<p>D2 like kat’s S and GAMom’s D never got to spend a summer at or near home. She had some fantastic research opportunities (and she wasn’t hooked, Miami) but she was always across the country from home. She was open to new locales, new places and new research fields–and she got to spend 2 of her 3 summers in fantastic places which she loved and would love to go back to. (The 3rd summer was at her home school where she had a paid fellowship working for her PI–still over 2000 miles from home.)</p>
<p>The key, as I said earlier is to apply early and broadly and to places that might be outside your comfort zone. (Not the typical MIT-Harvard-Columbia-Duke-WUSTL-Stanford schools). There are great opportunities at places like Colorado State (@Ft. Collins in the shadow of Rocky Mtn National Park) ; NM Tech (home to the VLA and wild whooping cranes) ; UAlaska; Towson State, UHawaii-Hilo (a summer in Hawaii all expenses paid? Where do I sign up?); Hope College; UMontana; UOregon; and dozens of others. </p>
<p>Did you know you could spend your summer on a dinosaur dig with Jack Horner who is one of the top 5 paleontologists in the world? Or swimming with whales in Hilo Bay Hawaii? Or hunting new species in the rainforests at the foot of Mt Rainier? And get paid for it! Come on, think outside the box. Med schools are not looking for soulless drones. You can have fun with your summer research!</p>
<p>Also: Harvard-MIT-Columbia-Duke-WUSTL-Stanford do NOT have a exclusive lock on the country’s most brilliant minds. You’ll find world class researchers in some surprising places.</p>
<p>For the students posting above who are concerned that they have begun too late. It is true that the advisable path is to do summer research, but that does not mean your chances are ruined if you did not get in the information loop in time. My DD was told she should do research, but for a number of reasons, she chose not to in the summer. She did shadowing and hospital volunteering plus other personal ECs.</p>
<p>In her case it was wise to apply after graduation, as she worked for that full application year as a paid research assistant in a lab, tons of experience, conferences, and made enough money to support herself that year. Just because you did not follow the perfect path does not mean you cannot get into med school, but you will likely need to find some research experience some where along the way./</p>
<p>@WOWMom,
While I agree with almost everything you said, why no love for the “usual suspects”? They are great places to study and offer much to a student. You mention a " summer in Hawaii all expenses paid? Where do I sign up?", but how about a summer in Manhattan, all expenses paid?
Did you mean to say, Not just the typical MIT-Harvard-Columbia-Duke-WUSTL-Stanford schools).?</p>
<p>It’s just that for most applicants the usual suspects (with under 5% acceptance rates) are a bit like entering a lottery. Some people get lucky; most don’t.</p>
<p>And given a choice between Manhattan and Hawaii–I’ll take Hawaii every time. (RE: Manhattan BTDT, definitely not my thing.)</p>
<p>Im sorry but would you mind telling me what you did in NYC during your freshman summer? I’m really trying to find something productive do in NYC come this summer since I go to school very far away from home and would like to spend my first summer near my family.</p>
<p>As I have mentioned, D. mostly relaxed with her firneds during all UG summers. She did a bit of volunteering, shadowing, but not any close in significance to the ones that she did during school year at her college. It did not hurt her at all. Actually, her committe commented that they did not understand how she was able to get involved in so much and she struggled to include everything in her application, she ended up not including very significant stuff. Oh, well, she is a third year Med. Student. She is extremely happy to have the memories of the relaxed summers that she will never ever have in her life any more…and many of her friends are also currently at various Med. Schools. Do not look very hard for something “productive” in a summer, at the end the relaxation, sleeping in is going to be the most productive for your future.</p>
<p>1) Course load of 14 credits and research.
2) REU. He got ~$4500 + dorm room for the duration.
3) Course load of 8 credits, research, and filling medical school secondary applications during the first 2 months. Around 12 hours of work per day with their start-up company and filling more secondary applications for the last month (still going on).</p>
<p>Hi Jooooy, I spent my summer after freshman year doing full time paid research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. A few of the people in my program were locals like you. There are a great many summer programs in NYC (a friend was working at NYU that same summer)so your chances are good, but you must start looking and apply early (during the Fall) to have the best chance of finding a spot. Best of luck.</p>
<p>BTW, during that same summer when I wasn’t working in the lab, I found several great opportunities to shadow physicians at nearby hospitals. An overall great summer :D</p>
<p>ka123,
Way too busy summers for an UG student. I hope he enjoyed them. Otherwise, he might regret being soo busy in summers of his UG. D. had no single class, got the only 6 credits for her trip to NZ and she did not need these credits, completed projects only because the Honors program paid for one summer. Research and other things were done during school year, all long term (3 years) commitments.
However, if she had an opportunity at paid Research internship, she would not pass it by. She had applied (college GPA=4.0, great LORs and also has worked at this Med. Research lab previously - greate refferrals) and she did not get position. She applied very early - might be Feb., I do not remember.
However, looking back as a third year Med. Student, she and we (her parents) are very happy that she had taken advantage of relaxed sleep-in summers and spent ton of times with her friends. No such chance any more, probably never. She did a bit of volunteering, but it was very little</p>
<p>He became very driven individual once he got into college. I tried saving him from overload, but he always came up with a rationale. His younger brother hated not having his big-bro home for summers. </p>
<p>Of all the summers, he really enjoyed the summer in which he did the REU. He met kids from different schools and had some fun after getting out of the lab.</p>
<p>He is really hating this summer - not so much for the amount of work, but all the stress brought upon by the delays with the application process. He is still not complete anywhere because his school hasn’t sent his committee packet yet. </p>
<p>He had to do the summer classes because of schedule conflicts. He is a double major in Computer Science and Biology with a minor in Linguistics. Since his majors are from two different schools (Engineering and SAS) schedule conflicts were always a problem.</p>
<p>He has been a paid research assistant with multiple research grants all three years in 2 different areas - medical robotics/computer integrated surgery and building synthetic yeast genome. He published one first author paper and presented it at a conference and the second paper is in the pipeline.</p>
<p>Just had a conversation with D about this last night. She’s a junior. This past summer, she took a required course (was also fun since it was given abroad) and then worked as a research assistant in a lab at school. She worked with this prof the semester before and hopes to continue working there this semester as well. The summer after freshman year, she worked at a camp for kids with autism, aspergers and other related disorders.</p>
<p>Volunteering is something she does often and a lot of. But unfortunately, shadowing and clinical experience seems to be an area she doesn’t have too much to show for. She was planning to look for an internship for the following summer (she’s a BME major) - but now was wondering if she should take next summer to do some volunteering/shadowing in hospitals instead. Thoughts? If she does land an internship, I doubt that she would have time for anything else. And it is going to be a busy summer, if she decided to go ahead and apply for the following year.</p>
<p>kal123,
Kuddos to your son. I just hope he does not get burned before his time. It is very very very…millions time very rough in Med. School. I am very happy that D. took advantage of the free summers during UG, sleeping in sometime until afternoon, spending time with friends, invaluable…and most of them are soooo busy with many at the Med. Schools. They do get burned, but they have to continue being burned…there are no breaks, no slowing down, just up, up, up, harder and harder</p>