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[lolpremed22]

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Would it be better to spend my summer at an REU such as amgen or apply for funding at my home institution and work in the lab I'm already working in full time? The program I'm talking about would eventually lead to me doing a poster at a conference at my school as well as be published in our undergraduate research journal (idk how much weight that holds)

 

[SpineResearcher]

I'm not sure why everyone is only discussing Nature as an impressive journal to publish in. Lancet, JAMA, and NEJM are all more prestigious journals if you're ranking by impact factor. Very competitive research could also be running a clinical trial, or a prospective cohort study. Getting published in the journals or speaking at the conferences of the top societies for any of the specialties could be very impressive. This could be Neurosurgery, Rheumatology, Infectious Disease, Radiology etc. Public Health research is also very relevant, and can also be published in the mentioned journals.

 

[aldol16]

I'm not sure why everyone is only discussing Nature as an impressive journal to publish in. Lancet, JAMA, and NEJM are all more prestigious journals if you're ranking by impact factor. Very competitive research could also be running a clinical trial, or a prospective cohort study. Getting published in the journals or speaking at the conferences of the top societies for any of the specialties could be very impressive. This could be Neurosurgery, Rheumatology, Infectious Disease, Radiology etc. Public Health research is also very relevant, and can also be published in the mentioned journals.

Probably because undergraduates are more likely than not to be involved in basic science research rather than clinical studies - most of the REU programs out there are in the basic sciences. It is no doubt prestigious to publish in those journals you mention but undergraduates are probably more likely to be published in basic science journals than in clinical journals.

 

[efle]

Would it be better to spend my summer at an REU such as amgen or apply for funding at my home institution and work in the lab I'm already working in full time? The program I'm talking about would eventually lead to me doing a poster at a conference at my school as well as be published in our undergraduate research journal (idk how much weight that holds)

Really either is a fine option, if you're happy with the project you're currently working on then just keep doing that full-time in summer rather than trying to jump into something new for 8 weeks. School symposiums are sort of the lowest level to be presenting at, but that's fine if you're just getting into research. Still shows some productivity.

 

[efle]

Probably because undergraduates are more likely than not to be involved in basic science research rather than clinical studies - most of the REU programs out there are in the basic sciences. It is no doubt prestigious to publish in those journals you mention but undergraduates are probably more likely to be published in basic science journals than in clinical journals.

QFT

Extremely easy to get yourself working on cells or fish or mice in a basic science lab. There's an entire listing of labs looking for undergrad labor in exchange for credits.

Can't just jump into a drug or device trial as a 20 year old that just finished some prereqs like that.

 

[popholdinitdown]

I have 4 clinical micro publications from my 3 summers of research... around 500-600 hours. Is this considered "impressive" ? Hoping to add on a first author pub this year during the gap year

 

[efle]

I have 4 clinical micro publications from my 3 summers of research... around 500-600 hours. Is this considered "impressive" ? Hoping to add on a first author pub this year during the gap year

What is a micro publication? Are you 2nd author on each?

 

[popholdinitdown]

What is a micro publication? Are you 2nd author on each?

Sorry I meant microbiology! I've been researching and volunteering in the same clinical lab in a major teaching hospital for the past 3 summers. I'm middle author for all of them. The highest are 2 3rd author pubs, 1 5th and 1 9th (lol).

 

[aldol16]

Sorry I meant microbiology! I've been researching and volunteering in the same clinical lab in a major teaching hospital for the past 3 summers. I'm middle author for all of them. The highest are 2 3rd author pubs, 1 5th and 1 9th (lol).

Having any sort of peer-reviewed publication is impressive for an undergrad. If you can talk intelligently about your contribution to it, the motivation for the work, and its implications for the field, then you are a very strong research applicant. Pubs are icing on the cake. A first-author pub in your specific case is the chocolate sprinkles on top of the icing on the cake.

 

[efle]

I should've picked up clinical research instead of basic sciences...

Pubs are more reliable and faster paced, but the role you can take as a newbie is diminished. Having been in both positions myself, I personally would rather be at the helm of my own small project in basic science than doing grunt work for clinical mid authorships with no role in designing anything.

Not that the clinical is bad. @popholdinitdown, having multiple mid authorships, is going to be above-average and I'm sure gained a lot of valuable experience. It's just a lot easier to put a young premed in control of something when you're working with cells or animals.

