I just got out of a meeting with the Dean of Graduate Studies at UMC. He was wanting to talk about my summer lab rotations, but was unaware that I have already been in contact with a physiology faculty member about them. This made our meeting superfluous, but we had a nice little chat, and I was able to talk to him about an issue I've been thinking about.

At UMC, the norm is to have an MD/PhD student complete the first two years of medical school (the basic sciences component), then get a PhD in three years, then return to the clinical portion of medical school. I thought this made sense and was a good setup. Then I started reading about the dual degree programs at other schools, and found out that some of them have students leave to go to graduate school after three years in medical school, instead of two.

Maybe it's because I lack knowledge about many aspects of the program, but to me, that sounds infinitely more appealing. The advantages I see of going this route are as follows:

1) There is a huge correlation between the second and third years of medical school, and it would be helpful to not have three years separating them. During the second year, you learn all about pathology and pathophysiology, and in third year, you apply that knowledge in the clinic.

2) One of the things I thought would be incredibly difficult about the program was not being able to do clinicals with my classmates. This would solve that problem. Everyone is spread out doing random stuff during fourth year, so I probably won't be with classmates then regardless.

3) After third year, there is a good chance that I will have decided upon a medical specialty, and I believe that would help to give my research a direction.

4) Fourth year is much less busy than third year, and if for some reason I were unable to finish my PhD work in the alloted time, I would have more flexibility in working around my rotations to complete the work.

These are the salient advantages that come to mind. The only disadvantage that I can think of currently is that I will be clinically rusty coming back into fourth year, and some of those rotations will likely be significant, especially if they're in a field in which I'm considering specializing. I think this wouldn't be hard to work around. I would just have to schedule a meaningless rotation first to get my clinical footing. If I came back before third year I would have to do the same thing anyway.