Undergrad Research Question!

[lynne8832]

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Hey everyone! I am currently a sophomore in undergrad and I plan to apply to vet school in the fall of 2021. I’ve been looking to do some research next year and haven’t had much luck finding anything through my university. Many of the research projects do not interest me or they are already full. One of my professors who has taught me for 3 semesters reached out to me about his research project that involves people’s misconceptions about science and medicine. He creates questionnaires and surveys, collects the data that people submit, and figures out what some of the most widespread beliefs are in science and medicine. He asked me if I would like to be on his team to create my own research about misconceptions regarding animal care and the veterinary industry. I am very passionate about client education and I plan to touch on the fact that educating and informing your clients is just as important as treating their pet. He mentioned that I could work on this project until I graduate and I could use the data from my surveys to create a patient education program, involving educational brochures, documents, and videos for veterinarians to use. Although this is not what most people count as research in their application, should I still proceed with the research project and highlight my passion for client education in my application?
Thank you for any advice! 🙂

 

[ajs513]

There’s no one type of research that admissions likes to see. Personally, I think this would be very worthwhile to do. Admissions committees like to see that you have an understanding of the field and to have done research on literally understanding the field, I think, would look great to admissions. Not everyone needs to do research on the cure for cancer.

 

[supershorty]

Not everyone needs to do research on the cure for cancer.

How dare! (I'm kidding, I'm kidding).

OP, any research is research. Yours sounds really interesting. I vote do it.

 

[hachamor_persists]

@lynne8832, that sounds amazing! I'm just a pre-vet, so I'm definitely not inside the head of admissions, but that sounds so valuable from just a being ready for vet med stand-point!

From my current biostatistics professor's critiques of other research fields (*cough* psychology, sociology), my only thought would be to consider taking a biology statistics or other biology/medicine-focused research methods class (if you're taking one of those at all) to understand the differences in how different fields do research. But there seems to be so much variety in all that stuff even within biology/medicine/animal science so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.