Dr. Sam Spellicy's Journey as MD/PhD at Medical College of Georgia

Her MD-PhD training curriculum follows the “2-4-2” track, which reflects the number of years that she dedicates to each portion MD-PhD program. The three parts of the program are didactic medical studies, Ph.D. training, and clinical training. Although the “2-4-2” track is the conventional structure for most MD-PhD programs, there are also numerous programs that offer a different path. 

Dr. Spellicy is now applying to neurosurgery residencies. Over the next few months, residency programs will be reaching out to her to interview and she will be notified of their decision by March. 

Background about Dr. Spellicy:

In high school, Dr. Spellicy had always been interested in science and research, however, her school did not offer many AP science courses, so she got more exposure to English and writing courses. Since she was good at English, she initially decided to pursue a  Government Politics and Journalism degree at UMD. Reflecting on this decision,  she says that her thinking was “if I’m good at this then maybe that’s what I should do” but looking back she recommends that individuals think more about “what they actually enjoy” when deciding about their majors or future career paths. Dr. Spellicy recalls how her organic chemistry courses made more sense to her than spelling in her journalism courses. As she fell in love with science Dr. Spellicy had to keep asking for UMD departmental permission to take science classes. After the third semester of asking to take science classes they said, why don’t you just be a science major? That is what Dr. Spellicy did; she became a Physiology and Neurobiology Specialization at UMD.

Why did you choose MD/PhD over doing MD and PhD?

During her junior year at UMD, she started working in Dr. Carleton’s science lab of general biology and vision and earned a departmental thesis for her work there. This experience solidified her interest in pursuing a PhD. Her first formal introduction to medicine was during class at Maryland that included a lot of neuroimaging. After that, she started considering whether she wanted to go into medicine over a PhD. Torn between her two interests, she looked deeper into the various routes and realized that it was possible to do both the PhD and MD. For her, being involved in both was the “easy answer” that she was looking for.

How have your research interests evolved since your undergraduate lab experience?

Her research in undergrad was focused on answering the“fundamental questions about why things are the way they are and how things evolve.” She is now focusing on the therapeutic side of Neuroscience research in regards to stroke. In other words, she transitioned from basic science to more clinical science. 

How did you go choose which PhD/MD programs to apply to?

The first question Dr. Spellicy says you have to ask yourself when thinking about applying to graduate schools is: are geographically limited in any way? Is there a part of the country that you want to be in specifically or are you open to everywhere? 

Personally, she was open to everywhere. She narrowed down her initial search by limiting her application to schools following the “2-4-2” track. Due to financial reasons, she applied to a lot fewer programs than other students did. If Dr. Spellicy were to do it again, she said she would have taken out loans and applied to more places. She believes it is not worth limiting yourself on this momentous decision. For residency programs, she took her own advice and applied to everywhere she could possibly want to! 

Why did you choose your program?

The Medical College of Georgia offered a really unique option, in that you could do your MD and PhD in different cities and at different schools. For most programs, you would do the MD and PhD in the same city and at the same school. For example, for the Maryland MD/PhD program you would be in Baltimore for medical school and you would also conduct research in Baltimore. Then you would go back to Baltimore medical school for your last two years. For the medical college of Georgia, you could do your PhD in any Georgia state school. So she could go to five different universities within Georgia to do her PhD. Dr. Spellicy liked the flexibility of the program.

For the interviews and application process did the schools want you to know your research vision is ahead of time?

Dr. Sam Spellicy was very research-oriented, so she knew the path she wanted to take research-wise. However, she wishes she had done more clinical shadowing before medical school, as she wasn’t as well versed in that area, and she recalls the interviewers wanting her to express what MD fields she could picture herself in. She advises that going into the interview you have an understanding of different specialties, and have the ability to explain why you might be interested in a specific specialty. The research that you will be doing at the institution you are applying to is dependent on what research the faculty are doing. “If you come into the interview and say you want to study schizophrenia research but no one at the institution studies that then you might have just dug yourself a hole.” It is important to understand what the faculty does ahead of time.

Looking back, how would you advise someone to differentiate themself in the application process? 

Dr. Sam Spellicy recommends knowing your research inside and out for an interview. Even though she didn’t have an undergrad publication or a publication through her postbaccalaureate at NIH prior to her interviews for MD/PhD programs, she brought a piece of paper and a pen to the interview and taught the Ph.D. interviewer about her project. 

“I would sit down and write through it. It was almost like a chalk talk. People were really impressed with that. Knowing your research in and out to a level that you can almost do a mini-lecture on it went a long way to show them that it wasn’t an older graduate student project that I just hopped onto. I had my own ideas, I had my own project, and I knew what was going on.” 

