Importance of Research and Volunteer Work

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Hey,
As the subject says, how important is research and volunteer work in the application? I'm thinking about starting chemical research in the spring and summer of my jr year. The reason I'm starting it late is because I just switched into the chemistry program a semester ago, and I didn't have the lab experience to do research work until after this past summer. I also want to do this research because I like doing chemistry research; my advanced organic/organometallic chemistry lab is very similar to chemistry research, and this is the one class I look forward to a lot, which is another reason why I'm gonna start late.

Also, I'm starting late on the volunteer work thing, because my soph year I was too tied up with my ECs and schoolwork to do it. After reading the forums, though, it seems that doing volunteer work is almost a prereq for a lot of med students. Unfortunately, I learned of this a little later than everyone else, so there is a good possibility I may not start volunteer work until this November or even next semester. Will this also look bad on my transcript? I don't want to give the impression to adcoms that I'm cramming in everything my junior year.

One other thing, do adcoms want to see research dealing with hard, physical/biological sciences, or just research of any kind? Freshman year, when I was still a computer science major, I did research on hydraulic engineering as a computer programmer at a government engineering and research center.

 

[jbrice1639]

do something that interests you. i had a discussion with one of my interviewers about how research i'd been a part of at the ad agency i work at is relevant and useful...and that's certainly not biological...maybe sociological or psychological. it's more about understanding the principles of research than the actual knowledge you're gaining from the work. i also think you need to gear your experiences towards your goal. if you want to go into research/academic medicine, then you're going to want to show them that you've tried it and you liked it. similarly, if you want to practice clinical medicine, volunteering is going to show that motivation more than tons of research, no matter how good the research is. the biggest thing though, is to do something you're interested in so you can talk about it in an interview with some conviction.

 

[Law2Doc]

do something that interests you. i had a discussion with one of my interviewers about how research i'd been a part of at the ad agency i work at is relevant and useful...and that's certainly not biological...maybe sociological or psychological. it's more about understanding the principles of research than the actual knowledge you're gaining from the work. i also think you need to gear your experiences towards your goal. if you want to go into research/academic medicine, then you're going to want to show them that you've tried it and you liked it. similarly, if you want to practice clinical medicine, volunteering is going to show that motivation more than tons of research, no matter how good the research is. the biggest thing though, is to do something you're interested in so you can talk about it in an interview with some conviction.

Regarding research -- this is basically true - an interest in research looks good in whatever field. However many interviewers who do research in medicine are going to often be more interested and have an easier time relating to research in the health care field, for what that's worth. As for volunteering -- you absolutely need some form of clinical experience, be it volunteering, shadowing, a hospital job, etc. to get into med school. Schools want to know you know what medicine is all about and have a sense of what you are getting into so, you need some form of experience working with (or at least watching) doctors dealing with patients. Its pretty much a prereq for all allo med schools.