Don’t get me wrong, I adore science. I love learning it and applying it. But I equally love linguistics. I just received an email from a fantastic professor at my college offering me a research opportunity in linguistics (I emailed him before and met with him so he “thought of [me] when figuring out [his] research team”). Anyway, I’m wondering if this would count to medical schools. If they ask if I have research experience, would it count? And would they see it as the same as scientific research?
Either way, I’m accepting his offer, but I’m wondering if I need scientific research on top of that.
You need some kind of medical experience for med school, but it does not need to be research. You still will want to volunteer or work (part time or summer) in a medical setting. But go for the linguistics research too if you want to.
You could certainly list your linguistic research, but it won’t be viewed the same as science research because the research processes involved are different. (Linguistic research doesn’t typically involve the use of the scientific method of developing a hypothesis, devising a testing protocol, testing the hypothesis, determining if the protocol is appropriate, analyzing data/results, revising hypothesis, re-testing…)
LizzyM explained it this way–
I would point out however, that science research experience isn't strictly necessary for a medical school application to be successful. Approx 15-18% of all med school matriculants report having zero science research experience. And a survey of factors that adcomms use when making admission decisions ranks science research experience as having only "medium" importance (and then only at private, non-mission-oriented med schools).
See p. 3 of this AAMC publication: <a href="https://www.aamc.org/download/434596/data/usingmcatdata2016.pdf">https://www.aamc.org/download/434596/data/usingmcatdata2016.pdf</a>
Yes, of course I’m planning on volunteering and shadowing doctors. That’s not a problem. I was just asking about research in general.
But ok I see. So do it, but it’s not equal to scientific research in the eyes of adcoms (which makes sense and hence why I said it was a silly question to begin with).
Speaking as a linguist who’s had a handful of former students go on to med school, it would really depend on what sort of linguistics research.
Is it, say, theoretical syntax or semantics? That’s legit research experience (which does count for quite a bit), but despite the protestations of syntacticians that their subfield fits under Popper’s definition of science, it almost certainly wouldn’t be scientific research as it’s intended in this context.
Sociolinguistics or psycholinguistics? Maybe scientific under this definition, but probably not—still legit research experience, but not the core of what you need. (There are, however, experimental forms of both of those that definitely would fit.)
Neurolinguistics or laboratory phonetics? Almost certainly scientific research under the definition at hand (and in some cases it would even have a medical flavor).
So no, not a silly question at all—just a somewhat underdefined one.
ETA: And contra what was stated above by one poster, linguistics research most certainly does involve hypothesis testing and experimentation, even in the more “armchair” theoretical subfields.
@dfbdfb Thank you so much for your input! I totally agree that linguistics does utilize hypotheses and tests them. The prof was a bit vague, but it’s mostly about how native bilinguals learn other languages. I’m an “asset” because I grew up learning both English and Arabic, but also learned Spanish and French. I know this falls more under psychology, but it’s the study of how someone utilizes the languages he or she knows to acquire a new language, specifically learning syntax and the irregulars.
You have to ask your pre-med advisory. However, even research while in Medical school not always related to science. And believe it or not this non-scientific research still gets published in the very prestigious medical journals. So, I would check with the pre-med advisory which research is appropriate in your specific case.
The medically related experience does not need to be research. In fact, research is not even mandatory for medical school (unless you intend to do MD/PhD). If research is not mandatory, then there is no reason why you specifically need to do research in a natural science area.
It is not mandatory, but one is at disadvantage for not having it as vast majority of med. school applicants do. Ultimately, decision is up to a student.