So what is considered a "high research" applicant?

[JActOfWarren]

So, I understand the general consensus to getting into to big name medical schools such Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc. is not only being "creme de la creme" in terms of GPA, MCAT, and civil service, but being a "high research" applicant, which is understandable. The latter institutions have high endowment dollars to churn out results, and having a student well versed in research seems obligatory to the mission of those schools. But what is a high research applicant exactly?

The reason why I ask is because a PhD candidate who is a TA at my uni, 2 friends, and I were casually discussing it yesterday while grabbing lunch. Let's face it. I understand there are some brilliant high school and freshman college students in the US who do novel work, but as a freshman, the majority of students are taking Biology I & II, and Gen Chem I and II the first year. It's hard to churn out high quality work when you're just learning the basics of dynein arms, etc. I find it hard that most professors would be receptive to letting a freshman jump in at 18 years old in the lab without starting off with grunt work, like washing dishes.

Unless you take a gap year, that leaves three years on the table to produce high quality research. I know a lot of PhD professors who have knowledge galore and teach like 1-2 classes a semester that produce limited work in three years, it's just not a lot of time in the research world...let alone a student trying to study for an MCAT, get his/her bachelor's degree, and do rounds of civil service/extracurriculars (not to mention jobs for some).

There are exceptions, and I know of phenomenal students, but what type of research exactly are those schools wanting? For example, at the time of application (next cycle, hopefully), I'll have research done in:

-Genomics 1.5yrs- The only reason why I got it is because I took programming in high school and the geneticist faculty needed scripting done to assess his gene data. It felt more like applied programming, but I learned a lot about genetics and evolution along the way. I got it freshman year because it was more programming than biology.

-Summer research in nephrology at a DO school like 20 min away from my house- I just informally e-mailed all the faculty and landed lucky with 1 e-mail reply out of like 30 attempts. Did 5 hours a day, M-F for 1/2 of May, June, July, and the first week of August before I had to go back to school

-Prospective: Applied Microbiology with a professor that likes me. This will probably be for a year, ~4-5 hours a week.

Am I a high research applicant? I sure as hell don't feel like it. I feel normal, haha. I'm not published, and I don't see me getting published at all. My application is more focused on civil service and maintaining my numbers. I'm sure I'll get in somewhere in-state/semi-reach if I maintain my performance, but is it really dream school worthy?

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[Ismet]

You have very solid research experience. Yeah there are a handful of brilliant people out there, but most applicants to a research-focused school have a similar research experience as you (or less). My school likes to see research, and you have the hours, I just hope you have good experience to go along with those hours (aka actually participating in research and not doing scutwork). Publications aren't necessary. I think when I applied I had an abstract submitted and a few poster presentations, and that was pretty much it. I too did a summer research internship, and 1.5 years of bench research culminating in a thesis.

 

[JActOfWarren]

You have very solid research experience. Yeah there are a handful of brilliant people out there, but most applicants to a research-focused school have a similar research experience as you (or less). My school likes to see research, and you have the hours, I just hope you have good experience to go along with those hours (aka actually participating in research and not doing scutwork). Publications aren't necessary. I think when I applied I had an abstract submitted and a few poster presentations, and that was pretty much it. I too did a summer research internship, and 1.5 years of bench research culminating in a thesis.

None of my research has involved that "grunt work" that I was speaking of. If we're excluding common courtesy at the end of the day before you lock the lab room, I've never been assigned to wash PCR dishes all day or hop around the lab and mark all the test tubes with a sharpie then good bye, etc (I've heard nasty stories from my friends, is that what you meant by "scutwork"?). My experiences are/will be:

Genomics-Actively firing up the scripting software from Day 1 and filtering results based on constraints imposed by the nature of the research..then interpreting them with faculty. I even wrote my own programs to do tasks, but in the world of computer science, that's not an accolade. It's just a measure of your participation in the project and your critical thinking.

Nephrology-Got to actually test physical kidneys (not human kidneys haha) with respect to the treatment plan/materials option, understand the physiology of the situation, relate the research question to the procedure of research, fail, and succeed and understand why both situations failed/worked with the methodology.

