<p>I'm really interested in economics, and I'm also planning on taking my pre-med classes. But the thing is, I'm not so much into biological research..I'm planning on doing some economics research under a prof (gonna go into my freshman yr), but I'm not sure whether this would be "frowned upon" or be considered inferior to someone who has done biological research in the med school admissions process.</p>
<p>Well, D1 did 3 years in a high energy physics lab writing computer code, soldering circuits, and irradiating all sorts of samples–didn’t seem to hurt her application. She also has a classmate at med school who did zero bio research and instead spent 2 years researching the theory of blues music composition. (He capstoned his project with a 40 page thesis and a 1 hour live performance of original music.)</p>
<p>My personal belief is that [long-term] research is used mostly as another metric by med school admissions to measure dedication to a something, a willingness to hang in there when stuff gets complicated and boring and results don’t come or results are not what was expected. (Kinda like practicing medicine.)</p>
<p>I also believe that not everyone looks at this the same way I do.</p>
<p>with economics I could do some research relating to health policy or health care in general, so I know I can tie it in with medicine… not sure if I’d be looked down upon though by the admissions committees</p>
<p>My advice would be to make sure that it doesn’t seem like your primary focus is econ and medicine is only a back up plan or else that could hurt your app.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’ll definitely go for hospital internships, shadowing, & other types of patient experience to back it all up.
any other advice?</p>