gauging research experience

[vcentwin]

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On a scale of 1-10, 10 being you published 3 first-author pubs in Nature and Cell as an undergrad, and 1 being you only washed beakers in a wet lab (and thats it) what is the average research experience that a matriculant has to an MD program?

Obviously if you are aiming for research-heavy programs such as t-20 and MD/PhD then you need a heavy CV but these programs aren't representative of ALL US MD/DO programs in the country.

 

[xkcd6330]

Obviously if you are aiming for research-heavy programs such as t-20 and MD/PhD then you need a heavy CV

I wouldn’t say this is true. I was recently accepted to a T20 with ~1 year of research experience that was nothing too rigorous. Mostly just some lit searches and writing up my findings for the team, but never published. It came up in most interviews, and I think it was a valuable experience, but mostly just in how I was able to talk passionately about the topic and discuss how it might shape my future academic interests. N=1 of course, but even though the vast majority of students at T20 schools have some research experience, I doubt all that many are published, and many probably didn’t lead independent projects at all.

 

[bluepeony]

I wouldn’t say this is true. I was recently accepted to a T20 with ~1 year of research experience that was nothing too rigorous. Mostly just some lit searches and writing up my findings for the team, but never published. It came up in most interviews, and I think it was a valuable experience, but mostly just in how I was able to talk passionately about the topic and discuss how it might shape my future academic interests. N=1 of course, but even though the vast majority of students at T20 schools have some research experience, I doubt all that many are published, and many probably didn’t lead independent projects at all.

What do you think helped you get in despite the comparatively lower research hours/productivity?

 

[xkcd6330]

What do you think helped you get in despite the comparatively lower research hours/productivity?

That’s the thing: I’m not convinced that the low research productivity was some glaring weakness that I had to overcome with another part of my application. Would it have been better to get a paper out of it? Sure. But otherwise it was just one of several activities that were important to me. Otherwise, I don’t think there was any single part of my application that was particularly unique. I had high stats, I’d say fairly strong clinical/leadership experience, and a handful of other on-campus activities.