My micro research will be about proposing methods to chemically test relationships among bacterial secretions and how they affect the biofilms/colonization in a culture.

I do have a poster presentation for an on campus conference, and even won a judge award on it, like you did. I'm going to present this nephro stuff in a few weeks at the DO school actually, too. It's an official conference with a title and all, but hella informal.

 

[mimelim]

Research is about productivity. Unless you had dedicated time for research, nobody expects publications. That having been said, medical schools with big research dollars are looking for people who are productive in the research realm. The biggest problem is if you say that you spent a lot of time in a lab with little to nothing to show for it. Abstracts, posters, acknowledgements, publications are the formal on paper production markers. On the other hand, you can have none of those and have a fantastic LOR, "This guy took something that would have taken our lab of 16 people 2 years to crank through and finished it in 2 weeks because he reorganized the project and developed de-novo web based tools to make everyone more efficient" is a pretty big golden star on your application. I generally look for those things when I'm considering someone's research background.

On the other hand... If you want to talk about "high research". Sky is the limit. People that do clinical research can pump 10+ papers a year out. (working full time) There is an undergrad working with me, (well more like a just graduated high school student in his Summer before undergrad) that will probably finish the Summer with his name on 3-4 things, first author on a case report. Most of it isn't all that impressive to be perfectly honest. Obviously, basic science papers take a lot longer and tend to mean more. As far as time commitment, there are people that are ~30hrs/week during the school year, 70 hrs/week during the summer and they get things done and produce a lot. A more typical "high" applicant would be ~10-15 hours/week school year, 40-50hrs/week during the summer and maybe 1-1.5 abstracts/posters/publications per year worked.

Edit: As an aside, my foot into the research world was programming as well. Any paper that your code was used for a reasonable part of the project should get you an acknowledgement (not authorship) in the paper. And yes, that IS something that people do look for. It is a marketable skill, just like knowing a foreign language. I also always put that I am a capable programmer in C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python etc. People know that it is useful when they recruit you.

 

[Ismet]

None of my research has involved that "grunt work" that I was speaking of. If we're excluding common courtesy at the end of the day before you lock the lab room, I've never been assigned to wash PCR dishes all day or hop around the lab and mark all the test tubes with a sharpie then good bye, etc (I've heard nasty stories from my friends, is that what you meant by "scutwork"?). My experiences are/will be:

Genomics-Actively firing up the scripting software from Day 1 and filtering results based on constraints imposed by the nature of the research..then interpreting them with faculty. I even wrote my own programs to do tasks, but in the world of computer science, that's not an accolade. It's just a measure of your participation in the project and your critical thinking.

Nephrology-Got to actually test physical kidneys (not human kidneys haha) with respect to the treatment plan/materials option, understand the physiology of the situation, relate the research question to the procedure of research, fail, and succeed and understand why both situations failed/worked with the methodology.

My micro research will be about proposing methods to chemically test relationships among bacterial secretions and how they affect the biofilms/colonization in a culture.

I do have a poster presentation for an on campus conference, and even won a judge award on it, like you did. I'm going to present this nephro stuff in a few weeks at the DO school actually, too. It's an official conference with a title and all, but hella informal.

I think you're more than fine research-wise. mimelim above also made a good point about LORs. It looks a little suspicious if you do substantial research in a lab and don't have an LOR, so make sure you get one and make sure it's strong.

 

[JActOfWarren]

Research is about productivity. Unless you had dedicated time for research, nobody expects publications. That having been said, medical schools with big research dollars are looking for people who are productive in the research realm. The biggest problem is if you say that you spent a lot of time in a lab with little to nothing to show for it. Abstracts, posters, acknowledgements, publications are the formal on paper production markers. On the other hand, you can have none of those and have a fantastic LOR, "This guy took something that would have taken our lab of 16 people 2 years to crank through and finished it in 2 weeks because he reorganized the project and developed de-novo web based tools to make everyone more efficient is a pretty big golden star on your application." I generally look for those things when I'm considering someone's research background.

