brass@mail.med.upenn.edu
Phone: 215-573-3540
Assistant: Barbara Zolotorow
(bzoloto2@mail.med.upenn.edu,
215-573-4669)
Maggie Krall
Director of Administration
Email:
krall@mail.med.upenn.edu
Phone: 215-898-8025
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