[Training Tuesday] - Weekly thread for questions about grad school, residency, and general career topics 01/18/2022

This is the place to ask questions about graduate school, training programs, or general basic career topics. If you are just learning about the field and want to know if it is something you should explore, this thread is probably the correct place for those first few questions on your mind.

Examples:

• "I majored in Surf Science and Technology in undergrad, is Medical Physics right for me?"
• "I can't decide between Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics..."
• "Do Medical Physicists get free CT scans for life?"
• "Masters vs. PhD"
• "How do I prepare for Residency interviews?"

Comments:

1. I applied to about 25 residency programs. I was trying to check and see which places have sent out emails and mark them off my list.

Does anyone remember what institution "**Residency in Therapeutic Medical Physics, Department of Radiation Oncology**" I applied on Dec-15th but that might not have been their deadline. I was using the google sheet too.

I believe one of the Ohio ones was listed like that... Case Western or Cleveland Clinic?

Does anyone know when Duke usually releases admissions decisions for PhD applicants?

Congrats on getting the interview! May I send you a PM to ask about the interview details?

sure!

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That interview on gradcafe was me actually! I meant to ask during my interview when decisions are released but was so nervous and forgot 😅

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I got the same email too! Curious what it means.

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Thank you very much! I hope grad admissions season is going well for you!!

yes I’m so nervous for results! we got this tho!!

But I'm told it's not too late to become a medical physicist. I need to seek employment in a medical physics role with less responsibility than a registrar would have, and build up my skills there. But I can't even find those kinds of jobs. Where do I need to start looking?

You had an overall grade of C+ or just C+ on one course? If you didn't get a residency/registar position you should look for assistant jobs on your region... email hospital/clinics/consulting groups and see if you get lucky.

An overall C+ grade for my thesis. Would you have any further advice to that? I've been emailing hospitals about technician/assistant positions for years now with no success. (There are only 6 hospitals with a medical physics department in my country though so maybe that's the main reason.)

Are the deadlines for 3 reference letters the same as applications (thus my applications are invalid), or is it acceptable to submit the letters (one letter in this case) somewhat late?

You could try to contact the institutes you applied to. Many institutes would download the applicants' profiles after deadlines, right before they start the screening sessions. So hurry up, you may still squeeze in some of them.

Try checking the FAQ for MP-RAP, I know you can submit your application without having the references, but I don't know the deadline of the references... You should ask this questions to MP-RAP directly by email. Also contact your missing reference and have him/her submit it NOW!

Maybe not super helpful, but have you checked your spam folder? One of the places I applied to sent an interview invite but it got flagged by my email for some reason.

Here are the most common responses I had when applying to residencies years back from most common to least common. I applied to as many as I was eligible to apply to given my MS so this is a decent number of programs worth of data.

1. Ghosted - No response or acknowledgment of application. We all used the common application process so I knew they received the application
2. Generic response - Something like "We received significantly more applications than any other year and will be going through them soon." These either followed up with a rejection email or interview invite.
3. Rejection generic response - Like #2 but with no thread of hope.
4. Interview invite - The least common of responses but definitely the best! This includes either phone or on site. I guess its mostly Zoom interviews now?

I would say around 40-50% of programs just ghosted in my year. I got interviews at 20-25% of programs I applied to. I heard from all but one of the programs that I interviewed at between mid December and end of January with most of my on-site interviews in February. There was a program that contacted me for an interview late February and were clearly rushing their interview process which was not a good sign.

Keep in mind, this was before covid so I'm not sure how the timelines may have changed for these programs. I think match day is similar around March 20ish.

This spreadsheet is out there and helps keeping track of a lot of the programs

Based on my program, there are a couple of possibilities. Sometimes we've met to discuss candidates only to discover that one or more of us hadn't finished reviewing files, so we've postponed discussing those candidates for a week or two, and I could imagine it could be longer, under unusual circumstances (illness, death in the family, etc.). The other possibility is that some candidates were clearly not going to be invited for an interview, some who clearly were going to be invited for an interview, and others we wanted to have another meeting to discuss more. Or is it possible that one of your letters arrived late, so review of your file was postponed?

Possibly some programs plan to interview a specific number of candidates, so once they get responses back from their first invitations, then the know how many more invitations to send out.

Just wanted to add that LSU does provide a stipend for their MS students. It's a 3-year program and you work as a TA or RA. The stipend isn't much, but it was a huge plus for me to not need more student loans.

