Year off during med school: MPH or research year?

[Perpetually]

Hi everyone,

I am re-posting this on the Radiology forum as advised from the general allopathic forum.

After searching the forums, I could not find any recent threads addressing my specific question.

I am interested in radiology and also working in academics/ research in my career. If I take a year off between MS3 and 4, what do you all think will be more beneficial to help reach these career goals?

-Spend a year of doing research. Trying, hopefully, for publications and spending time in the radiology department. Hopefully I can get funding and not be in additional debt for this year.

-Spend a year getting an MPH (focus on quantitative methods/ biostats) at a top 5 MPH program. This will cost like 70k with living expenses ect.

Thanks and please let me know about your personal experiences if you pursued either of the above options yourself.

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[colbgw02]

There was a thread about a month ago about getting an MPH during radiology residency. It's lower down on the front page of this sub-forum. Minus the bit about distraction, which isn't relevant for you, I don't see how the degree helps you. And it definitely hurts inasmuch as it adds to your debt load.

The research year is entirely up to how much you care about research. Most academic radiologists didn't take a year off to do research, so it's clearly not necessary. But if you love research and believe it will help you get into a top-tier residency (which is more important to landing a professorship), then go for it.

 

[JoshSt]

OP,

To reinforce my post in the other forum, I've been able to successfully balance schoolwork and radiology research without taking a year off. The fruits have been a couple of first author pubs in radiology journals with hopefully another by my ERAS deadline in ~3 months. I started at the beginning of MS2 and am now finishing up MS3 year.

My success story is very mild, I have a classmate who has like 6 first authors and 4 more secondary author radiology or rad-like pubs - all done without taking time off. It's all about finding connections.

Best of luck.