Importance of Research

[pbehzad]

I was wondering how important everyone thinksresearch is? I'm not really fond of it, but I realize that its becoming ever more important in med school acceptance. My research experience so far is rather weak in my opinion. From your interview experiences, would you say that most people that got interviews had decent research experience? Thanks.

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[truth617]

Do it if you like it. Do it if you think you might like it or if you're considering it as a career. Do not do it to get into medical school.

I've done a good deal of research, and first, let me say that it's risky as far as getting good results and publications. Working hard does not ensure success. I throughly enjoyed my experience and had some decent results, but I also had substantial projects fail. You learn patience in research and how to learn from unsuccessful experiments.

If you're not into research, that time--substantial time if you want to do anything worthwhile--could be spent on 2 or even 3 other interesting activities. If you were the calculating, cuthroat type, I'd say that the return would be greater for those activities during the year than research.

 

[Biodude]

I think that research is a good thing to have. But, I think that whether you choose to do research depends on your future goals and which med schools you plan on applying to. For example, Stanford's not really going to consider your application as much if you don't do any research, but on the other hand, a school like UC Davis (I'm a CA resident, sorry for the lack of info on other med schools), whose goal is to produce primary care docs, won't care as much.

Just tread carefully and follow the advice of the previous poster.