I don't know many masters programs that have significant funding. I (and most everyone I know) took out pretty substantial loans to attend our programs.

There is a recent post on this subreddit reviewing the GT online program you might be interested in.

I don't know of any part time programs but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Depending on the program, you may not have much time to even work part time or you would need a pretty flexible schedule due to clinic tasks and labs that occur afterhours. Honestly, I don't know much about working during a MS program since we were discouraged to do so. Some of the very clinical programs will pay their grad students for clinic work like QAs and such which seems like the ideal situation. This is only some and not all.

So it makes sense that you have to take out loans for the education but how do you afford to live during a two-year education program without any form of income? I'm located in Baltimore currently and I see JHU has a MS in Medical Physics program and it costs 58K/year for tuition and then there are other costs such as insurance, transportation, etc. Do most people take out cost of living loans?

Are you sure JHU is CAMPEP accredited? If you want to work in the US, you should try to find a CAMPEP-accredited program. There is sometimes lag between when a new program is approved and when it appears on the list: https://www.campep.org/campeplstgrad.asp

Is CAMPEP mostly for those who want to go into residency? If I want to just stop at the Masters level would I need it to be accredited?

If you don't plan to become board certified, then you don't need a residency. But your job options without board certified will be limited.

Got it, I just checked a job listing in my area and I didn't notice that it required board certification. So that means I would have to go to only the schools on this list: https://www.campep.org/campeplstgrad.asp

Almost all job listings will want board certification or board eligible with a contingency of you completing within a year or two of hire. The only non ABR certified positions I can think of would be physics assistants but those don’t even need a specialized degree and it pays significantly less. Or a non-clinical position may not require certification but most of those people I’ve worked with over the years are certified and spent years in the clinic before branching out.

Thats pretty steep. Is that in state or out of state?

For me, I went to an out of state program, took out the max federal loans I could, and kept the extra for living expenses, food, etc. I was pretty young and right out of undergrad (lots of loans there too) with no savings or income but I was very accustomed to living a broke life. I can see how this could be much more challenging if you had a family or other responsibilities.

I certainly do not recommend that method, but its what I chose to do and it worked out for me in the end. If I had to do it over, I would go to an in-state program which cost around 35% of what I paid for out of state, and I would have worked harder in undergrad to go in with a savings of some sort.

So Johns Hopkins is a private institution. I live in Maryland and oddly enough that is the only place that even offers a MS in Medical Physics. University of Maryland has a residency program but that relies on you already having the MS.

It is very difficult to be able to do all training and get a job in a single location. Most people entering this field end up in different locations for school, residency, and first job. This is a very competitive field with limited accredited positions relative to the number of applicants. You should be applying almost everywhere you can if you want a good chance of getting accepted somewhere.

For non CAMPEP accredited programs, it may be worth reaching out to see if they are seeking accreditation and where they are in the process. If you are a student when they become accredited, you completed an accredited program and are eligible for residency and boards.

OHSU is pretty well known for wanting to keep their top students forever.

What advice can you give going into graduate school interviews, especially those over Zoom? What are some common questions that are asked?

I think the best preparation you can do is to come up with questions for the interviewers. They can be questions about research, ways the program might change, where graduates end up, the geographic area, or pretty much anything else. Asking specifics about the program shows that you're interested, in addition to you getting info that you want.

When I applied for my masters program I was asked about things like

• Why medical physics?
• Tell me about yourself.
• Hobbies
• Strengths and weaknesses
• My undergrad research
• [deleted]

CAMPEP requirement is most important if ABR is your end goal (which it probably is if in US). Another top priority is making sure the program offers the type of education you are most interested in. Clinical vs. academic, for example. If going the clinical route, check into what their curriculum looks like and how much hands on experience you actually get.

The rest of my list is pretty much the same as u/Gotterdam so I won't waste space repeating. Adding to his 5th point, school prestige is a bit different in our field. MD Anderson and Wisconsin are known for their research programs while Kentucky, Oklahoma, and LSU are known for their clinical programs. I didn't know this before I was in the field and wished I knew earlier!

1. Is the program CAMPEP?
2. What are their statistics for matching students to residency?
3. What level of funding do students get, and what work do students have to do to get this funding (TA, RA)?
4. Are the faculty that will be looking for students doing research you are interested in?
5. How prestigious is the institution. Note: this is not as important as it would be for "normal physics" but going to a place like Wisconsin or MD Anderson will get you so many connections that will be very valuable to you.