When are you supposed to do research during your premed years?

[noroxytocin]

I want to eventually get MD and PhD degrees, and do medicine half the time, and research the other half. But when they say it's good to have at least four years of research before going to medical school, do they mean that you're supposed to do research while you're taking classes, or during the summer? Also, is it better or necessary for the research to pertain specifically to medicine, or does it not matter if some of it is about other kinds of science?

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[BurghMed]

During undergrad, many students do research in labs for credit, while other students may do research over the summer (sometimes for class credit/sometimes for minimum wage or even for free as an internship). Most students tend to medically related research but this is not always the case. However, I would at least stray away from doing research in the humanities/social sciences, and would at least stick to the natural sciences (e.g., chemistry, biology, physics) if you are interested in going to medical school. Hope this helps

 

[noroxytocin]

Perfect--that helps a lot. My only question is now, for example, if a lab focussed on how social psychology and neurology worked together, would that research still apply? I'm not sure how social psychology looks on an application, and it's not something I'm really interested in anyway, but the lab seems to connect the different things it focuses on.