Gap Year Uncertainty, please help !

[fuzzydoc303]

Hey Guys! Thanks in advance for your help

Prior to applying to medical school, I plan on taking two gap years and applying the summer following that of my graduation. I would like to spend this year continuing work in my lab (productive, already have a first author pub) and working part time so I can pay rent in my woefully expensive college town. I would also be extending my clinical/non-clinical volunteering during this time.

I was wondering, would it be a bad move to continue doing research as opposed to spending the year working in a clinical setting in a scribe/med tech sort of job? I have a decent amount of clinical experience already, close to 300 hours and growing volunteering in a number of settings. Would it be unfavorable to spend the year doing research instead of scribing/something in the same vein? I am worried that continuing research will potentially deprive my application of "eclecticism" since I have never done paid clinical work but that could just be me being neurotic. What do you guys think? I really want to keep doing research. Thanks for your advice!

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[HomeSkool]

You don't need to do paid clinical work, but you should have adequate clinical exposure to show adcoms that you know what you're getting yourself into. @LizzyM posted some guidance in the number of hours that are desirable for clinical and nonclinical volunteering and shadowing: How many volunteer hours are solid?.

Remember that research is less important to adcoms than are your volunteering and shadowing hours except at a few research-heavy schools. If you have to sacrifice one EC for the other, it makes the most sense to decrease your research time in favor of clinical exposure. That said, if you're sitting pretty on clinical hours, research certainly ain't gonna hurt you.

 

[fuzzydoc303]

Thank for the advice! Given my current plan (doing research and volunteering concurrently), I will be applying with roughly 400 hours of Clinical Volunteering and about 600 of nonclinical. Is that competitive at top schools?

 

[Aerus]

Thank for the advice! Given my current plan (doing research and volunteering concurrently), I will be applying with roughly 400 hours of Clinical Volunteering and about 600 of nonclinical. Is that competitive at top schools?

You can get interviews at top schools with much less than that. The combined factors of everything on your application as well as how you present it to the adcoms will decide whether you can get interviewed/accepted at a top school.