Hello guys,
I had a question about the significance of undergraduate research. I realize getting published (being 1st, 2nd, 3rd author) is sort of the pinnacle of individual success in doing research. However, I realized that my college holds Fall and Spring Undergraduate Research Symposiums, giving students the chance to present research in a poster format. I was wondering if this too is a very significant accomplishment that you put down in your application and that is appealing to adcoms? I suppose that I will have research experience for over 3 years and have the opportunity to do a poster, which requires time, but I am not sure of how much merit it claims to the adcoms and thus whether it would be worth the time investment.
Thank you.
Publications do carry a lot of weight. Co-authorships, though becoming more common, still demonstrate the quality of the work the author contributed to the study. Lead-authorships are still relatively rare among pre-meds and demonstrate a substantial commitment. As such an accomplishment they are still looked on
very favorably by an adcom. Usually, it is tough to get a first authorship while still an undergrad (although it can happen) so usually applicants with such credentials have done other things after college. As already said, the extent of the pubs weight also is determined by the specific journal and extent of the peer review system.
Poster presentations and subsequent abstracts also help, though not as much as a pub. This depends more on the conference than anything. Was the conference a regional scientific meeting, or a national scientific meeting? A University symposium? Was there a competition for your poster to be accepted? Is it a big name metting?
Oral presentations (as opposed to posters) at the big meetings are more substantial as usually these are competitive to get (and tougher to do).
Personally, I have lead-auths, co-auths, and both poster/oral presentations at national meetings. At my interviews, when I mentioned a co-auth or poster presentation, the interviewer said something along the lines of: "Ohh, that's cool." When I mentioned a lead-auth or an oral presentation, their eyes lit up and they said "Thats legit!". So take that for what you will.
To be honest, if you spend three years doing research just to do a poster, and only for the benefit of your application, it isn't worth it. But if you love research, you couldn't find anything better to do.
They don't really care whether or not you published a paper, but whether or not you can talk about your research in good detail and be able to explain the benefit you gained out of it.
For example, a student doing 1 year of undergrad research with no publications but who came out with significant understanding in what they were involved, and even did much independent work, such as create/test protocols, will look much better than an undergrad who worked 4 years and all he/she did was follow protocols on paper and record results without a true understanding of what he/she was doing and why it was being done.
True that you need to know your work backwards and forwards, but to say they don't care about your curriculum vitae is a big overshot, that just isn't how life works. Publications speak to the quality and extent of your work. You can know your 5th grade "crystal garden" science fair project like the back of your hand, design the experimental procedure, and genuienely learn something from it, but that won't speak to the caliber of your study as a peer-reviewed publication does. Not only that, but publications follow you. When you apply for residency or a job, nobody cares what you did during college,
unless you published. They are permanent additions to your CV and they are cumulative.
I agree you can do meaningful research as you described without a publication, and as you said you should be able to describe the project in detail and learn something from it. This is great, but naturally published work carries more weight with an adcom and beyond.