On the other hand... If you want to talk about "high research". Sky is the limit. People that do clinical research can pump 10+ papers a year out. There is an undergrad, (well more like a just graduated high school student in his Summer before undergrad) that will probably finish the Summer with his name on 3-4 things, first author on a case report. Most of it isn't all that impressive to be perfectly honest. Obviously, basic science papers take a lot longer and tend to mean more. As far as time commitment, there are people that are ~30hrs/week during the school year, 70 hrs/week during the summer and they get things done and produce a lot. A more typical "high" applicant would be ~10-15 hours/week school year, 40-50hrs/week during the summer and maybe 1-1.5 abstracts/posters/publications per year worked.

Edit: As an aside, my foot into the research world was programming as well. Any paper that your code was used for a reasonable part of the project should get you an acknowledgement (not authorship) in the paper. And yes, that IS something that people do look for. It is a marketable skill, just like knowing a foreign language. I also always put that I am a capable programmer in C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python etc. People know that it is useful when they recruit you.

Kudos to that kid, I guess. Must've had a pretty good AP Biology teacher to be getting his name all over content like that /sarcasm.

Also lol:

http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vladimir_Berezovskii, worked at Harvard forever, no where near that 10+/year paper level

https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/herbert-abrams?tab=publications, Stanford emeritus no where near that 10+/year level

Most of the staff don't hit 10+/year

Let's see. Assuming you invest 10 hours of your life a day, 7 days a week, no breaks, F everyone at the school/family/personal life even during holidays, you're looking at about 300 hours per medical publication. There are kids that apply on AMCAS and TMDSAS that do weak projects with 200 hours listed. C'mon.

Plus we're talking undergraduate admissions to medical school? Why is hitting 10+ clinical papers a year relevant to discussing high research applicants to medical school?

32 man years into 2 weeks...lol, did the research project in 0.12% the total time frame. Perfecting a project based on "de novo web tools" is more about computer science proficiency an algorithm efficiency than it is about interpreting the results on a biological level. It might give you a "well done sticker" in a senior level computer science class. I've taken 7 in my life time, including HS and college, excluding the entertainment hours that I program. It was/is my job. Maybe because I'm CS turned BME that I have this mindset, but every engineer on campus is expected to know some languages, even applied math/physics majors. If you don't know a language for a research project/class, you have pronto to learn the syntax. Also, I was told not to put programming language proficiency on an application by a CS major who goes to medical school, well because it's not that impressive. They have kids programming works of art now. Most of the syntax is related, and it's not a question of being "capable" in those languages, but more of, "do you understand the pros and cons of each language with respect to an objective" You can easily "learn" all those languages you listed with a very solid foundation in just C. Math example of syntax proficiency: Mathematica is good for symbology. MATLAB has a better ODE solver. Both run on pretty much the same syntax. Programming is the tool to do the research, not the objective of the research. You can program your own ODE solver using loops. The same structure as for loops in C.

 

[JActOfWarren]

I think you're more than fine research-wise. mimelim above also made a good point about LORs. It looks a little suspicious if you do substantial research in a lab and don't have an LOR, so make sure you get one and make sure it's strong.

I can easily get good LORs. I took 5 classes with one guy, and 3 of them were like ~10 people in the class, so he knew everyone on a personal level. The DO/PhD and I hit it off well, same with Mr. Genomics

 

[JActOfWarren]

I think you're more than fine research-wise. mimelim above also made a good point about LORs. It looks a little suspicious if you do substantial research in a lab and don't have an LOR, so make sure you get one and make sure it's strong.

My concern wasn't really the quality of the LOR, or my ability to get one, but more of: is my research experience/background decent enough to warrant an approachable probability of consideration for admissions into those "dream" schools. It was just out of curiosity. I'm more than 90% likely to go to a public/in state school, but while reflecting on my application, I thought "Oh what the hell, might as well pursue a chance at those institutions if the numbers match and I can fit in with the crowd that traditionally gets in".

