bluedevilmike

I disagree with ASMAJ's hierarchy but that's neither here nor there. (I think it's basically impossible to form such a hierarchy, and any explanation I give of one is absurdly complicated. See below discussion. I was going to call it an appendix but even I'm not that nerdy.)

If you want to go to research schools, then, duh, research matters. If you want to go to top primary care schools, than many of them (notice the DO program included) probably won't care in the least. There are some schools in fact which dislike the ivory-tower nature of research and will frown upon it, although obviously this list is very, very small.

You have to tell us what you mean by a "top" medical school before we can tell you whether it's the sort of medical school that cares about research. If you mean a top research school, then I would think it's basically tautological.



*Imagine that there are nine criteria for admission to medical school:
1.) Application process
2.) GPA, mainly BCPM
3.) MCAT score, including balance
4.) LORs, especially advisor letters
5.) Essays, especially AMCAS
6.) Research
7.) Clinical Experience
8.) Community Service
9.) Interviews

There are certainly more, including legacy status, race, and in-state status, but we'll ignore those.

Now, you rank each of these students into a percentile score and assign them 1-100 in each of the eight categories. Here's how I imagine the admissions process at an extremely selective medical school:

Step 1: Any student with less than an 85 in any two of those categories is immediately eliminated from consideration. You're permitted one area in which you may be only average, provided that that area is not MCAT, GPA, or Clinical Experience.

Step 2: Any student which does not have at least three areas scoring as a 95+ is eliminated.

Step 3: Any student who scores 95+ in six areas is automatically admitted.

Now and only now do I feel comfortable assigning a hierarchy. Notice that students must be excellent in all fields first -- the only question is, in which field are they really stellar? In other words, when I tell you that criterion X is more important than Y, it doesn't mean that an excellent X will make up for a poor Y. It means than an excellent X and a good Y trumps the other way around.

Step 4: Separate students based on the categories in which they have a 95+. For example, if Bob has a 95+ in GPA and EC's but only a 91 in MCAT scores, he goes into the GPA pile and the EC's pile, but not the MCAT pile.

Here's, finally, where I feel comfortable listing a hierarchy:

1.) Research/Clinical experience/Community Service
---> These among themselves vary from school to school, but I would feel comfortable always labelling them as the top three.
2.) Advisor Letter
3.) MCAT Score
4.) Interview
5.) Application Process

Large Gap.

6.) Essays
7.) GPA
8.) Other LOR's.