My school allows you to do research through several hundred research classes
Does research mean anything if it is on the transcript (as in done through a class)
- Thread starter JoyKim456
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Why not? It's still a research experience and you will still learn a ton from it.
The only tricky part is calculating the hours you spent.
Some will say that counting hours during the school year when you are doing research for credit is "double-dipping." I just calculated my summer research hours to play it safe.
The only tricky part is calculating the hours you spent.
Some will say that counting hours during the school year when you are doing research for credit is "double-dipping." I just calculated my summer research hours to play it safe.
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It depends on what the classes are. If it is something like a biochemistry research lab techniques course, then no, I do not think that is appropriate to count as research at all. To me the rule is if the research is on something that has never been discovered before it counts; if it is something that has a known outcome, then it does not.
Medical schools want to see work in a laboratory under a principle investigator working on a project, ideally independently, that is publishable in a scientific journal. These research classes at my school were called "independent research". I don't think that these classes taken for credit is "double-dipping" when reporting hours. In fact, I would say that only putting summer hours is a disservice to the amount of time that you actually spent in lab and would misrepresent the amount of effort you put into a project.
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If you can, I would go back and report the hours that you did for credit too. When you think about the amount of time that you worked on something for a "research experience" it does not matter if it was for credit or not. You want to show the admission committees the total amount of time that you have spent, not just the non-credit stuff. There are thousands of applications so you want to make your application easier to read, think about what they would have to do in your case. They need to check your AMCAS experience dates for research then compare that to the classes in research that you took for credit. Trust me, that can get confusing, especially when there are people applying like me who have worked in 3 labs on 4 projects.