 

[Ismet]

My concern wasn't really the quality of the LOR, or my ability to get one, but more of: is my research experience/background decent enough to warrant an approachable probability of consideration for admissions into those "dream" schools. It was just out of curiosity. I'm more than 90% likely to go to a public/in state school, but while reflecting on my application, I thought "Oh what the hell, might as well pursue a chance at those institutions if the numbers match and I can fit in with the crowd that traditionally gets in".

I can really only speak about my school, which is a top 20 research school based on USNews, but you have a comparable amount of research to the typical applicants we get.

 

[mimelim]

32 man years into 2 weeks...lol, did the research project in 0.12% the total time frame. Perfecting a project based on "de novo web tools" is more about computer science proficiency than it is about interpreting the results on a biological level. It might give you a "well done sticker" in a computer science class. I've taken 7 in my life time, including HS and college, excluding the entertainment hours that I program. It was/is my job. Maybe because I'm CS turned BME, but every engineer on campus is expected to know some languages, even applied math/physics majors. If you don't know a language for a research project/class, you have pronto to learn the syntax. Also, I was told not to put programming language proficiency on an application by a CS major who goes to medical school, well because it's not that impressive. They have kids programming works of art now. Most of the syntax is related, and it's not a question of being "capable" in those languages, but more of, "do you understand the pros and cons of each language with respect to an objective". Math example: Mathematica is good for symbology. MATLAB has a better ODE solver. Both run on pretty much the same syntax. Programming is the tool to do the research, not the objective of the research.

Okay, let me rewind. I applied to medical school with a 3.4 GPA with research as the primary calling card in my application. I interviewed at every top 10 school that I applied to. I matched at my top choice program in Vascular Surgery with research again being my biggest calling card. I had multiple high impact journal publications in undergrad and medical school. I know how this works. I also was on the medical school admissions committee and now review our residency applications at a major research institution.

The post that I quoted is a CS major perspective on coding. Programming is a tool. I have stated this on multiple occasions in prior posts here. I did not imply otherwise anywhere in my post. People who can program are a dime a dozen. People who can affect the course of projects by applying their programming are not. People who produce something substantive with their programming are not common. I have worked with a dozen or so students, many of them from a CS background. Almost universally, they are far superior programmers than I am. That doesn't make them useful. You have to know the science (and later medicine) as well as work flow and how to program to get things done quickly and efficiently. Just because the tools you build are rudimentary from a CS standpoint doesn't mean they aren't incredibly powerful. It doesn't matter if a CS major could have done it better. They didn't. This isn't a computer science class.

As for not putting it on your application. Every admissions committee member looks for different things and values different things. I know that I was selected out because I put that on my application. I know that I never looked for another lab position again in undergrad after someone wrote that about me. People were clamoring for someone willing to work hard, had a basic programming background and knew the science. I know that from where I'm sitting in my current residency position, I want to hire the best future Vascular Surgery trainee, but a huge plus will be that they are proficient coders.

 

[JActOfWarren]

I can really only speak about my school, which is a top 20 research school based on USNews, but you have a comparable amount of research to the typical applicants we get.

Lolz, I went to US News, found the research list, scrolled down to 20. Went and did a reverse countdown from 20 to 1, nodded my head all the way as I read the names. Kudos brother.

 

[DrEnderW]

That is good research experience, no doubt. However, I agree with @mimelim that it is absolutely not high level research experience or output.

There are definitely people with pubs and lots of poster presentations at conferences by the time they apply to med school, with or without a gap year. I worked in 3 labs, had 2 publications, and about 5 conference presentations when applying and know a ton of people (colleagues, co-authors, fellow students, family members) that have more than that, even at low tier/unranked med schools or still in undergrad.

 

[JActOfWarren]

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The post that I quoted is a CS major perspective on coding. Programming is a tool. I have stated this on multiple occasions in prior posts here. I did not imply otherwise anywhere in my post. People who can program are a dime a dozen. People who can affect the course of projects by applying their programming are not. People who produce something substantive with their programming are not common. I have worked with a dozen or so students, many of them from a CS background. Almost universally, they are far superior programmers than I am. That doesn't make them useful. You have to know the science (and later medicine) as well as work flow and how to program to get things done quickly and efficiently. Just because the tools you build are rudimentary from a CS standpoint doesn't mean they aren't incredibly powerful. It doesn't matter if a CS major could have done it better. They didn't. This isn't a computer science class.

