<p>I feel like in order to break into any good medical program we have to have done 'research'. </p>
<p>what exactly does that mean? at this point in our lives how many of us are really capable of doing real research beyond just watching petri dishes? </p>
<p>if anyone can explain this to me and how to get into a position like this it would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>during this past year, i had some connections that allowed me to do my science fair project in a lab environment, got 5th place in regionals, wrote a paper (might send to Siemens), presented, etc. If you don't want to do an entire project, im sure there are labs that are looking for "research assistants" and such..</p>
<p>Not everyone has the resources available to do research. If you like medicine, volunteer in a hospital, join a pre-med club, etc.</p>
<p>i picked a place [jefforson university] and emailed probably 60 people from different departments and i acutally got a positive response. i'm going to be working in the immunology department and i'm doing a project on DNA encoding. so if you want to do something like that, you should probably find a place locally and email researchers, professors, or anyone that you can find.</p>
<p>some labs only want test tube cleaners :(</p>
<p>My PI at the NIH absolutely refuses to hire HSers. He said the last one he hired couldn't even be trusted to make buffers. lol</p>
<p>My school offers a science research course where you can get upto 12 credits at a university by being a member of the program and doing upto 90 hours worth of research over your sophomore and junior summers. From there, I applied to some programs and got assigned to projects. If you don't have a class in school, you can look up some research institutions and just start emailing mentors. Some of my friends who didn't apply to programs looked into say SUNY Stonybrook and emailed some researchers to see if they had available spots for research students.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>