Go with your heart. I can’t think of a single “T10” college or university where (outside of BS/MD programs) h/s research would be relevant for taking pre-med courses. No one anoints you as pre-med. There’s a pre-med advisor or a committee that may or may not give you an extra boost in terms of recommendation letters for med school, but everything else is up to you. And, maybe I’m wrong, but IMO the slate gets cleaned once you step on campus.
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^^The above is correct. Activities done in high school aren’t included on a med school application. Med schools are only interested in what you have done recently, not 3-5 years prior to your application.
BTW, it’s an incorrect assumption that research is the most important thing that med schools look T in your application. Having leadership roles in your activities, having clinical experiences, having shadowing and having significant and long term community service are rated as more important than research according to survey of med school adcomms.
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As a high school student, unless you are applying to BS/MD programs, the research experience will be more valued vs shadowing. You will need shadowing hours for BS/MD and for med school admissions.
Shadowing a doctor at this young age won’t really impress college adcoms. But for med school admissions, it is expected. Reason is that they want to make sure you really understand the life of a doctor, along with the crazy hours and hectic schedule.
Note that going to a T10 college won’t necessarily help with med school admissions. Instead you should be focusing on which college will 1) help complete pre med course requirements 2) Get as high of a GPA as possible and 3) Get as high of MCAT as possible. Going to a T10 school and then ending up with a <3.5 GPA will make things difficult.
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Yep, definitely a combo. We know a kid who at 16 got a prestigious job over the Summer working for a very amazing research group. He got it himself. He applied and was picked from many. The rest of the kids we know got jobs via connections ( parents mostly). A couple through school programs or by competitive application ( seems the best way). Most of the parentally involved internships had very little knowledge transfer.
My kid got an internship via school. They offered it to the top two kids in a particular subject. It was paid and my kid realized that environment wasn’t a likely career. Good to know. I’d imagine that some schools have companies contact them and ask for interns and teachers make recommendations.