As for not putting it on your application. Every admissions committee member looks for different things and values different things. I know that I was selected out because I put that on my application. I know that I never looked for another lab position again in undergrad after someone wrote that about me. People were clamoring for someone willing to work hard, had a basic programming background and knew the science. I know that from where I'm sitting in my current residency position, I want to hire the best future Vascular Surgery trainee, but a huge plus will be that they are proficient coders.

Congrats on the accomplished background, getting that surgery gig you always, and very nice ethos and all, but not interested in your life story. Still giggling at them "de novo web tools" that turn 32 man years into 2 weeks.

With respect to programming making someone a God in terms of research positions and never finding a lab position ever again, there are so many BME, Computational/Mathematical Biology, Genetics (if it's done at a good school), and even non biological sciences pre-med that know programming because of their original major candidates-all of the latter "know the science", and have the prospect for "medicine", and are "decent" if not good programmers. Not impressed.

I don't even know why I'm having this debate. Athe end of the day, I just wanted to know where my work stood with respect to admissions standards. I rest assure, my participation despite not being 18 years old fresh out of HS and slapping my name on 3-4 things was fruitful, and I have a good insight on the scientific method.

 

[JActOfWarren]

That is good research experience, no doubt. However, I agree with @mimelim that it is absolutely not high level research experience or output.

There are definitely people with pubs and lots of poster presentations at conferences by the time they apply to med school, with or without a gap year. I worked in 3 labs, had 2 publications, and about 5 conference presentations when applying and know a ton of people (colleagues, co-authors, fellow students, family members) that have more than that, even at low tier/unranked med schools or still in undergrad.

Thank you. A succinct explanation answering the question at hand.
EDIT: Just curious, this is obviously with SURFs, right? Fruitful tenures with 3 labs during the school year is a reach, no? I go to a D1 research school, and I know literally like 1 kid who has stats like that, and his goal is gunning for just a PhD in his field at a tech school like MIT/CMU,CalTech...and it's not even medicine/biology related(mechanical). He did CLEP to reduce his per semester load to make time, and he doesn't have to volunteer or worry about an MCAT.

7 day work week: assuming zombies running on 6 hours of sleep forever 24/7/365, takes 2 hours a day to do intermediate tasks like walking to class, getting ready, buying garbage, eating, defecating, urinating, etc. Assuming F family, entertainment, sex, friends, personal interests deviating from medicine, relationships, etc. all for 4 years, in the name of medicine.

*168 hours allotted in a week.
*142 hours left after doing menial scrub tasks like walking and eating.
*100 hours left after sleep.
*Assume 15 hour class load per semester if not gunner trying to look nice by doing 18+, 85 hours left after attending class.
*Assume studying for 30 hours, 55 hours left after school.
*Assume 5 hours of volunteer a week, 50 hours left.
*Assume in class labs+report writing/etc. other projects, 15 hours a week. 35 hours left.
*Extracurriculars and extraneous civil service like fund raising, 5 hours a week.
*Assume wanting to not get a Carribean-esque score on MCAT, studies MCAT...
*Assuming no job needed, not even part time
*Assuming not Archimedes in a bath tub shouting Eureka and doesn't hit serendipity every time he thinks of research idea....looks like there's no time left to always research in 3 labs and get meaningful results.

 

[mimelim]

Congrats on the accomplished background, getting that surgery gig you always, and very nice ethos and all, but not interested in your life story. Still giggling at them "de novo web tools" that turn 32 man years into 2 weeks.

With respect to programming making someone a God in terms of research positions and never finding a lab position ever again, there are so many BME, Computational/Mathematical Biology, Genetics (if it's done at a good school), and even non biological sciences pre-med that know programming because of their original major candidates-all of the latter "know the science", and have the prospect for "medicine", and are "decent" if not good programmers. Not impressed.

