Hi all,
I am a freshman majoring in biochemistry currently looking for research labs…Four professors have responded to my emails and want to meet me for an interview. Two of them specialize in biochemistry research (one is closer to organic chemistry) and two of them currently does clinical research; topic-wise, I personally think that the organic chemistry prof.'s research is the most interesting. Am I hurting my own chances for medical school when I choose chemistry research over clinical research? How much do medical schools care about the topic of UG research?
Thanks.
Not at all. The purpose of doing research is learn about how the research process works with all its inherent flaws and potentials. Whether you do this in a bench lab or a clinical site doesn’t especially matter.
Not much unless you plan to go into a MD/PhD program.
Your research may be a talking point during a med school interview – or not. Basically any research is of interest only to those who work in your same field. (Case in point: D1 did medium energy particle physics research in UG–and to this day not a single interviewer (med school or residency) has ever even mentioned it.)
@WayOutWestMom Thank you for your response. I am actually considering MD/PhD program as an option as well; would this change my situation?
If you are considering an MD/PhD then your research becomes much more important since you will be judged on the quality of your UG research experience. Ideally your UG research experience should demonstrate increasingly levels of responsibility within the project/research group, culminating with you working on a original project for which you are solely responsible for its success/failure.
I’ll let iwannabe_Brown and plumazul (who are MD/PhD students) address whether you should get involved with clinical vs lab research.
@iwannabe_Brown @plumazul
Basic science research is always best for MD/PhD unless you’re thinking of doing a PhD in statistics or clinical research. Organic chemistry research can be perfectly acceptable if you can talk about it in a way that makes its application to human health and disease obvious. MD/PhD programs think very, very much about fit (way more so than MD only) so depending on what exactly your research is you may or may have a harder time describing how you would fit in with schools. People do change topics all the time, but it’s always an easier sell the closer your research is to what’s offered. I don’t really want to say too much about my own work, but let’s just say that I recently submitted a paper to an ACS (as in chemistry, not cancer) journal and would have been able to take my project in a different direction if I had a stronger chemistry lab background.
I wouldn’t say “solely” because to me that implies you have to be the only one involved. I don’t think that matters. I would say “chiefly” or “primarily” because the point is that you want to be the person who is most heavily involved in the experimental design, performing the experiments, analyzing the experiments, and writing up the results.
So in summary, if you want to do orgo research, go right ahead!