Research Vs clinical experience

[gildas]

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My situation is that I hav an offer to do research for my Org Chm professor next fall. I was also planning to do a pre-med intership from which I will acquire clinical experience. I am going to attend the SMEP at yale this summer, and I pretty sure I will be exposed to clinical activities. The thing is I will applying for med schools next year, and due to the limit of my time commitment, I will only be able to do either the reasearch or the intership. Which one do you think I should do to increase my chance to get to med-school?
Thanks for your input

 

[Chirurgien]

Hey -

I vote for the one that you think you'd enjoy more. Instead of trying to do something just to make it look good, pick the one that you'd actually like doing. Both are very valuable and personally enriching experiences.

 

[Brit1982]

I go to a small private school where the profs make you think you will never get in if you don't do undergrad research. I have no interest in research, so I focused on clinical experiences throughout undergrad. In my most recent interview, I discussed this with the interviewers and they were cracking up that profs would preach research over clinical. That is just one example though. In my case, it has turned out to my advantage to do what I wanted to do.

 

[DoctorWannaBe]

I agree that you should do what you are interested in. Plenty of people get in to medical school with no research experience. I think you do need some clinical experience (if you have none). By the way, I got into University of Arizona with no research experience.

 

[jlee9531]

how come you waited so long to do any?

i hope this isnt going to be your first exposure to research or clinical care....

 

[efex101]

No kidding my thoughts exactly.

 

[docmemi]

i vote clinical.

 

[TTSD]

Originally posted by trojan2004
i vote clinical.

Agreed. Try clinical research! You get both clinical experience and research as well. Why so late though?

 

[meanderson]

If you don't have sufficient clinical experience, this will be a major blow to your application at many schools. That doesn't mean you can't get in without lots(or even any) clinical experience somewhere, just that some schools you may want to go to will cross you out. At my UAB interview I realized they put a lot of emphasis on clinical experience, and less emphasis on interesting EC's that aren't directly related to medicine. At some other schools(Emory, Mercer), this didn't seem to be the case.

As for research, it all depends on where you want to go. For top 10 schools then this is a semi-requirement. Not having any will be a negative. But for state schools and many other schools, it isn't a problem at all.

If you are lacking in clinical experience though, you certainly need to address those problems in your app first because the consequences could be more severe.