I don't even know why I'm having this debate. Athe end of the day, I just wanted to know where my work stood with respect to admissions standards. I rest assure, my participation despite not being 18 years old fresh out of HS and slapping my name on 3-4 things was fruitful, and I have a good insight on the scientific method.

I posted my background because half of figuring this stuff out is knowing your sources. If you disagree that who you get your information from is important, I don't really know what to tell you. I have a background in research and the interface with CS. I also have an admissions perspective on evaluating research. What I say is clearly my opinion and doesn't represent every admissions committee out there, but I don't think I have tried to speak for them here. I assume that you came to SDN to ask people's opinions, but maybe not.

Sorry, my experience was Wash U in St. Louis, Northwestern and Harvard. As far as I know we had decent genetics programs given that that was my area of focus in undergrad. We always had a hard time finding people who could develop good tools that could code and understood the science well enough. I know because we went looking in the BME/CS departments for people. Now in the hospital with a real budget, it is a lot easier, but still not a trivial process and certainly reviewing what would be the crem de la crem of applicants, it is rare that I see this skill set listed.


Edit: You spend 60 hours/week doing school work taking 15 credit hours?

Edit2: I don't really have the inclination to debate any of these particular points. I assumed that you might value getting my opinion (in addition to others) based on our backgrounds in this. If you don't, please just disregard this. In the end, it is my opinion, *shrug*

 

[JActOfWarren]

Edit: You seriously spend 60 hours/week doing school work taking 15 credit hours?

Yes, and that's why my GPA isn't/won't be anything near a 3.4

Shave 15 for attendance, you have 45 to study.

Ask anyone taking Pchem (3), Partial Diff(3), Circuits (3), QChem (3) (btw, lab for Qchem is 8 hours a week mandatory looped in the class, 0 credit hours, just sayin'), and a Molecular Cell Biology class (3) (for 15 total) if they think 45 isn't sufficient to

A) Master content
B) Do well academically
C) Not develop slob habits

Plus, c'mon Mr. Harvard/Northwestern/WashU. You should know those curricula are geared towards problem solving and critical thinking. It takes a lot of time to master content on the superficial level before you can apply it to problem solving.

By the way that was a numerical estimate excluding fostering personal relationships and developing my psyche from a social perspective (i.e, that sarcastic F relationships, F family....tidbit)

 

[Ismet]

Yes, and that's why my GPA isn't/won't be anything near a 3.4

Shave 15 for attendance, you have 45 to study.

Ask anyone taking Pchem (3), Partial Diff(3), Circuits (3), QChem (3) (btw, lab for Qchem is 8 hours a week mandatory looped in the class, 0 credit hours, just sayin'), and a Molecular Cell Biology class (3) (for 15 total) if they think 45 isn't sufficient to

A) Master content
B) Do well academically
C) Not develop slob habits

Plus, c'mon Mr. Harvard/Northwestern/WashU. You should know those curricula are geared towards problem solving and critical thinking. It takes a lot of time to master content on the superficial level before you can apply it to problem solving.

By the way that was a numerical estimate excluding fostering personal relationships and developing my psyche from a social perspective (i.e, that sarcastic F relationships, F family....tidbit)

No need for personal jabs against someone who's just trying to help you out. If you come off this defensive and arrogant in interviews, no amount of research will help you.

 

[JActOfWarren]

No need for personal jabs against someone who's just trying to help you out. If you come off this defensive and arrogant in interviews, no amount of research will help you.

Do you really think I'm going to act the same way I do online on an internet forum in basketball shorts and a t-shirt with a guy telling me he's from Harvard as I do in a real life interview dressed in a 3-piece suit with some faculty guy named Dr. Bob Schwartz with my application in hand? Call it immoral, unethical, dishonest, etc., but it's reality. The way I act in front of my mother when I visit her in the summer is different than the way I act on Friday and Saturday nights.

 

[Ismet]

Do you really think I'm going to act the same way I do online on an internet forum in basketball shorts and a t-shirt with a guy telling me he's from Harvard as I do in a real life interview dressed in a 3-piece suit with some faculty guy named Dr. Bob Schwartz with my application in hand? Call it immoral, unethical, dishonest, etc., but it's reality. The way I act in front of my mother when I visit her in the summer is different than the way I act on Friday and Saturday nights.

