Ben Ferguson, MD/PhD student
Age: 27
Hometown: Naperville, IL
College: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Major(s): Molecular & Integrative Physiology (Chemistry Minor)
Highlights of Pre-Med Career: Sang with No Strings Attached, a small jazz a cappella group; member of a social fraternity and pre-med club; organized blood drives and worked at local hospital; research in biochemistry and neuroscience labs.
Why medicine?
Medicine was not something I was very interested in until a relatively late point in my education. I was not one of those who woke up one day to an episode of epiphanic clarity and realized that medicine was my calling. My parents are both doctors, so while growing up I was, as a matter of then-standard operating procedure, determined not to be a doctor. When the science classes inevitably arrived in high school and college, though, my interest in the subject was too strong to ignore, and I gradually sensed that medicine was the best fit for me.
Why Pritzker?
A confession: My dad is a physician here. As a kid, I would come to work with him occasionally while he rounded on patients, and as I grew up I began to get a sense of what the University of Chicago was clearly all about: studying.
When I came here to interview, everything changed. I saw that people didn’t study all of the time. I saw that people laughed, and joked around with each other, and smiled, and were able to eat a hearty lunch, and did other things that I imagined medical students had absolutely no business doing. In general, I saw that medical school could be fun and stress-free and collaborative all at once.
The Pritzker Podcast
In the course of providing live chats to prospective students, another student and I gradually realized that there might be an additional, more thorough way to convey such basic information about Pritzker to our applicants. The admissions staff loved our idea of a podcast, and the Pritzker Podcast was born.
Putting such information in the form of a podcast allows prospective students to have access to this information in a personal way anywhere, anytime. It has also allowed us to bridge the inevitable gap that forms between a huge academic institution and an individual student.
Lab vs. Classroom?
One of Pritzker’s greatest strengths is its research atmosphere, with which come excellent physician-scientists eager to work with students, research topics in every imaginable area of science, and programs in place to allow students to pursue these very opportunities in depth. I chose to pursue a PhD through the Growth and Development Training Program (GDTP) after having worked with a faculty member through the Summer Research Program here. I became hooked after only 10 weeks of working in my lab, and I think it’s a testament to how enthusiastic faculty members here are in working with and mentoring medical students.
GDTP is a unique way for students who weren’t initially sure whether they’d want a career as a physician-scientist (or didn’t even know that this was of interest to them) to have the opportunity to pursue an advanced degree after starting medical school. Very few schools have such an established, well-funded program in place, and it’s an invaluable opportunity that many people don’t know about when they’re looking into Pritzker.
