My daughter is a freshman premed at a top LAC and is trying to decide between a couple of options for this summer. She has a medical assistant/phlebotomist job lined up at a clinic near home, but she also has the option of staying on campus to do research.
A physician at the clinic has advised her to take the research opportunity, as he thinks it’s a far superior EC for med school apps over clinical experience (he applied to med school with thousands of research hours and zero clinical).
Her premed advisor told her to choose whichever option she prefers (she would prefer to get clinical experience).
Everything I’ve read leans toward clinical experience being non-negotiable in a med school app, but perhaps I’m wrong? We have no physicians in our family and this is my first college kid, so I thought I’d tap the collective wisdom here.
Thoughts from those with experience? TIA.
As a freshman, let her choose what she wants. She can fill in others in the next year or two.
In this day and age I wouldn’t apply to med school without clinical experience - paid or volunteer.
Have you had a chance to read what U Rochester lauds in its matriculants? I doubt they’re the only school expecting great things from future students. It’s a competitive world out there.
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If she prefers the clinical experience, I would go that route. The experience will probably help when applying for her next clinical experience opportunity.
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She needs clinical experience to bring that to her med school interviews. They want to see how she’ll perform with patients.
Our eldest (who later became an engineer) did research on “diabetic” mice. If that’s the kind of research that she would be doing then, it might be helpful. But our middle daughter did clinical experiences with diabetic, low-income patients at community clinics, and worked for pay, in on-campus labs. She did well in her med school interviews.
Ultimately, it’s your daughter’s choice.
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I would pick the clinical experience …how can she know she wants to be a doctor without having had exposure to patients?
Thoughts @wayoutwestmom? @thumper1
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If she prefers clinical experience, let her do the clinical experience.
See Table 1 on p 15 of this 2023 AMCAS document on med school admissions
Table 1. Mean Importance Ratings of Academic, Experiential, Demographic, and Interview Data Used by Admissions Committees to Make Decisions About Which Applicants Receive Interview Invitations and Acceptance Offers
Clinical experience is rated by adcomms as being of “highest importance”
Research experience is rated as being of “medium importance”
IOW, your d needs clinical exposure to be consider a strong applicant for med school. Research is also nice to have, but it’s the cherry on top of the EC cake.
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Thanks so much for all the responses! I’ve shared these with my D and she feels a lot more secure in her decision to work in the clinic this summer.
One other question regarding research: She is currently writing a paper for a social science course in which she’s researching how triage decisions were made in ERs during the pandemic, along with how those decisions may have affected certain marginalized groups. Her prof recommended she consider expanding on this idea as a potential thesis topic in a couple of years. Would this type of thing also count as “research” for med school apps, or does research refer only to that done in the hard sciences in labs?
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Any research works. My guy’s research was akin to how children learn languages (Brain and Cog Sci major). He was asked about it a bit in interviews.
I believe what the schools that prefer research are looking for is often that students are interested in the “whys” of the world more than any specific “why.” If one is looking for MD/PhD, then they want it medical related.
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Mine chose to do research most summers, squeezing in the clinical volunteering here and there, but she was leaning towards going for an MD/PhD degree (and that’s what she’s doing now). If your daughter prefers clinical I would suggest she follow her interests. Also, clinical hours are critical towards a medical school application. As said above, if the goal is MD/PhD I would lean heavily into research as early as possible (but honestly, for her first summer I would still say that it would be ok either way).
Hope this helps.
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One other question regarding research: She is currently writing a paper for a social science course in which she’s researching how triage decisions were made in ERs during the pandemic, along with how those decisions may have affected certain marginalized groups. Her prof recommended she consider expanding on this idea as a potential thesis topic in a couple of years. Would this type of thing also count as “research” for med school apps, or does research refer only to that done in the hard sciences in labs?
The subject matter of research isn’t as important as the process the research involves. (My older d did medium energy particle physics research in undergrad. Definitely scientific research, but not especially relevant to medicine.)
Research for med school application is generally expected to utilize the scientific method in order to be considered research.
So it will depend on the scope, design and depth of her project and whether she will be involved in hands on data gathering.
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