Welcome to UCSD

ACADEMIC RANKINGS
UCSD was named the “hottest” institution in the nation for students to study science by Newsweek and the 2006 Kaplan/Newsweek College Guide.
UCSD ranks 7th in the nation in National Academy of Sciences membership. (The top universities, in rank order, are: Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, Princeton , Caltech, UCSD, Yale, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison , Univ. of Chicago and Univ. of Washington.)
U.S. News and World Report ranks UCSD as 7th best public university in the nation, and 32nd among the nation’s top 50 universities.
UCSD was ranked the 4th best university in the nation by the Washington Monthly’s 2007 College Guide, based on the positive impact the university has had on the country.
The journal Foreign Policy ranked UCSD 9th in the nation for international relations studies and 10th for international public policy studies.
The National Research Council ranks UCSD 10th in the nation in the quality of its faculty and graduate programs. The NRC ranks oceanography and neurosciences 1st in the nation.
Kiplinger's Personal Finance ranks UCSD 11th nationally for best values in public colleges in the country. The Princeton Review 2007 edition of America’s Best Value Colleges also lists UCSD among 150 “best values.
The 2007 Academic Rankings of World Universities conducted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China ranked UCSD 14th internationally.

The Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of California, San Diego prepares students to be physician-scientists. Clinical instruction in the UCSD School of Medicine is combined with research education in a graduate program. Trainees earn both M.D. and Ph.D.degrees. Here, the variety of teaching hospitals, breadth of research faculty, scope of resources in the San Diego biomedical community, and beauty of the surroundings provide a unique environment to train physician-scientists.

Students gain expertise in three major areas of academic medicine: research, teaching, and clinical care. Training includes learning to apply the scientific method, thinking imaginatively and creatively, reading critically, and preparing to work as an independent physician-scientist. The UCSD MSTP has been supported by the National Institutes of Health from 1974 onward. Since the program's inception, 90% of graduates have obtained positions as physician-scientists at academic health centers or in research institutes.

In addition to our Medical Scientist Training Program, the UCSD School of Medicine is committed to enhancing all types of Physician-Scientist Training, at every level.  A separate office of the Associate Dean for Physician Scientist Training coordinates these School-wide efforts.

We hope that you will find this website, prepared by our current students, useful for learning more about our program.

Paul A. Insel, M.D., Director
mstp@ucsd.edu