Could research from an undergrad senior research project be considered research for applications?

[KiddCo]

In building my list of EC's, hobbies, and experiences for my application, I've been concerned about my lack of research. As I was going over transcripts, it hit me that for both of my majors in undergrad, we had to complete a senior research project.

I'm curious if I could count these projects as research in the research section of the application. At my undergrad, you spent sophomore year learning about research methods and how to construct a research paper and experiment. In junior year we designed our own research projects, drafted up an experimental design, went through the IRB, and built a thesis paper.

Then in senior year we obtained funding and actually carried out the experiment we constructed junior year. A journal quality paper had to be written on the result, and a poster board was constructed and presented in front of faculty and students. I remember that if our research papers were exceptionally good, we had the option of publishing as a second author under discretion of the department head.

I remember my research in Biology consisted of testing feeding habits and resilience of tribolium beetles on endophytes living within tall fescue grass/kentucky blue grass types vs. their typical diet of yeast.

Then my Neuroscience research loosely had to do with measuring cortisol levels before and after being exposed to helpful, neutral, and demanding scenarios and their tolerance to pain afterwards (length of time their hand was kept in ice cold water).

It would be great if I could count this experience, as it would more than likely be 200+ hours of research experience.

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[esob]

You can count it but tbh, it won't be all that helpful. Research is like the icing on the cake for the vast majority of schools. If you look at the MSAR data, a huge chunk of matriculants, even at the big schools, don't have any research experience. I had published research at a top medical school and it was barely mentioned on the interview trail (and, perhaps ironically, the school I did the research for didn't even invite me for an interview, lol).

 

[KiddCo]

You can count it but tbh, it won't be all that helpful. Research is like the icing on the cake for the vast majority of schools. If you look at the MSAR data, a huge chunk of matriculants, even at the big schools, don't have any research experience. I had published research at a top medical school and it was barely mentioned on the interview trail (and, perhaps ironically, the school I did the research for didn't even invite me for an interview, lol).

I was looking at the MSAR before I posted this. Some of the schools I plan on applying to have 80-90% of matricants with prior research experience.

I was just hoping to be in that group who has it vs. Those who don't.

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[esob]

I was looking at the MSAR before I posted this. Some of the schools I plan on applying to have 80-90% of matricants with prior research experience.

I was just hoping to be in that group who has it vs. Those who don't.

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80-90% have it because they listed the 3 hrs per week they spent cleaning glassware in the lab as research. True, meaningful research is a rarity for undergrads. Not that there aren't some people involved in it (in my case, we identified a major issue that will probably impact clinical medicine in at least some small way) but I dare say that there is probably no undergrad research where the undergrad themselves are the PI and the research is somehow significant to the field. The point of having research experience is that you understand how good research is performed and have some idea of how to write technical documents that withstand peer review.

Some schools have high percentages of matriculants that have "paid clinical experience" as well, but the vast majority of those are low-level jobs. A few, however, were probably something significant (think ICU nurse or a PA), and those will make their applications stand out.

So yes, your research qualifies to check the box, and it is probably on par with the research of most of the other premeds at those institutions, which is about enough to say that you are familiar with the concept but no one is going to expect you to be doing post-doc level research because, well, that's what the post-docs are doing.

 

[joshuv]

In building my list of EC's, hobbies, and experiences for my application, I've been concerned about my lack of research. As I was going over transcripts, it hit me that for both of my majors in undergrad, we had to complete a senior research project.

I'm curious if I could count these projects as research in the research section of the application. At my undergrad, you spent sophomore year learning about research methods and how to construct a research paper and experiment. In junior year we designed our own research projects, drafted up an experimental design, went through the IRB, and built a thesis paper.

Then in senior year we obtained funding and actually carried out the experiment we constructed junior year. A journal quality paper had to be written on the result, and a poster board was constructed and presented in front of faculty and students. I remember that if our research papers were exceptionally good, we had the option of publishing as a second author under discretion of the department head.

I remember my research in Biology consisted of testing feeding habits and resilience of tribolium beetles on endophytes living within tall fescue grass/kentucky blue grass types vs. their typical diet of yeast.

Then my Neuroscience research loosely had to do with measuring cortisol levels before and after being exposed to helpful, neutral, and demanding scenarios and their tolerance to pain afterwards (length of time their hand was kept in ice cold water).

It would be great if I could count this experience, as it would more than likely be 200+ hours of research experience.

You should definitely mention it in your application as it would definitely count as "research experience". Like all experience, how much weight the adcoms would put on your experience would vary depending on the reviewer/school/other variables, but it can only help you.

I would add that your research experience would actually be noted as solid in quality compared to the average undergrad's research experience. Sure, there are PhD's in neuroscience who apply to med school, but obviously their research experience would be more in depth. Most undergrad RAs do not design their own research projects, go through their own project's IRB, write a thesis paper, make and present posters before faculty. Med school adcoms will value the independent nature of your work as well as the fact that you were able to participate in the final stages of the scientific process, knowledge dissemination.

 

[wholeheartedly]

I'd add it. It's not going to hurt you and is better than washing glassware.

 

[KiddCo]

I'm glad I decided to ask. I wasn't going to mention it and I almost didn't ask the forum. Thanks everyone.



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