Can I use undergrad research on my residency application?

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Blitz2006

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I did a lot of research in my undergrad years...will this count at all towards my residency app next year?

Obviously I understand that medical school research is weighted more...but just wondering if any of my work done in BSc will have any impact?

Cheers,

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I did a lot of research in my undergrad years...will this count at all towards my residency app next year?

Obviously I understand that medical school research is weighted more...but just wondering if any of my work done in BSc will have any impact?

Cheers,

As you mentioned, med school research is weighted more, but if you have prior research experience and publications/posters/presentations then sure you would also list that stuff.
 
I'd say that it depends on your overall research background. If you went to med school fresh out of UG, then I think it's completely appropriate to list any significant college activities, including any college research, on your ERAS. But if you're like me and have one or more grad degrees (and/or several years worth of research work experience since leaving college), then I don't think it makes as much sense to list minor research projects you did in college, especially if you've done research during med school. That being said, I did list my college thesis work, since I had two years of research experience in college and I considered it significant in terms of my career path.
 
Thanks for that reply,

Yeh I went to med school straight after BSc. I have a fair amount of research in my undergrad years, including an honors thesis/final year physiology research project, so I hope that helps for residency apps,

I agree, obv if I did MSc or PhD then my BSc research would be irrelevant.

Good to know my 4 years in BSc may play a small role for NRMP.


I'd say that it depends on your overall research background. If you went to med school fresh out of UG, then I think it's completely appropriate to list any significant college activities, including any college research, on your ERAS. But if you're like me and have one or more grad degrees (and/or several years worth of research work experience since leaving college), then I don't think it makes as much sense to list minor research projects you did in college, especially if you've done research during med school. That being said, I did list my college thesis work, since I had two years of research experience in college and I considered it significant in terms of my career path.
 
It will be notable, especially if you published. You'd better be able to explain it, though. You'd be surprised at how many students can't tell me about their research. That's a "bad" sign.
 
Hi All,

How critical is research in securing a good residency? What if an applicant has excellent STEP1 and 2 scores, great letters of recommendations but no research? Would that hurt his or her chances?
 
now's the time to use it-- after residency, any applications you fill out (fellowship, etc.), undergrad is a moot point unless it was groundbreaking stuff, or you were first author. residency, though, is fair game, and it sounds like you did some significant things.
 
Thanks for that reply,

Yeh I went to med school straight after BSc. I have a fair amount of research in my undergrad years, including an honors thesis/final year physiology research project, so I hope that helps for residency apps,

I agree, obv if I did MSc or PhD then my BSc research would be irrelevant.

Good to know my 4 years in BSc may play a small role for NRMP.


Hey all, thought I would revive an old thread. I did a similar honors thesis while as an undergraduate which I put significant amount of time into, which is published (not as a manuscript, but as a research thesis on the University Digital Repository). I was wondering how I would go about classifying this publication on the ERAS? The classifications are listed below. Thanks a lot for the help.


ERAS Publication Type:*
Select from:

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Abstracts

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Abstracts (Other than Published)
Statuses: Submitted, Provisional Accepted, Accepted or In-Press

Peer Reviewed Book Chapter

Scientific Monograph

Other Articles

Poster Presentation

Oral Presentation

Peer Reviewed Online Publication

Non Peer Reviewed Online Publication
 
Hey all, thought I would revive an old thread. I did a similar honors thesis while as an undergraduate which I put significant amount of time into, which is published (not as a manuscript, but as a research thesis on the University Digital Repository). I was wondering how I would go about classifying this publication on the ERAS? The classifications are listed below. Thanks a lot for the help.


ERAS Publication Type:*
Select from:

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Abstracts

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Abstracts (Other than Published)
Statuses: Submitted, Provisional Accepted, Accepted or In-Press

Peer Reviewed Book Chapter

Scientific Monograph

Other Articles

Poster Presentation

Oral Presentation

Peer Reviewed Online Publication

Non Peer Reviewed Online Publication

A thesis or dissertation that is "published" in a digital repository or in a university library archive is not really "published". It would probably be classified as a "Scientific Monograph" (which is basically a catch-all term for non-peer-reviewed work that is not yet published).

Here are two other threads that discuss other types of scholarly work and the different types of categories: here, and here (FAQ).
 
A thesis or dissertation that is "published" in a digital repository or in a university library archive is not really "published". It would probably be classified as a "Scientific Monograph" (which is basically a catch-all term for non-peer-reviewed work that is not yet published).

Here are two other threads that discuss other types of scholarly work and the different types of categories: here, and here (FAQ).

I would argue that anything that falls into the categories listed by the ERAS is a publication - this would include scientific monographs, abstracts, posters, not just peer reviewed manuscripts. Hence the term "ERAS publication type" on the application...also when the NRMP releases match statistical data, they list the average number of "publications" for each field (plastics, ortho, etc.) and for that they are taking into account all listed publication types - posters, abstracts, monographs, manuscripts, etc.

Thanks for the info, and the links to the earlier threads. Appreciate the help. :thumbup:
 
I would argue that anything that falls into the categories listed by the ERAS is a publication - this would include scientific monographs, abstracts, posters, not just peer reviewed manuscripts.

For the purposes of ERAS this is true enough to be fine.

For the purposes of the rest of your professional life, if you list your senior honors thesis, masters thesis or even your PhD thesis in the publications section of your CV anyone who bothers to read it (grant reviewers, potential bosses, etc) will heartily (and appropriately) mock you for it.
 
