pharmaceutical job position

[chicagowind44]

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My major is engineering and am also a premed student. I recently got this interview with a pharmaceutical company as an engineering intern for the summer. I might also take summer school but I def. am doing bio research with a mentor. Do you think taking this position would enhance my changes for med school, what do you think the take would be if I interned there doing engineer work (NON BIO related) in a pharmaceutical company?

-I guess if I took it I would have a lot on my plate for the summer: research, summer school (I will possibly drop it) and then maybe this intern position?
-Could anyone give me pros vs. cons also? Have to make a decision soon 🙁

 

[PleaseBelieveit]

Well, I can tell you that at the end of my freshman year I started research at a pharmaceutical company...After a couple years I decided that industry was just not for me--I felt like people could care less about the science and were just focused on the money that came with working at a big company. However, I have friends in industry who have had better experiences and definitely feel that the science is not lacking. That being said, I found that research in academia was more up my alley (despite the fact that I was being paid much less). More importantly, I felt like the schools that I interviewed at were much more interested in the research I was doing in the academic setting. We are submitting a paper this month and I feel like I would have never had that opportunity in industry (again, it is possible to do industry just not as likely in my opinion). I also feel like that doing research at a university allowed me to participate in all of the poster presentations (in fact it was required by my PI). In industry it was definitely not required, for me at least. Soooo...what I'm trying to say is that I would recommend trying to stick it out with a university bc you might be given a better chance at getting a publication and working on poster presentations--both of which look great on your AMCAS.

 

[caffeineaholic]

(1) have you already been offered the internship? if not, you don't really have a decision to make yet, and I would suggest going to the interview and seeing what happens, and then making a decision if need be.

(2) if you receive and take the internship, you won't have time to do research as well (since internships are typically full-time, and research typically goes on during business hours as well (for the most part)). if there's evening classes available, you could potentially take those, but it might be tough.

you could always do the internship and then do research during the school year part-time (though it's a more difficult to make as much progress with research goals if you're only working 10 hrs/week vs. 40 hrs/week on a project)

(3) as someone working in the pharma industry who's also performed research in an academic setting, i think it's been valuable to me to see both sides of things. I like industry for working directly with products that are going to end users (vs. long-term research goals that may or may not pan out into anything that people will ever see) & for seeing things performed on a very large & broad scale. I like academia for working more directly with science, much less paperwork, feeling like i'm working on something that helps further a greater body of knowledge, and it's a bit more an idealistic setting (profitability is never mentioned as a driver for an effort, although i guess publications / 'bragging rights' may not be wholly altruistic).

(4) do what you think interests you the most and will expose you to new experiences. don't do it for the sake of potentially impressing an adcom.

personally, i am fairly certain that working in industry did not hurt me with regards to med school admissions. did it help me? i don't know, i'm not on any med school adcoms. i do feel like it diversified my experiences and helped me learn about things outside of a school setting (though research and volunteer experiences also helped with those aspects).