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Talk with the mentor or residency program director for the specialty in which you are interested. They should know whether students from your school need a research year for your intended specialty.
Agree, this is absolutely dependent on what school you go to, as well as whether you are entering school with any prior publications. The threshold of what you need will be completely different depending on whether you're coming from HMS vs a state med school that doesn't have a residency program in your chosen field.
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Assuming a T20 with no prior research and strong departments in most specialties, what then?
Still school and specialty dependent. But if "everyone" is telling you to do a research year, and everyone includes the PD at your home institution, then you probably should.
n = 1 but my school consistently matches people to every specialty, including neurosurg, optho, Ortho, ent, and derm without them taking a research year. Not T40 NIH Funded, but we are a large academic center with programs in everything.
The people who do take research years either have little confidence in themselves, have a deficiency they want to make up, or just want a little extra time to study for step. These people still tend to be a minority of applicants for these specialties.
The people who do take research years either have little confidence in themselves, have a deficiency they want to make up, or just want a little extra time to study for step. These people still tend to be a minority of applicants for these specialties.
I think it’s better to try to do some research projects as you go along, starting as soon as possible. And NOT take a research year. Keep in mind that research years can be risky. Sometimes you wind up with a bad preceptor, or a bad lab, or simply get unlucky because your research projects don’t pan out. So you could wind up with zero publications, which looks terrible on your resume. Worse than not taking one at all.
No specialty absolutely requires a research year. That being said, you do need a decent amount of research for competitive specialties and if you can get it done in 4 years (yes, it's possible), then why take a research year? If you can't, then you have to critically evaluate your own application and see if you need to take a research year to "catch up."
I generally agree with this, with the caveat that if you are aiming for a highly competitive specialty and your school does NOT have a home program, that may tilt the scales even more in favor of doing the research year just to have time to make connections (in addition to publish)
It completely depends. There are people at all different types of schools with various research capacities applying into all manner of specialties at a wide variety of programs that do and do not take a research year.
To a certain extent, it depends on what your career goals are, how you want to portray yourself as an applicant, what types of programs you're shooting for and what they value, and what the marginal benefit / what you're willing to do might be.
As an M1, the best advice I can give you is do well at school first, make connections by talking to people in your home department, perhaps try to get in on a few projects that are beginner friendly and don't take up too much time (case reports, maybe help with writing something that's already done), and see how your interests evolve from there.
To a certain extent, it depends on what your career goals are, how you want to portray yourself as an applicant, what types of programs you're shooting for and what they value, and what the marginal benefit / what you're willing to do might be.
As an M1, the best advice I can give you is do well at school first, make connections by talking to people in your home department, perhaps try to get in on a few projects that are beginner friendly and don't take up too much time (case reports, maybe help with writing something that's already done), and see how your interests evolve from there.
Look at charting the outcomes. Any specialty where the average matched applicant have 20+ pubs/abstracts/posters will potentially need a research year (which includes most surgical subspecialities and derm), as most medical schools would not allot enough time in their regular curriculum to do that much research. The exception is if you're at a medical school that already a lots 8-9 months or more of research time into the standard 4 year program, which is usually only limited to a small proportion of top research schools.
Of course you should not commit to the research year until you're sure the rest of your app is competitive for a competitive specialty. This is now becoming harder to determine early on as more schools go to P/F during pre-clinical years and Step 1 is P/F (one must wait until getting Step 2 scores back to decide this, which at many schools is not until end of 3rd year or beginning of 4th year).