She recommends practicing something like that with a friend or saying here let me explain something to you does this make sense.

What experiences did you wish you had more of during your undergraduate education?

Dr. Sam Spellicy said wishes she had done more clinical shadowing. This would have allowed her to know “more about the ins and outs of what a physician scientist’s life would look like in XYZ  specialty.“

“I’m going into neurosurgery and that might look a lot different than a physician-scientist going into neurology,” she says. She wished she understood what those eventual life careers could look like.

How did you choose your personal statement topic? 

The way she constructed her personal statement for medical school and residency applications was to start with her first paragraph with“something unique about me that might not have anything to do with science or medicine...anchoring first to something that’s unique about you is a great way to start.” In the first paragraph, she talked about being a non-science major and what that was like. Then she switched over to focus on her science major. “It kind of naturally flowed from there.” She talked about the clinical experiences she had done because that was something she was not as strong on so she wanted to at least highlight the ones she had done. For her MD/PhD application, there was a separate essay that she could use to write about her research experience, which was one of the reasons she didn’t fill the personal statement too much with research.

How would you describe the culture of your program?

Dr. Sam Spellicy’s medical school was in Augusta, Georgia and her Ph.D. was in Athens, Georgia. In her experience, everyone was cordial and supportive. Between students it was great, she recalled all her classmates joining facebook groups and GroupMes where everyone shared notes and tips. In these groups, if someone had a question many students would someone jump in with the answer. 

“It was a great environment in that respect. Something really cool there was not only the graduate students interacting with each other but the graduate students interacting with the faculty. The faculty almost treated you as peers, in terms of relationships. We just had fun talking to our professors, we’d hang out and talk about journals in journal clubs. It was a great environment that way too. You felt that no one was like I’m on a different plane than you, everyone could comfortably talk.”

Did you do research during your medical school years in the “2,4,2” structure?

Dr. Sam Spellicy says that a lot of programs will invite you to come early before med school starts and do a research rotation. So if medical school starts in July the school may ask you to come in June and do a research rotation before you start medical school. After this early summer experience, the students try to maintain the relationship they developed with the principal researchers, however, their engagement in the research overall is less intense when they are in medical school. She wasn’t able to come early, but she  did make a connection with the neurology department during her first year of medical school. This allowed her to do research with them throughout the first and second year on her own time. She was analyzing CT images of strokes and outlining lesions. It was something that she could just sit on her own computer, whenever it was convenient, like a work-from-home position. If a student were to be involved in a research project that required a lot of in-lab time she said that it may be a challenge “to go into a lab every day and run PCRs and do all this molecular stuff, but the analysis you could definitely do throughout the first two years.”

If you were an MD without the PhD, how much involvement can you do in research?

For students who did not initially enter the school as MD/PhD, but gradually recognize that they want to do research and may need a PhD to do it, some schools provide the option to flex into their PhD program after the second year of medical school. This will allow a student to be on track with the conventional MD/PhD pathway. Other students might complete all four years of medical school and decide that they want to do a PhD during their residency. In this case, there are some residencies and specialties that allow students to do a PhD with that program. Since a residency might be as long as 7 years, a PhD may be able to fit into that time. Dr. Spellicy also mentions you don’t really even need a PhD to do clinical research. There are a lot of MDs out there that do great clinical research without obtaining a PhD. 

What are the pros of getting a PhD?

With a PhD program, an individual becomes trained in experimental formation, analysis, statistics, and scientific writing. An advantage to getting a PhD is that there are four extra years to train all of that, as compared to your MD-only colleagues who probably are not able to solely dedicate that much time to becoming experts in research. Dr. Spellicy believes it is very beneficial to have “all that training condensed into one 4 year program.” When you’re trying to apply for a grant, sometimes having the PhD can increase your chances of getting funded. Still, obtaining funding is very person-specific. There are MDs who have been funded really well and have been doing their research for a long time. The purpose behind getting an MD/PhD is that you can get extra training and expertise and hopefully get rewarded with grant funding for that.

If you enjoyed hearing about Dr. Sam Spellicy’s journey in this post and want to know more about her current research she has a TedTalk explaining it in more depth. 

Dr. Spellicy encourages students who are interested in healthcare and an MD/PhD to follow @A_P_S_A on Twitter. This account posts webinars that are free for students to hop onto to get more information about pursuing a physician-scientist pathway.

Gus would be very grateful if you’d help spread the word about the blog by sending it to a pre-health friend or sharing it on Instagram or Snapchat. Thank you and see you next Tuesday! 

With care,

Gus

Editor: Olivia Stephens