Research

[Fluffyone]

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Hi, how many hours of research do you need to be competitive? I plan on doing research in a hospital for at least 1 summer and possibly another summer. Is one summer or even 2 summers enough or should I try doing it during the year?

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[esu aves]

You don't need research at all to be competitive.

 

[Fluffyone]

You don't need research at all to be competitive.

Oh, I thought it's recommended.

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[Dr. Stalker]

You don't need research at all to be competitive.

Research is strongly recommended. Not mandatory, but, something 99.9% of applicants have done at any given medical school.

 

[Dr. Stalker]

Hi, how many hours of research do you need to be competitive? I plan on doing research in a hospital for at least 1 summer and possibly another summer. Is one summer or even 2 summers enough or should I try doing it during the year?

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Quality, not quantity. Aim for 500 hours before applying. This can be spread out during college semesters as well as during summer/winter vacation.

 

[aldol16]

314.1592653. There's no number of research hours you need to be competitive. What's more important is that you can write intelligently about your role in the research and what you did and how that all fits into the broader scheme of things. "I washed flasks and beakers for 500 hours over the course of four years" is not impressive. "I designed experiment A to address hypothesis B and obtained results C, which are relevant to the field because D. I presented these findings at national conference E" is much more impressive, even if you spent only 100 hours on the project.

 

[SpineResearcher]

314.1592653. There's no number of research hours you need to be competitive. What's more important is that you can write intelligently about your role in the research and what you did and how that all fits into the broader scheme of things. "I washed flasks and beakers for 500 hours over the course of four years" is not impressive. "I designed experiment A to address hypothesis B and obtained results C, which are relevant to the field because D. I presented these findings at national conference E" is much more impressive, even if you spent only 100 hours on the project.

I agree, although I would like to add if you did do A, B, C, D, E it would be suspicious to only have 100 hours.

 

[JJRousseau]

I agree, although I would like to add if you did do A, B, C, D, E it would be suspicious to only have 100 hours.

Amen.


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[aldol16]

I agree, although I would like to add if you did do A, B, C, D, E it would be suspicious to only have 100 hours.

Research is about quality of time spent, not quantity. Usually, undergrads tend to list only hours spent in lab and not additional time spent in the library, etc. doing literature reviews. If you do a good literature review and come up with a good hypothesis/project, the actual lab time spent can be quite short depending on the project. A lot of time is wasted in lab by inexperienced researchers because they set off on dead-end paths that could have been prevented by doing better searches of the literature and spending a little more time thinking.

 

[Lucca]

Research is about quality of time spent, not quantity. Usually, undergrads tend to list only hours spent in lab and not additional time spent in the library, etc. doing literature reviews. If you do a good literature review and come up with a good hypothesis/project, the actual lab time spent can be quite short depending on the project. A lot of time is wasted in lab by inexperienced researchers because they set off on dead-end paths that could have been prevented by doing better searches of the literature and spending a little more time thinking.

very much this. Especially in molecular biology where you might have an experiment going for days or even weeks before you have some results to interpret.

my undergrad thesis advisor said it best at one group meeting: "two hours in the library saves you two weeks in the lab".

 

[aldol16]

very much this. Especially in molecular biology where you might have an experiment going for days or even weeks before you have some results to interpret.

my undergrad thesis advisor said it best at one group meeting: "two hours in the library saves you two weeks in the lab".

I had an undergrad in my lab who refused to ask for help when they were clearly out of their depth and they ended up on a months-long wild goose chase when they could have looked in the literature and seen that their experiments could not possibly work. They simply didn't understand the system they were working with. Waste of their time and a complete waste of our resources!

 

[SpineResearcher]

Research is about quality of time spent, not quantity. Usually, undergrads tend to list only hours spent in lab and not additional time spent in the library, etc. doing literature reviews. If you do a good literature review and come up with a good hypothesis/project, the actual lab time spent can be quite short depending on the project. A lot of time is wasted in lab by inexperienced researchers because they set off on dead-end paths that could have been prevented by doing better searches of the literature and spending a little more time thinking.

My mistake I wasn't specifically talking about research in the lab. I mean this more for clinical research, for which you need to be certified by the NIH or similar institution and apply for approval from an IRB. Especially if you're doing a prospective project, the time it takes to put something like this together and actually follow through with it will be more than 100 hours. This is not even counting the time it will take if you want to write a paper for it and get published.

 

[SpineResearcher]

In a 2013 AAMC survey* where 127 medical admissions offices responded, found research experience is only of medium importance at private schools and of low importance to public schools as an experiential factor in offering both interview invitations and acceptance. Healthcare experience, community service/volunteer experience, experience with underserved populations, navigated through cultural barriers or challenges, leadership experience were considered of higher importance in factors for interview invites and offers of acceptances. This was further borne out in the 2015 AAMC Survey** where 130 medical school admissions found that both community service or volunteer in both medical and non-medical settings ranked higher in importance than physician shadowing

https://www.aamc.org/download/434596/data/usingmcatdata2016.pdf#page=7
see page 3 (pdf p7) Table 1. Mean Importance Ratings of Academic, Experiential, and Demographic Application Data Used by Admissions Committees for Making Decisions about Which Applicants to Receive an Interview Invitation and Offer Acceptance (N=127)

** https://www.aamc.org/download/462316/data/2017mcatguide.pdf#page=9
See page 4 (pdf page 9) Table 1. Mean Importance Ratings of Academic, Experiential, Demographic, and Interview Data Used by Admissions Committees for Making Decisions about Which Applicants Receive Interview Invitations and Acceptance Offers (N=130)

Yes I understand where you're coming from with this, but we need to be a lot more careful about how we analyze these charts. (Also I'm not sure why because it was working before, but the 2017 link stopped working)
1. We see that the private schools ON AVERAGE found research experience to be of medium importance. If we make a safe approximation and say half this sample was private and half public schools, we'd get about 62 private schools. Who's to say that the top 30 private schools in the country (I don't need to list them) did not put high importance for research and the mid to low tier 30 private schools did not list research as low importance? If this is the case, it would make the "mean importance" medium.
2. Second, OP asked about being competitive. If you want to get into the top 15 schools in the country, you'd better have a decent gpa/MCAT, cultural competence, leadership, community service, and health care experience, that goes without saying. But what if you already have all that? What is one way to separate yourself? Well you could get a masters in Public Health...or maybe you could do some meaningful research.

Thus, it doesn't matter how important they ranked it...because all that is really saying is that they would rather you have healthcare experience. OR If you had NO HEALTH EXPERIENCE, but some research, they'd probably take someone with healthcare experience over you. AND even that is subjective depending on if your research was actually huge for the field of medicine or not. These charts say nothing, however, about how research cannot make you a more competitive and dynamic applicant in the event that you ALREADY have all the other experiences they mentioned. These charts should not be discouraging students from pursuing research.

 

[Lost In Transcription]

If you want to do research, do it for at least a summer and calendar year. Try to be productive. However, if you don't want to do it, you'll likely be slow as hell and unproductive, so essentially wasting the money of the lab AND your time (and theirs)!