Hopefully you can fake it as well as you think you can.

 

[mimelim]

Yes, and that's why my GPA isn't/won't be anything near a 3.4

Shave 15 for attendance, you have 45 to study.

Ask anyone taking Pchem (3), Partial Diff(3), Circuits (3), QChem (3) (btw, lab for Qchem is 8 hours a week mandatory looped in the class, 0 credit hours, just sayin'), and a Molecular Cell Biology class (3) (for 15 total) if they think 45 isn't sufficient to

A) Master content
B) Do well academically
C) Not develop slob habits

Plus, c'mon Mr. Harvard/Northwestern/WashU. You should know those curricula are geared towards problem solving and critical thinking. It takes a lot of time to master content on the superficial level before you can apply it to problem solving.

By the way that was a numerical estimate excluding fostering personal relationships and developing my psyche from a social perspective (i.e, that sarcastic F relationships, F family....tidbit)

I was a Physics major. I don't think I ever took less than 18 hours of course work a semester. There were too many classes that were interesting to not take while I was there. I know what most of those classes are like (minus QChem, I have no idea what that is). Those curricula are all about problem solving and critical thinking and in my experience (limited to n=1 of course) take up a lot less time than memorization based classes which I didn't do fantastic in. To be honest, I was more focused on my future wife at the time than to worry about my 3.4. *shrug* we each have our different priorities. Yours is your GPA. Mine was my research and my relationships. Neither is wrong or "more correct". There is more than one way to get into medical school.

I'm just going to say, do yourself the favor and put something about technical proficiency on your app. It IS a skill that you have. Maybe everyone around you in your classes has them, but most people don't have them and do them well. Some of us DO look for them.

 

[DrEnderW]

Thank you. A succinct explanation answering the question at hand.
EDIT: Just curious, this is obviously with SURFs, right? Fruitful tenures with 3 labs during the school year is a reach, no? I go to a D1 research school, and I know literally like 1 kid who has stats like that, and his goal is gunning for just a PhD in his field at a tech school like MIT/CMU,CalTech...and it's not even medicine/biology related(mechanical). He did CLEP to reduce his per semester load to make time, and he doesn't have to volunteer or worry about an MCAT.

7 day work week: assuming zombies running on 6 hours of sleep forever 24/7/365, takes 2 hours a day to do intermediate tasks like walking to class, getting ready, buying garbage, eating, defecating, urinating, etc. Assuming F family, entertainment, sex, friends, personal interests deviating from medicine, relationships, etc. all for 4 years, in the name of medicine.

*168 hours allotted in a week.
*142 hours left after doing menial scrub tasks like walking and eating.
*100 hours left after sleep.
*Assume 15 hour class load per semester if not gunner trying to look nice by doing 18+, 85 hours left after attending class.
*Assume studying for 30 hours, 55 hours left after school.
*Assume 5 hours of volunteer a week, 50 hours left.
*Assume in class labs+report writing/etc. other projects, 15 hours a week. 35 hours left.
*Extracurriculars and extraneous civil service like fund raising, 5 hours a week.
*Assume wanting to not get a Carribean-esque score on MCAT, studies MCAT...
*Assuming no job needed, not even part time
*Assuming not Archimedes in a bath tub shouting Eureka and doesn't hit serendipity every time he thinks of research idea....looks like there's no time left to always research in 3 labs and get meaningful results.

Yup, the majority of my productivity was heavy research in the summers after all four years (also did a gap research yr). With that being said, I did research throughout junior/senior academic years as well.

I played a varsity sport too and tutored so time was pretty awful. The 3 labs did not overlap in time. I was very fortunate to go to an amazing liberal arts school where students can take charge of significant projects. Publishing there as a undergrad was common in my department.

 

[centillion]

Oh lord the annoying undertones in OP's comments on this thread

You don't need to be Watson and Crick to do meaningful research as an undergrad.
Chill out.

 

[Optimus-Prime]

awfully cocky