3 ms·

> I'm a graduating medical student with a master's in computer science. That's... actually really neat. What made you go for a graduate degree then on to med s

> I'm a graduating medical student with a master's in computer science. That's... actually really neat. What made you go for a graduate degree then on to med school, if you don't mind me asking?

sjg007 10y ago
I would guess that doctors have better career stability.
aabajian 10y ago
I actually got my master's in the middle of medical school (I took a leave of absence). My undergrad degree is in computer science as well. It's my long-term goal to start a radiology informatics company.
- alpha_squared 10y ago
  Thanks for answering! How do you feel among your peers? Performance-wise and general understanding of topics? Is there no noticeable difference or do you find that you're learning things from a different form of understanding? Sorry for all the questions, I think it's fascinating when people wind up in a very different field from one they've more formally studied in.
  - aabajian 10y ago
    Computer-science wise: I'm a rather good developer, according to my supervisors. I'm quite comfortable with Java, Python and a bit of Swift. I love writing code, starting with BASIC when I was 11 years old. Medicine-wise: I'm in the bottom quartile of my class. I'm terrible at sitting there and studying. It's a completely different mind set. I did really poorly on UMSLE Step 2 in particular; most med students do +20 points higher relative to Step 1...I did 40 points lower. That test is entirely memorization, we're talking memorizing immunization schedules for children, the screening guidelines for low-dose CT, the warning signs of an acute abdomen, and so on... In terms of benefits, I'm much faster at research data analysis. I'm doing imaging work and I can take a DICOM, convert it to NIfTI, run an algorithm in Python or MATLAB, and dump the results in under and hour. That kind of stuff is second-nature to me, but takes my fellow lab mates an indeterminate amount of time. I've written a number of 20-line scripts for my classmates that do basic stuff like vertical lookups in Excel and searching for files on the filesystem. Really simple stuff that would take a person a long time by hand. One more thing, the MCAT was a blast for me. It was a wonderful test. It emphasizes integration and application of what you've learned on novel problems, very much like computer science. The USMLEs were hell. I got 98th percentile on the MCAT; 40th percentile on the USMLE.

> I'm a graduating medical student with a master's in computer science. That's... actually really neat. What made you go for a graduate degree then on to med school, if you don't mind me asking?

sjg007 10y ago

I would guess that doctors have better career stability.

aabajian 10y ago

I actually got my master's in the middle of medical school (I took a leave of absence). My undergrad degree is in computer science as well. It's my long-term goal to start a radiology informatics company.

alpha_squared 10y ago
Thanks for answering! How do you feel among your peers? Performance-wise and general understanding of topics? Is there no noticeable difference or do you find that you're learning things from a different form of understanding? Sorry for all the questions, I think it's fascinating when people wind up in a very different field from one they've more formally studied in.
- aabajian 10y ago
  Computer-science wise: I'm a rather good developer, according to my supervisors. I'm quite comfortable with Java, Python and a bit of Swift. I love writing code, starting with BASIC when I was 11 years old. Medicine-wise: I'm in the bottom quartile of my class. I'm terrible at sitting there and studying. It's a completely different mind set. I did really poorly on UMSLE Step 2 in particular; most med students do +20 points higher relative to Step 1...I did 40 points lower. That test is entirely memorization, we're talking memorizing immunization schedules for children, the screening guidelines for low-dose CT, the warning signs of an acute abdomen, and so on... In terms of benefits, I'm much faster at research data analysis. I'm doing imaging work and I can take a DICOM, convert it to NIfTI, run an algorithm in Python or MATLAB, and dump the results in under and hour. That kind of stuff is second-nature to me, but takes my fellow lab mates an indeterminate amount of time. I've written a number of 20-line scripts for my classmates that do basic stuff like vertical lookups in Excel and searching for files on the filesystem. Really simple stuff that would take a person a long time by hand. One more thing, the MCAT was a blast for me. It was a wonderful test. It emphasizes integration and application of what you've learned on novel problems, very much like computer science. The USMLEs were hell. I got 98th percentile on the MCAT; 40th percentile on the USMLE.