Should I participate in research at my school or else where?

[aloegarten]

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Howdy all,

I'm a first-year undergrad and I've been itching to get started on some research at school. However, I lucked out on getting placed into a lab at my school. I've been looking at options for what I can do over the summer and I'm trying to decide on what I want to do. I've already decided that I want to take courses online (through my school) to open up my schedule a little bit.

Anywho, I've been looking into research opportunities and my school does offer plenty over the summer, albeit I would have to spend basically my entire summer at schoo. Besides this, I've also been looking at others around the country, from other schools to institutes around the US.

I've begun to think about risk and reward when it comes to these, and the immediate thing that comes to mind is that if I choose to work somewhere other than my school, I won't have the opportunity to continue working in the same lab in the future.

What other things should I consider with this? Do any of y'all have experience with this situation? Also, I don't have any clinical hours and I'm lacking on volunteering. Should I just focus on that instead? Sorry if my questions seem dumb, I don't really know what I should be focusing on right now.

Also, just to add on to this. Going home for me means being in Houston, where the Texas Medical Center is not far from me.

Thanks guys!

 

[AJS59]

Howdy all,

I'm a first-year undergrad and I've been itching to get started on some research at school. However, I lucked out on getting placed into a lab at my school. I've been looking at options for what I can do over the summer and I'm trying to decide on what I want to do. I've already decided that I want to take courses online (through my school) to open up my schedule a little bit.

Anywho, I've been looking into research opportunities and my school does offer plenty over the summer, albeit I would have to spend basically my entire summer at schoo. Besides this, I've also been looking at others around the country, from other schools to institutes around the US.

I've begun to think about risk and reward when it comes to these, and the immediate thing that comes to mind is that if I choose to work somewhere other than my school, I won't have the opportunity to continue working in the same lab in the future.

What other things should I consider with this? Do any of y'all have experience with this situation? Also, I don't have any clinical hours and I'm lacking on volunteering. Should I just focus on that instead? Sorry if my questions seem dumb, I don't really know what I should be focusing on right now.

Thanks guys!

This partially depends a bit on your financial situation but unless your interest lies in MD/PhD I'd go with clinical hours and volunteering. Those are much more mandatory for med school admissions than research, which is a nice bonus but not critical

 

[dimplesage]

I have friends who applied straight MD who did research over summers. Some people will often mix research with volunteering, shadowing, etc especially if they're staying at their undergraduate institution over the summer to do research.

In my opinion, research fellowships at other institutions can be a great way to explore new research fields, meet peers from all over the country, and experience life in another city. They may not directly help your application, but I do think they can help you grow as a person as well as grow your professional network. There are research fellowships that are more pre-health based that have shadowing more directly tied into the curriculum as well, so that could be an option too.