Wet lab vs Clinical Research

[kv11]

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Hi yall! I'm applying to a bunch of internships for this summer as a current sophomore. I have been doing research for the past 6 months at a psych research lab that is doing a clinical trial trying to study the effect of thoughts during sleep on problem solving. For these summer internships, most of them are lab-based research but some of them are more clinical based (health disparities, health awareness, prevention, etc.). Is it essential or better to have lab-based research experience for medical school? Would it negatively impact my application if I had solely clinical research? I'm leaning towards clinical research just because it is more interesting to me but i'm not sure if medical schools care that I've had no lab-based research or that I've never worked in a lab before.........thanks!

 

[Arbitas]

I got in with zero wet lab experience. do the research that interests you!

 

[AJS59]

Hi yall! I'm applying to a bunch of internships for this summer as a current sophomore. I have been doing research for the past 6 months at a psych research lab that is doing a clinical trial trying to study the effect of thoughts during sleep on problem solving. For these summer internships, most of them are lab-based research but some of them are more clinical based (health disparities, health awareness, prevention, etc.). Is it essential or better to have lab-based research experience for medical school? Would it negatively impact my application if I had solely clinical research? I'm leaning towards clinical research just because it is more interesting to me but i'm not sure if medical schools care that I've had no lab-based research or that I've never worked in a lab before.........thanks!

Any form of research (lab, clinical, computational, social) is fine. The important point is to show how to answer scientific questions.

 

[RockClimberMed]

From what I've learned from program directors at my school, basic science is held in much higher regard than clinical. Keep in mind you can report undergrad research on residency apps. Somewhat dependent on specialty tho.

 

[Goro]

Hi yall! I'm applying to a bunch of internships for this summer as a current sophomore. I have been doing research for the past 6 months at a psych research lab that is doing a clinical trial trying to study the effect of thoughts during sleep on problem solving. For these summer internships, most of them are lab-based research but some of them are more clinical based (health disparities, health awareness, prevention, etc.). Is it essential or better to have lab-based research experience for medical school? Would it negatively impact my application if I had solely clinical research? I'm leaning towards clinical research just because it is more interesting to me but i'm not sure if medical schools care that I've had no lab-based research or that I've never worked in a lab before.........thanks!

As long as you're learning something about the scientific method, it's OK if you were studying frogs in Kansas or Fiji.

Not everything you do has to be about Medicine

 

[pinkdino]

I also want to say, as someone who has done both, clinical research was a really great way for me to have a different type of patient interaction and ended up being a lot of what I wrote/talked about this cycle! I would totally go for it especially if there is a genuine interest 🙂