 

[SpineResearcher]

Pubs are more reliable and faster paced, but the role you can take as a newbie is diminished. Having been in both positions myself, I personally would rather be at the helm of my own small project in basic science than doing grunt work for clinical mid authorships with no role in designing anything.

Not that the clinical is bad. @popholdinitdown, having multiple mid authorships, is going to be above-average and I'm sure gained a lot of valuable experience. It's just a lot easier to put a young premed in control of something when you're working with cells or animals.

Yes, it is a lot easier to put a young premed in control of something when you're working with cells or animals, which is why I would argue that clinical research can make you stand out. @aldol16 I'm speaking from personal experience, I've applied this cycle. An example scenario in which an undergraduate can get published in a clinical journal is if he or she met a physician while working at a hospital and finds out the physician has ideas but doesn't want to do the work for it. From reading papers in any clinical journal, It isn't at all impossible for an undergraduate to learn how to write one. If you play a big role in a clinical project, it will be evident that you've dealt with the IRB and have had a significant amount of experience with medical ethics as well as patient contact. It just puts a lot of things together in one. In addition, any University's Public Health Department is normally a place to look for undergraduates who want to be involved in human research.

 

[efle]

Yes, it is a lot easier to put a young premed in control of something when you're working with cells or animals, which is why I would argue that clinical research can make you stand out. @aldol16 I'm speaking from personal experience, I've applied this cycle. An example scenario in which an undergraduate can get published in a clinical journal is if he or she met a physician while working at a hospital and finds out the physician has ideas but doesn't want to do the work for it. From reading papers in any clinical journal, It isn't at all impossible for an undergraduate to learn how to write one. If you play a big role in a clinical project, it will be evident that you've dealt with the IRB and have had a significant amount of experience with medical ethics as well as patient contact. It just puts a lot of things together in one. In addition, any University's Public Health Department is normally a place to look for undergraduates who want to be involved in human research.

You were in a very unique situation if you were first author of a patient-based study as an undergrad

 

[sat0ri]

Your statement was that some fields are likely to cite each other more than others. I'm saying that this isn't true. If you think this accounts for the wide variations in IFs across fields, then you know much less about research than you think. Nanotech is the hot topic right now so obviously there will be more work going on. More work going on = more papers = more citations going on in the field. That's why something like nanotech has journals with high IFs but emergency medicine does not.



Not sure what this quotation was supposed to support.

Trying reading source 21 and you'll realize you're completely wrong. I'll respond in full when I can.

 

[sat0ri]

If you think JACS typically publishes total syntheses, I really don't think you know what JACS publishes at all or you don't understand what's classified as total synthesis. JACS is a generalized, full-field journal. It publishes everything from structural biochem to catalysis to physical organic chemistry to materials science to synthesis. There is no unique emphasis on total synthesis. The unifying theme is that each work should contain results that are broadly applicable to the field and of interest to most of the readership (I don't know if you've ever seen the forms reviewers have to fill out but these are two criteria - the others are scientific validity and something else I don't remember off-hand). If you don't believe me, take a look at the current issue: http://pubs.acs.org/toc/jacsat/current. Not a single total synthesis paper from my cursory glance.

If your friend got rejected from Phil Baran directly (who I presume was the associate editor assigned to the paper), then I presume there was something wrong with the work or it was a total synthesis that wasn't complete. Editors don't reject papers all that often before sending out for review unless there's something obviously or egregiously wrong with them. At least not for JACS.

I think it's outrageous for someone who worked in a lab for a few years at the bachelor's level to presume to understand academia. I spent years in this field thinking long and hard about how to secure a tenure-track faculty position. I did go to a good school for my PhD and I am most familiar with getting faculty positions at the top private as well as top public universities. I have a few colleagues who went to mid-tier schools for faculty positions as well. Perhaps your professors did not go through the current labor marketplace. It's insane compared to 5 or even 10 years ago. Too many PhDs are graduating. The top students from the top groups will go on to the top schools as faculty. The good-to-mediocre students from the top groups (who still have first-author pubs in good journals) trickle down to the state schools or go into industry. When a faculty position has 300-400 applicants, it can afford to choose the candidates that have been the most productive and have published in the best journals. That's the best indicator of the candidate's success as a PI. A job at my institution opened up last year and there were indeed 400 applicants for it. The search committee interviewed 20 applicants for the job and they all had impeccable credentials. I counted not one without at least a first-author JACS pub. The one who was hired had multiple publications in Nature/Science from their PhD as well as post-doc days. My colleagues at mid-tier institutions have similar experiences.

