What Type of Research Helps You Get Into Medical School?

Conducting academic research can sometimes improve a medical school applicant's chances of admission, but research experience does not automatically lead to acceptance, according to physicians and medical school officials.

Dr. Fred M. Jacobs, executive vice president of St. George's University -- an international medical school -- and former chair of its department of medicine, says compelling research experience can improve the candidacy of a premed with strong academic qualifications. However, it cannot compensate for a subpar academic performance.

"If you're a good student and you're getting good grades and your scores on the standardized exams are superior, that's the kind of student I would encourage to then go and do research if they want to," he says. "But if you're an average student and you say, 'Well, I'm going to enhance my ... application by doing research,' you're liable to shoot yourself in the foot because you basically don't have time. You're not doing well enough as it is, so research should not be the top (priority) on your list."

Jacobs says that premeds should focus first on fulfilling the admission requirements for medical school. Once those requirements have been met, premeds can devote time and effort to research experiences. Still, for a high-achieving student, research is a plus that can add some luster to his or her med school admissions profile, he says.

[Read: 4 Ways to Make Premedical Research Experience Count.]

Dr. Daniel Clinchot, the vice dean for education at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, cautions that a research project is unlikely to mitigate a serious deficit in another aspect of a candidate's application, such as a poor MCAT score or a lack of clinical exposure.

Moreover, not every research experience has the same value, according to current and former medical school officials.

"The only type of research that impressed me and enhanced my opinion of the applicant was sincere, committed research done for its own sake and not simply to aid the applicant's competitive status. How to tell? If the research was part of or leading to a master's or doctorate was a definite sign," wrote Dr. Alex G. Little, a retired academic thoracic surgeon and a clinical professor of surgery at the University of Arizona--Tucson who was previously involved with screening prospective medical students, in an email. "A plan to continue the research in medical school and/or afterward was another indication. A month or two spent with a mentor just to be able to say research was done is not helpful."

[Read: How to Find a Medical School That Leads to a Research Career.]

Little says grades and test scores are typically much more pivotal factors in the med school admissions process than research experience. While research is a factor in admissions decisions, he says it has only a small influence. Research experience is weighed more heavily at research-intensive medical schools versus primary care focused schools, he adds.

Regardless of what academic discipline a premed's research focuses on, it's key that he or she displays persistence, resilience and critical thinking skills, says Dr. Quinn Capers IV, the associate dean for admissions at Ohio State's medical school. Capers notes that research does not need to be science-based in order to be an asset in a med school application.

"There is no expectation that the research be medical or even scientific, for that matter," he says, adding that he has been impressed by research projects by premeds who were English and political science majors. Capers adds that he doesn't expect premeds to have published research papers, but he appreciates when premeds have given presentations about their research. It's essential that premeds with a research background understand the research project they participated in well enough to explain it, even if they only played a minor role in the project, he adds.

It is possible to get accepted into med school without a research background, but the vast majority of med school applicants do have research experience, Capers says. "Those who do not have research usually have something else that's really on the ball, like maybe they've worked as a paramedic for two or three years or they did some other really terrific experience," he adds.

[See: 10 Ways to Identify Your Dream M.D.-Ph.D. Program.]

Dr. McGreggor Crowley, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and admissions counselor at the IvyWise admissions consulting firm, says premeds often mistakenly believe they need to conduct bench research at a science lab in order to assemble a viable application.

"There is a misconception that future clinicians should be conducting bench research in so-called 'wet' labs, surrounded by test tubes, reagents, and cell cultures. ... Having a solid background in the scientific method is really what matters, not necessarily the type of research conducted," Crowley wrote in an email.

Dr. Kama Guluma, the associate dean of admissions and student affairs at the University of California--San Diego School of Medicine, says med schools are not concerned about what academic discipline a candidate's research concentrated on or whether the research was lab-based. What med schools care about is whether a student was actively engaged in his or her research and whether he or she gained a significant amount of knowledge, Guluma says. Med schools judge the quality and significance of an applicant's research through a comprehensive look at the circumstances in which the research took place, he adds.

"It is how that research experience fits in context with the rest of that applicant's application that matters, and how it fits in the context of what the applicant had available to them," Guluma wrote in an email. "For example, a project done by an applicant who is a science major at a university with a plethora of research opportunities and labs, graduate science programs and an affiliated medical school may be viewed differently (possibly less impressively) than that same exact project done by an applicant who is a liberal arts major at a small college, in a small town, with no graduate science degree programs and no affiliated medical school."

A student who is a fifth author on a paper in a prestigious research journal may actually garner a less positive reception than a student "who conceived, designed and implemented the totality of their own project, but only presented it at a research meeting because it wasn't as glamorous and impressive," Guluma says.

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