For the purposes of ERAS this is true enough to be fine.

For the purposes of the rest of your professional life, if you list your senior honors thesis, masters thesis or even your PhD thesis in the publications section of your CV anyone who bothers to read it (grant reviewers, potential bosses, etc) will heartily (and appropriately) mock you for it.

Agreed. Many PIs do not list the publications from the early part of their career (grad school and postdoc), presumably because they either do not think that highly of their work back then or feel that the intellectual credit is spread between them and other people, etc. If they're well published they might just have a "selected publications" section to highlight their most significant findings.

The only exception I can think of are truly groundbreaking publications during graduate school or postdoc (e.g. Carol Greider and Harold Varmus).
 
I think you should list it if you continued developing your research skills during medical school so you can demonstrate an ongoing interest in research. This is especially true if you published in undergrad and if you continued being productive in medical school. Any pubs that are in Pubmed/Medline should always be listed regardless of when they were done.

If you just did research in undergrad with no pubs and did nothing in med school then I do not think its going to be of much help. It would kind of look like you just did what you needed to do to get out of undergrad and into med school.
 
For the purposes of ERAS this is true enough to be fine.

For the purposes of the rest of your professional life, if you list your senior honors thesis, masters thesis or even your PhD thesis in the publications section of your CV anyone who bothers to read it (grant reviewers, potential bosses, etc) will heartily (and appropriately) mock you for it.


Right, I was considering strictly for the purposes of the ERAS application. I'm not really planning on going into academic medicine, so I wouldn't even see the need to list it in the future.

What about if you have presented a poster over one research topic at more than one conference/symposium, if the results of that study have been changing? I am assuming that it is okay list all the times that you have presented it, since each conferences is different and requires its own amount of preparation. (Again, I am referring only to ERAS for residency applications, not all-purpose CV for later on in life).

Thanks for the advice.
 
What about if you have presented a poster over one research topic at more than one conference/symposium, if the results of that study have been changing? I am assuming that it is okay list all the times that you have presented it, since each conferences is different and requires its own amount of preparation. (Again, I am referring only to ERAS for residency applications, not all-purpose CV for later on in life).

Thanks for the advice.

That would be a waste of time and space. List it once as research and mention that it resulted in multiple presentations. Don't make the PDs read about the same project presented over and over again. Not even for research done in med school and ESPECIALLY not for research done in undergrad, which I think it stretching to include in ERAS.

Quality over quantity. Always.
 
What would electronic-only peer reviewed journals be classified under in the ERAS?

Peer Reviewed Journals/Abstracts

or Peer Reviewed Online Publication?

Thanks.
 
What would electronic-only peer reviewed journals be classified under in the ERAS?

Peer Reviewed Journals/Abstracts

or Peer Reviewed Online Publication?

Thanks.

ERAS doesn't provide detailed guidance here. My feeling would be that if it is indexed in MEDLINE (e.g., one of the BMC, PLoS, or Medscape journals) then you would describe it as "peer reviewed journals/abstracts". Any researcher would regard a publication in one of those journals as a bona fide publication.

Not sure what a "peer reviewed online publication" would be. Maybe something like AMA Virtual Mentor (ie., not indexed in MEDLINE but I believe it is somehow "peer reviewed").
 
ERAS doesn't provide detailed guidance here. My feeling would be that if it is indexed in MEDLINE (e.g., one of the BMC, PLoS, or Medscape journals) then you would describe it as "peer reviewed journals/abstracts". Any researcher would regard a publication in one of those journals as a bona fide publication.

Not sure what a "peer reviewed online publication" would be. Maybe something like AMA Virtual Mentor (ie., not indexed in MEDLINE but I believe it is somehow "peer reviewed").

Ah okay great, thanks for the insight. Also, just to confirm, any journal with a listed "Print ISSN" and "Electronic ISSN" (ex. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/249749) would be classified as a print journal, correct? Thanks again.
 
Ah okay great, thanks for the insight. Also, just to confirm, any journal with a listed "Print ISSN" and "Electronic ISSN" (ex. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/249749) would be classified as a print journal, correct? Thanks again.

Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry is a print journal -- I don't think any researcher would consider it ambiguous.
 
Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry is a print journal -- I don't think any researcher would consider it ambiguous.

Er sorry, I may have phrased my question incorrectly - I was wondering if a journal which has a listed Print ISSN on the NLM catalog, is it considered a print journal? (Not referring to Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry in particular, but rather just giving an example of a journal which has a Print ISSN listed on NLM)
 
Er sorry, I may have phrased my question incorrectly - I was wondering if a journal which has a listed Print ISSN on the NLM catalog, is it considered a print journal? (Not referring to Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry in particular, but rather just giving an example of a journal which has a Print ISSN listed on NLM)

Sorry, I don't know. I'm guessing that the ERAS application was probably not written by lawyers. If that were the case you might have the meaning of each word specified to such a level of detail.

You may be over-thinking this. Seems to me if the publisher issues a printed journal and it is peer-reviewed, then it's a printed, peer-reviewed journal. And if the publisher doesn't issue a printed journal and only posts material to a web site and it is peer-reviewed, then it's an online-only, peer-reviewed journal.

People who read this thread in the future may derive some benefit from the discussion, but at this point you might be able to get more mileage out of your question if you simply posted the name of the journal and asked directly.
 
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