<p>Hi everyone,
I am an incoming senior in high school, and am aspiring to be a future doctor. However, I don't know if I am doing enough to get into a good undergraduate school and major in pre-med (i.e. Stanford or Johns Hopkins). The thing is, the extra-curricular activities that I do have been revolving around internships and other medical-related stuff. For example, I did a research for a family doctor that I interned for; unfortunately, the doctor is not allowing me to send in an abstract for the supplemental material for college. How can I prove to colleges that I did do a research? Also, this is a clinical research for a family practice clinic, how will it compare to Stanford or UC Berkeley's high school research opportunites? Will colleges choose one from a program like Stanford over a clinic's research? Lasty, I spent my summer attending the NYLF program on Medicine and the People to People Medical program at Johns Hopkins University. Will these programs appear to be impressive to colleges, or will they choose somebody else that spent a summer volunteering at the UCLA medical center? Please respond, I thank whoever reads this and/or responds.</p>
<p>For your research with the doctor, could you ask him to write a letter of recommendation or something of that sort explaining what you did? I would assume that universities wouldn't look down at doing research at a smaller clinic versus a prestigious one like Stanford or Berkeley, but I don't know for sure. After all, you're still doing research, and whatever it is that you find out could still help people. For the programs, again, I doubt universities will really care whether you spent your taking programs at JHU versus volunteering at a medical centre (side note: do you have volunteer experience?). What they would look at is what you got out of the experience (you could explain in an essay or at an interview or whatever). Also, keep in mind that the universities are not going to focus too much on the little details (exclude grades/test scores); they are going to take a look at the big picture.</p>