I know all this because I did give serious thought to applying to faculty positions before deciding on medical school. While I obviously wanted to end up at a top-tier school, I also looked a mid-tier schools. The implicit requirements are simply too stringent. Too many qualified applicants. You think medical school admissions is hard - try securing a tenure-track faculty position.

Fair points on some of this though I'll disagree in other places. The main concession I will make now is that, yes I did not take into account that the field could be changing so my observations might not explain what it's like in the current environment. However, I do know 2 post-docs with nothing close to JACS/Angewandte (especially not nature, science etc), one of them has less than 7 publications now that I checked, and they poth got faculty positions and one got small NIH fuding. So if you're ok with a small lab, in a small unknown school and small state school (one of the bottom in the state), JACS is certainly not necessary.

Also, you're making quite a bit of assumptions about me, which is arrogant at best.

 

[aldol16]

Fair points on some of this though I'll disagree in other places. The main concession I will make now is that, yes I did not take into account that the field could be changing so my observations might not explain what it's like in the current environment. However, I do know 2 post-docs with nothing close to JACS/Angewandte (especially not nature, science etc), one of them has less than 7 publications now that I checked, and they poth got faculty positions and one got small NIH fuding. So if you're ok with a small lab, in a small unknown school and small state school (one of the bottom in the state), JACS is certainly not necessary.

Small programs also generally do not have strong research agendas. Most of their research faculty teach full-time and do research on the side with undergraduates. For the small programs with graduate schools, it becomes difficult to publish - it's hard to get your lab set up when your institution has little money to give you for a start-up package, you don't have access to the communal instruments that large research universities can afford (i.e. NMR and mass spec facilities, with full-time specialists to help you figure stuff out and maintain the instruments, EPR instruments, HPLCs, GC-MS, etc.). You can probably buy your own GC-MS if you're running a synthetic lab but you sure as hell aren't going to afford all of those instruments. You depend on the department to have those facilities with all the faculty contributing money towards buying those machines, maintenance, and the hiring of full-time specialists. Without these, you'll produce mediocre research and have to scramble for funding.

Big schools like Harvard can give starting PIs financial packages of $1-2 million just to start their lab up and hire graduate students/post-docs, etc. That's a huge advantage - and it's on top of any funding the PI brings. Plus you have access to state-of-the-art facilities that even mid-tier state schools don't have. That makes a huge difference in this day and age of research.

I will agree with your bolded statement above - if you are content with being at the bottom of academia, you don't need a JACS publication at all. You can probably push out one or two papers in open-access journals and apply for those positions.

Also, you're making quite a bit of assumptions about me, which is arrogant at best.

I'm not making any assumptions. Are these not you?
Significance of additional poster presentation?
MD & DO - REALITY CHECK: 3.78; MCAT TBD; Small Kingdom of red flags (e.g. 7 W's)
No-backsies? Research grad student threatening to not add co-authorship

I like knowing who I'm talking to. You have had several years of research experience at the bachelor's level and have worked almost full-time in research for a couple of years. Is that off the mark?

 

[aldol16]

Trying reading source 21 and you'll realize you're completely wrong. I'll respond in full when I can.

Did you read it? Several things:

1) That paper is only tangentially related to certain fields citing less. Although it shows that in the field of statistics, the average number of citations per paper per journal is lower than in other fields, this can be completely accounted for by the fact that statistics is not a hot field and therefore has fewer overall publications per unit time than other fields like nanotechnology. Since journals like Nature or Science basically publish only the hot topics of the day, it's obvious that they would get more citations since they're publishing on topics that are being published on more often. It's a simple numbers game. Publish a paper about perpetual machines and you'll get zero citations. Nobody is working on that now. Publish a paper on nanotech and you'll get a ton of citations within months because everybody is working on it and publishing about it. The paper you cite does nothing more than note that the average number of citations for statistics journals is lower than that in other fields - it makes no claim about the basis for this, as you're trying to make it out to be, because the paper deals with the rate of citation diffusion in statistics, not why there are fewer citations in general.

