Medical How is research before medical school perceived?

[Goro]

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Hello,

a mere MS1 here.

Very quick question - in a few years, when applying to residency programs, say gen surg, how would research done before medical school be perceived?

mom talking here about about 20-ish papers, some of them sole author. Two NSF grants, sole PI. All in math though...

thanks for input.

My read on this is that PDs like research in this way

Research in the same field > research in other fields > research done before med school.

 

[GoSpursGo]

While generally true that research in your field is preferred, if you truly had a major research career prior to med school, that is impressive. Particularly since you apparently got some grant funding, though I'm curious how much that was.

Basically, they know if they bring you as a resident you will have the chops to keep putting out pubs, which to some extent is meaningful to anyone in academia. May be more or less relevant in some specialties (the surgeons are never hurting for pubs, as they always get thrown onto papers when they were involved for surgical management). Regardless, you need to do some research for most of these competitive specialties to show your commitment--don't think you can slack off on this unwritten requirement just because you have pubs already--but if you can check off this box, your prior research will definitely be viewed favorably.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Two 3-year grants, $300K total.

No doubt, that's impressive. I think it becomes very easy for you to craft a story that you want to stay within academia, accrue research funding, and grow up to be an academic poohbah. Whether or not that's true doesn't really matter, but PDs are in academia, and while I'm sure they don't intentionally do it they love to hear when someone else wants to be in academia. Unlike most applicants who say it just to massage the PDs' ego, you can credibly say that you have some idea of what that would entail.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

PDs want to see that you know how to conduct research. They want to see you know the process and can produce something from the beginning and follow it to either a poster or publication. Research before medical school is better than nothing, but since you know how to do research already, why cant you do some in medical school as well?