Summer After First Year

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bassquiat

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Hello,

My first year of medical school is ending in a few weeks, and we start back up again mid-August. I did well in my classes, but don't have any EC's on my CV and with especially P/F Step 1 I'm starting to get worried if I'm setting myself back if I don't make use of this summer. I don't plan on matching into a hyper competitive specialty, and would like to keep my options open for IM at a mid-tier academic site.

From what I've read, it seems like the most common advice is to get involved in some kind of clinical research project over the summer. However, I don't have any research experience from undergrad, and am worried that it's too late to find something for this summer. Would it be a good idea to just start cold e-mailing professors and people from local hospitals/residency programs to ask for something to do?

Any advice would be appreciated, thank you!

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You may be correct that it is too late. You will want to get on your school website and find out which of your professors do research if you have research opportunities at your school and then message all of them and see if they have room for you. If you have a nearby university, call them up or show up and express your interest in during a summer research project. Call up any hospitals in the area as well. If you have a specific topic of interest (ie. cardiology, orthopedics, derm, etc), then make your interest known and reach out to the right people. If you want to get something, you have to be a pest.....especially this late in the game. Good luck.
 
Enjoy the summer and crush step. When you hit the wards, slap together a few case reports and call it a day. That's what I did, and now I'm at a brand name university IM program in the NE.
 
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If your med school has a research society organization/club, see if you can reach out to them. My university connected us to a research society that made certain to present us with opportunities/FU on our progress. Other than that, I know cold-emailing has worked for a few people.
 
Doesn't hurt to cold e-mail, but at least have some kind of interest or topics in mind. When I tried this, I always got an e-mail back if I included some topics I find interesting or wanted to investigate more. Other than that I would relax as much as possible, and be refreshed to grind M2 so you can get a good foundation for Step 2, even though step 1 is P/F. You don't want to be scrambling during M3 while on rotations for a make-or-break exam.
 
If you want to do research, cold e-mailing your schools professors is probably the best bet. If reaching out beyond your institution, hit up program directors or residents (the chief resident might have the best idea if other residents need help with research).

If you can’t find any research, there’s other ways you can boost your application. You can get involved in a volunteering activity or maybe some sort of local organization. If that doesn’t appeal to you, you can try to shadow some of the specialties you won’t be able to see during you fourth year. That way if you find you’re interested in something other than IM you can start building an application towards a different specialty before it’s too late.

If all else fails, just enjoy your last free summer and maybe start prepping for Step 1/Level 1. A lot of my classmates wont be doing research this summer and will instead be bartending, traveling, etc.
 
Step 1. Find physician with patients.
Step 2. Go in person and ask to write a case report for them.
Step 3. Find an interesting case and write a report.
Step 4. Publish in Cureus.
Step 5. Add summer research to CV.

You can also expand this by doing a case series either after the report or in lieu of.
 
Step 1. Find physician with patients.
Step 2. Go in person and ask to write a case report for them.
Step 3. Find an interesting case and write a report.
Step 4. Publish in Cureus.
Step 5. Add summer research to CV.

You can also expand this by doing a case series either after the report or in lieu of.
lmfao Cureus, just helped my friend and his advisor write a BS review paper which is complete trash. I told him to try Cureus, and two reviews were already completed the day we submitted within hours saying our paper was good for publication. even funnier, my friend is not even in med school yet and his advisor is a neurolinguistist but we were sending in a psychiatry and neurology paper
 
I didn’t have any research entering med school and I wanted IM as well initially... but I changed my mind and am now planning to apply to something much more competitive. I would have been in trouble if I’d sat back and relaxed because lots of people match IM just fine without research.

So, just keep in mind that a lot of people change their minds about what specialty they want between M1 and residency app time and you might end up being one of them. I’d start cold emailing people looking for research.
 
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