1800+ Research Hours?

[Pills Of Soap]

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does anyone have this or more?

i just calculated mine. this is how much i got and this is and underestimate...


just wondering if schools will believe i have this. it seems kinda outrageous 😱 but i researched full-time for 2 summers and like 20+hrs week during the semester for over 3 semesters. should be noted that a lot of the research time is downtime

 

[brooklynblunder]

yea. some people have done research full-time, i have to be at around 3000+ like pete rose. i wouldn't list the total hours though, research performance is substantiated by LORs and meaningful publications

 

[Pills Of Soap]

yeah i normally wouldnt list it, but UC Davis asks for hours

 

[Poliscidoc]

Dear god, looks like I am only 1800 hours behind.. Maybe I can find 75 days to do nothing but research....

 

[GoSpursGo]

1800 hours seems pretty reasonable to me... surely not everyone will have that many, but I can easily see how you'd wind up w/ that much.

 

[Poliscidoc]

If you don't mind me asking how long did yall do research for and how did you do it? Was it during the summer or at school? I am just wondering because I am in need of research.

Thanks in advance

 

[DendWrite]

It's reasonable.

Just as an aside (please forgive me for the unsolicited advice), but if you at all feel shaky about your clinical volunteering, I'd say devote your full time and effort to that until you apply. 1800 hours is -way- past the benchmark, yet some schools (fairly or not) may value your clinical experience more than your research. If you've already got some volunteering under your belt though, it sounds like you are set. You have good stats as well.

Finally, (I'm sure you know this) make sure to be able to talk about your research in-depth. If you list 1800+ hours and any schools are at all skeptical, they're going to ask about it, so be sure you can deliver.

 

[theacks1]

Easily. I was in a lab from the start of my Junior year to the end of my Senior year including all breaks, working full time, which comes out to about 2800 hours. Of course, at least half that time, including 100% of the time the PI happened to look in unexpected, was spent on the internet.

 

[schrizto]

That sounds believable.

 

[camo]

Dang OP, I have a big goose egg when it comes to research..I better not apply to any top tier schools.

 

[ziggydoc]

yes, they will believe you, I did two summers (only 3 months each), and only worked 4 days a week and I pulled in over 700 hours, and Yes, I know cuz Albany wanted me to estimate lol.

 

[Podalarius]

It's quite believable. Counting a year of full-time research, I was around 5500 hours before med school. I'd say 1800 hours reflects a serious investment of your time - about the time it takes to get from just doing menial tasks in the lab to starting to design and execute your experiments well.

 

[jtimmer1]

I wouldn't say 1800+ is outrageous for a motivated student. I have ~1300 and only have one semester and a summer under my belt; Mind you, I am only going into my sophomore fall. I would expect the sky to be the limit over the next 3 years.

 

[rikibamboo]

How do you guys even keep track of your research hours?? I mean, I've been going to my lab for almost the entire day, 6 or 7 days of the week, throughout this summer. Though I never really kept a tab on how many hours I've physically been in lab. Even then, I do a lot of outside reading for my lab. Does that count towards hours?

I wouldn't worry about the hours and I don't understand why some schools ask for specific hours. Just because a person spent 300000000000 hours in a lab but doesn't have much to show for it would mean jack compared to a person who spent a few weeks but got a publication (even a small one) or a good RL from their PI from it.

 

[RogueUnicorn]

i'm at around 3-4000

 

[Poliscidoc]

Yea the whole hours game is what I am wondering about? I mean is there a difference between "I volunteered at ___ Hospital" or "I volunteered 500 hours at _____ Hospital"...

I mean do I need to keep all this information

 

[djommy2005]

What if a student considering medicine has a lot more research experience then clinical?
I have been in research for 2 years, 1 year (10 hrs/week) in the same lab with no publications, 1 semester with a oral and poster, another semester (idk what I was thinking it was in nuclear physics although I had fun), plus I ended up not having a summer because I was in two other research projects....

besides that I spend another time tutoring. (I have to pay for my education somehow, all research experiences listed above are payed).

as for volunteer work, I mentor for two hours everyweek because I love it, and actually don't really want to stop doing it.

but the only experience I have that remotely resembles medicine is working along side my mother in her cases as a certified nursing assistant.

huh...I actually wanted to do an MD/Ph.D, but I realize that one does not have to be hold a Ph.D to do research. Yet if I take the MD out of the equation, everything becomes bad because as cliche as this sounds I have to become a doctor. There is no doubt about that...

I plan to volunteer this semester, and the next and I'll be applying next year. My problem is I can't take the insane amount of classes I'm taking, working at least a 25 hrs job because well I have to sustain myself somehow and save for expenses. Have another research position that is unpaid this time...(bummer 🙁, but the research done is something I wanted to get involved with since I first heard of it😍), and volunteer at a hospital at the same time.

I look at the numbers and unless it's an two hours a week or less, it simply does not work...

what do you guys recomend?
sorry for the incredibly long post... but I would appreciate any help

 

[vickpick]

djtommy, did u say her cases as a CNA? what? lol...

 

[djommy2005]

djtommy, did u say her cases as a CNA? what? lol...

I don't know that's how she calls them. Although you are not the first one to mention that. lol! and yes it's not stellar work, but this is what I was able to do. My mother is a very sick woman and at some point I had to take over (with approval off course) or she would loose her job.
But anyway, I get to take care of very ill and old people, or people with mental disorders, or paralyzed. I guess it's more living assistant than anything else actually. so it's definitely not a clinic setting, although we are in contact with their doctors or nurses (for check up or to know what prescription, in what dosage to give them), I'm sure it's not the same thing as a clinic experience.

