Research in medical school?

[deleted1089232]

A few questions on research in med school:

1. Does research in med school have to be specific to the specialty you pursue? Like eye research for ophto?
2. Is it bad I don't have significant research experience beyond genotyping, histology, and etc in undergrad?
3. Do people do research at another local med school or only at the med school they go to?
4. How many hours a week do med students dedicate to research?
5. When is the best time to start pursuing research opportunities when entering med school?

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[voxveritatisetlucis]

1. It’s better to be specialty specific. Specialties like ortho deem urology etc expect specialty specific research
2. No
3. Unusual as PIs tend to give preference to home students. Plus, I’ve heard you need to cold email hundreds of PIs if you want to do research as an outside student
4. I probably do like 10-15 but this varies widely. Look for clinical research as it’s way more efficient
5. Right away. You don’t want to start late M1/M2 and then get unlucky on a few projects and have no publications on eras

 

[SweetBurger]

start m1, biggest regret is not doing that

 

[pierty]

Your research does not necessarily have to be specific to the specialty you pursue. In general, it helps show "committed interest," but good research is good research. How much it matters in an application depends more on the specialty (and even moreso on the program, and the individual interests of the department/PD in recruitment).

Yes, you can pursue research outside of your institution, especially if you are in the same city. It's less formal/connected than being a student at the institution, but still very possible. There are also several summer programs you can apply to outside of your institution, as many do.

You do not "need" to start right away. While it is helpful to start building a relationship with a mentor early, as this offers more time and exposure to get to know them and start researching, you don't need to gamify it. This website is full of pre-meds/M1's who spend hours online every day miserably obsessing over every neurotic detail of each other's posts. Most is exaggerated, nearly all will make you miserable. Take it 1 week, then 1 month at a time. It's a marathon, not a sprint.