research vs. clinical experience?

[mizp78]

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i graduated from undergrad in may 2000 and started working in a lab a week later. i haven't been able to do any volunteering since graduation or get any clinical experience b/c i work full time and was working on a publication. i actually got published in science and am coauther of the article. that's gotta help, right? i volunteered all throughout college. will the laspe in volunteering look bad? i was thinking about volunteering in a hospice. i would really like to shadow a doctor, but i only have weekends available? any suggestions or advice? thanks so much.

 

[PMPMD]

Was your college volunteering medically-related? I don't think that a well-explained lapse in clinical volunteering should hold you back. As long as you've spent sufficient time in a clinical setting to know whether or not you really want to pursue a career in medicine. Given your research experience, you'll probably have to explain why you would rather get an MD than a PhD, and having clinical experience will help this.
Will you be applying to start med school in the Fall of 2003? If that's the case, you've got plenty of time to get more experience if you're really worried about it. It will be tough to do on top of your current job, but just a few hours a week will be enough to talk about in your interviews and personal statement.

 

[Barton]

I have no volunteer experience at all. I do have lots of paid research and clinical experience, but it all came during summers. I never did anything medically-related during the school year. I have been accepted to 2 med schools and waitlisted at 2. Also, I have a really crappy GPA and a really really crappy science GPA. I think that med schools look more at the quality of your actual experiences than the number of hours or whether it was volunteer or not. When trying to explaing this during an interview, the interviewer took the words out of my mouth and said "why do the same work for nothing if someone's willing to pay you to do it?" I think you will be fine.

 

[mizp78]

in response to patdaddy-i spent the fisrt 3 years of college volunteering in the community through campus organizations. i was heavily invilved in one for 2 years and was president 1 of those years so i rarely had time for clinical stuff. my last year of college, i volunteered in a children's hospital. one semester in the surgical recovery room and the second semester in the neonatal icu. yeah, i'm planning to apply this summer and want to turn in apps early (june-july) and i don't have time until after the mcat to do anything so i'll only have a couple of months of volunteering. will that look okay?

 

[mizp78]

oh yeah, about explaining md vs. phd thing--this also pertains to what barton wrote, but i did research in college b/c 1-it was cool and 2-i got paid. i needed some money in college. the only job i applied for were research ones after college b/c they were the only ones that were offering enough for me to live on. but my heart lies with helping people....but can you really come out and say that you just needed the money and you had a bio degree so you took the job? (that's oversimplified, but anyways.) i couldn't just take a clinical position that didn't pay enough since i had to live on my own.