 

[Evergrey]

I don't know that's how she calls them. Although you are not the first one to mention that. lol! and yes it's not stellar work, but this is what I was able to do. My mother is a very sick woman and at some point I had to take over (with approval off course) or she would loose her job.
But anyway, I get to take care of very ill and old people, or people with mental disorders, or paralyzed. I guess it's more living assistant than anything else actually. so it's definitely not a clinic setting, although we are in contact with their doctors or nurses (for check up or to know what prescription, in what dosage to give them), I'm sure it's not the same thing as a clinic experience.

To my definition, that is most definitely clinical experience. You're working in healthcare, even though it's not a hospital or clinic setting.

 

[Omni]

I have close to 1500 in research, but for volunteering (EMS), I have close to 600 hours. By next summer, I should have close to 1,000 and by the time interviews start rolling in, I should have close to 1,500 hours of volunteering.

 

[DendWrite]

I wouldn't worry about the hours and I don't understand why some schools ask for specific hours. Just because a person spent 300000000000 hours in a lab but doesn't have much to show for it would mean jack compared to a person who spent a few weeks but got a publication (even a small one) or a good RL from their PI from it.

I disagree. A good research LOR after only a few weeks of work is unlikely to be substantive and an accurate reflection of a student's work. I have known PI's who will just write you a great letter even though they don't know you that well. But say you are asked about your awesome letter in an interview and they ask you about the lab you worked in...what did you do, how long were you there. You can't honestly say that "I worked there a few weeks" would be as impressive as "I worked there a year and learned ... etc."

Also, pubs aren't everything. So many factors go into undergrads getting publications (many of these are out of their control and include luck, benevolance of the PI, and a little bit of hand-waving) that it's not an adequate metric for comparing research experience. What you get out of the experience is what matters.

I think the only problem with listing hours is if you have a ton of hours, are asked about your experience and seem really shaky about it. That would be a negative. But otherwise, listing hours (or at least an approximate hours per week and duration) is important IMO.

 

[rikibamboo]

I disagree. A good research LOR after only a few weeks of work is unlikely to be substantive and an accurate reflection of a student's work. I have known PI's who will just write you a great letter even though they don't know you that well. But say you are asked about your awesome letter in an interview and they ask you about the lab you worked in...what did you do, how long were you there. You can't honestly say that "I worked there a few weeks" would be as impressive as "I worked there a year and learned ... etc."

Also, pubs aren't everything. So many factors go into undergrads getting publications (many of these are out of their control and include luck, benevolance of the PI, and a little bit of hand-waving) that it's not an adequate metric for comparing research experience. What you get out of the experience is what matters.

I think the only problem with listing hours is if you have a ton of hours, are asked about your experience and seem really shaky about it. That would be a negative. But otherwise, listing hours (or at least an approximate hours per week and duration) is important IMO.

Yeah, that's what I meant - that the amount of hours you are in the lab isn't as important as what you do in the lab. A person could've spent an entire year in a lab just doing one simple procedure over and over again. Compare that to someone who made the initiative to investigate stuff on his own and learn from the PhDs and PI for a few months. Hours may be helpful in serving as a gauge for adcoms but it's the experience taken out of it that matters the most. The lab I'm a part of treats me like another one of their PhDs. My PI trusts me to conduct my own experiments (though they're small-scale compared to the work done by the PhDs) but I still do get results that help PhDs better understand the small details of what they're doing. I actually got the go-ahead from my PI to put together a manuscript for a procedure that I optimized independently for publication in a small journal. It definitely helped that I did this during the summer since I didn't have to worry about classes. Not trying to boast, just trying to emphasize that it's what a person does in the lab, not how long the person stays in the lab that tends to count IMO.

 

[sully677]

1800+ hours seems very reasonable.

I would consider pubs to heavily outweigh hours tho.

 

[Trexate]

Where do you find out about these research opportunities?

 

[RogueUnicorn]

Where do you find out about these research opportunities?

if you're ballsy enough, just cold call/email some profs whose research interest you. you can also just talk to some science profs you've had class with for some help, they usually know someone who can take on an undergrad if they themselves cannot.

 

[JJMrK]

does anyone have this or more?

i just calculated mine. this is how much i got and this is and underestimate...


just wondering if schools will believe i have this. it seems kinda outrageous 😱 but i researched full-time for 2 summers and like 20+hrs week during the semester for over 3 semesters. should be noted that a lot of the research time is downtime

That seems reasonable if you were pretty involved.

 

[Pills Of Soap]

thanks for all the responses guys.

i have like 1800 research hours compared to only 100 clinical hours lol

 

[echolalia16]

Right now I have close to 2200 hours of research logged, and an currently under a grant that extends to next August. Because I only works summers, I expect that when I'm finished I will be around the 3000 hour mark. But like others have said, its not so much the time that you committed to research, but what you learned and the contributions you've made to the scientific community while you were there.

 

[Pills Of Soap]

Where do you find out about these research opportunities?

I think the most common way to email a bunch of professors. Another approach would be to go to the office hours of a prof you have taken class with (during the time your taking and class) and maybe ask them after the class is over.

I actually had a friend who went to prof's office hours for homework help and the professor actually asked her to join the lab 😱. Kinda crazy but he was a new professor and must have saw some motivation in her.

 

[randombetch]

I did 770 in one summer, so I totally believe that.

I just calculated, and I came up with 1780 by the time I apply (counting the summer of application)... I personally thought I'm a bit lacking in research.

 

[Shinobiz11]

Great amount of hours, great work ethic. Just be ready in your interview when they ask you why you might not go into a MD/PhD program for research, unless you want to do research as an MD.