2) The paper's main claim is that impact factors are lower in statistics because IF = number of citations a journal garners in the first two years/total number of published articles in that journal in the first two years. If a field has a low rate of diffusion, meaning it takes a long time for papers to get noticed/come into the mainstream/cited, then it will necessarily have low impact factors. Say you have an earth-shattering idea but nobody believes it. You publish in journal A. But your field has a low rate of diffusion, so your paper doesn't really get noticed until a few years later, when people start working on proving/disproving/building on it. Your number of citations is low in the first two or three years but takes off after five years. Let's say this is generally how papers play out in that field. Well, the fact that the number of citations takes off after five years doesn't help the IF of journals in your field because only citations within the first two years count. This is what Fig. 1 and Tables 4 and 5 are showing. This paper is not arguing that people simply cite others less in certain fields. It's positing that papers in certain fields take more time to take off and thus result in lower IFs for journals in that field just from the way IF is calculated.

 

[mistafab]

Let us state the facts.

The vast majority of medical students, and even student applicants, do not have primary authorship in a published work.

So i'd say the bread and butter of an "impressive research resume" for a medical student applicant is a primary authorship with more than a year of research experience. Remember here, that we are talking about medical student research resumes. This isn't a PhD research resume, where you would expect much more research activity. The research aspect of an MD application is supposed to accentuate the applicant, not be the primary focus. You either have no research, have research, or have stellar research in the adcom's eyes. No one care beyond these three bins, with the exception of nobel prize-winning research.

 

[DameJulie]

Somethings that would be considered "impressive' to me, in terms of research, which are also some things people I know that are in Top 20 schools now that had in their research (many were mentioned above already):

1. Independent project (small or big). This could eventually lead to a first or second-author publication, which is a +++ on your application (pretty much the highest achievement you can have as a UG in research)

2. Any sort of independent funding (for example, at my school there's a $2000 fund each year awarded to UGs who goes through an intense application cycle similar to grant proposal).

3. Presentations (state, national, international conference).

4. Summer research program, full-year research program, research awards/scholarships.

5. Long-time commitment (hours total, years committed). These usually can lead to a quality letter by PI.

However, one doesn't need all (perhaps any) of these to get into a Top 20 school! Having research is like icing on the cake (your stats and other ECs). As long as you can enthusiastically talk about it, you will be in good shape.

Note that UG research, just like medicine, it is not for everybody. If you find your research boring and un-stimulating, consider choosing another EC. Lack of research isn't going to keep you out from med school.

 

[SpineResearcher]

Let us state the facts.

The vast majority of medical students, and even student applicants, do not have primary authorship in a published work.

So i'd say the bread and butter of an "impressive research resume" for a medical student applicant is a primary authorship with more than a year of research experience. Remember here, that we are talking about medical student research resumes. This isn't a PhD research resume, where you would expect much more research activity. The research aspect of an MD application is supposed to accentuate the applicant, not be the primary focus. You either have no research, have research, or have stellar research in the adcom's eyes. No one care beyond these three bins, with the exception of nobel prize-winning research.

I think I'd believe that to be true for low-mid tier schools, but for programs that especially emphasize research, there is more of a spectrum. Take for example Pitt's PSTP. I can guarantee they're not shoving applicants into "has primary authorship" and "has research but not primary authorship" for that.

Yes, I absolutely agree with @liquidcrawler. It cannot be "no research, have research, or have stellar research" anymore. For example, Public Health as a discipline/undergraduate major is transforming the norm for undergraduate research for students applying to medical school. It's the current hype train and I would suggest people hop on. Public Health prepares you for EVERYTHING.
1. You learn the basic ethics of medicine, which every school wants you to know.
2. You learn how to apply the scientific method to your practice as a physician.
3. If you take public health classes, you'll be in contact with tons of professors who you can sign up to do research with. You could do anything from epidemiology to biostatistics to environmental and occupational health.
3. You still have to take the same science classes as science majors because you're PRE-MED.
4. Just when you think it can't be any better, public health teaches you about UNDERSERVED POPULATIONS. That way when a school asks you about vulnerable populations, you have more to talk about than just "access to care." Do these issues ring any bells?