<p>What kind of extracurricular activities should a premed participate in?</p>
<p>From <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=206567:[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=206567:</a></p>
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<p>this should be stickied, it should help a lot of people.</p>
<p>should research be in a science or medicine related field, or can it be in, say, a humanity?</p>
<p>so i guess what i’m asking is, do they want you to research just to get experience in the art of good research?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>1.) We know that any research is better than none.</p>
<p>2.) I think that science research is better than non-science research, but I have no evidence to back this up. I have been told by one admissions director that this is not the case at her school, but she, of course, only speaks for her one school.</p>
<p>3.) Medically-related research, of course, does not have to be scientific. Sociological implications of psychiatric disorders in various ethnic groups, for example, is not a basic science but it is certainly medically related. Reseach on the FDA’s pattern of drug approvals relative to pending lawsuits is also not in basic science, but is medically related.</p>
<p>4.) In my judgment, it is quite important to be medically related – and this is much more important than being natural-science based. But I do not know any of that for sure.</p>
<p>5.) To reemphasize: what we do know for sure is that research is very important at research-heavy schools. Beyond that, nothing is certain.</p>
<p>You rock man.</p>
<p>oh okay</p>
<p>would you recommend sticking with one project for a long time? or would you go with think broader but less in-depth research?</p>
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<ol>
<li>You become very involved and knowledgeable about the subject.</li>
<li>Possibilities of publications. </li>
<li>Awesome LOR from your PI for medical school.</li>
<li>Shows you are not just doing it to put on your resume.</li>
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<p>I am a rising junior in college. Research I did as a rising junior in high school was published in NCI publication last year and the research I did as a rising junior in high school will be published this year. The paper went through many revisions and I had to review and comment each time. I am the 3rd author in both of the papers. I did spend time in college on it but not as much as I did research. Would I be able to include the publications in the 15 item list of the medical school application ?</p>
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How can I find the meaning involved in what I did and why it mattered to me? Even if I knew about these, I doubt I’ll be able to speak in a convincing way during an interview; I’m not an eloquent speaker. 
I have two years left until applying to med school. What are the best ways of preparing for these things?</p>
<p>ysk1:</p>
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<p>Frankly, if you don’t know why the heck you bothered doing any of the things you’re doing, you need to figure that out. Why you participate in whatever premedical activity you do or why you want to be a doctor? Seriously, reconsider medical school.</p>
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<p>PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE.</p>
<p>Despite my background as a Peer Educator, which involved frequent speaking in front of small groups, I kinda flubbed my first two interviews because I didn’t practice. By “flubbed” I mean that I felt like a clumsy idiot after them. I got waitlisted at both schools.</p>
<p>Since I applied late, I then had about 3 months until my last interview in March. During those three months, I set up a “practice interview” at my school’s career center, interviewed in person to teach for Kaplan, interviewed over the phone for Teach for America, and relentlessly practiced how to answer interview questions I gleaned from SDN’s interview feedback section. All that interviewing really helped me do much better at the third interview. (I still got waitlisted, though that could’ve been due to the extremely late interview date.)</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I’ve since gotten into two of the three schools. That’s good enough by my standards, given my late applications and the fact that “talking” is not a gift of mine. Getting good at talking to people is a skill worth practicing.</p>
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I’m just going into second year, and I didn’t start participating in any premedical activities, yet. I’m thinking of starting those activities beginning September, 2007. Fortunately, I’ll still have time to think about why I want to go to med school until I actually plunge myself into doing those activities.
Thanks so much for your advice on interviewing. That really helped. :)</p>
<p>Let’s say if I want to apply to MD/PhD, which of the following choices looks will be valued the most and why:
a) 2-year undergrad research
b) 1-year undergrad research + 1-year hospital/EMT volunteering
c) 2-year hospital/EMT volunteering</p>
<p>Just in general; if I just want to apply to MD NOT MD/PhD, does research experience really matters that much? Nowadays, is “clinical experience” really a “MUST” for med-school applicants?</p>
<p>1.) MD/PhD has research as the most important component, but clinical experience is still necessary.</p>
<p>2.) Not if you’re not applying to a research-heavy school. Else, yes.</p>
<p>3.) Yes, clinical experience is a must for med school applicants. Which is fine, because, as a future physician, I’m sure you love clinical experience. So it works out nicely.</p>
<p>I would pick option B. Quality is better than quantity. Some people achieve more in 3 months of summer research than 2 years of research. You just need to make sure your time is spent well and is productive.</p>
<p>[Medical</a> Milestones By Kay Singer-Under the Gargoyle-Duke Magazine-January/February 2007](<a href=“Duke Mag”>Duke Mag)</p>
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<p>what exactly does “doing research” mean? I went to Northwestern University for a leadership conference and we got to visit a hospital in Chicago. We were told that a man was doing research when we saw him on his computer in a lab. However, I dont know what it means to do it. What kind of tasks are involved? If I want to be a neurologist, and treat patients for migraines, would i have to do “research”? I mostly want to prescribe medication and find out the cause of it. Also, if I become a neurologist, do I have to work with patients who have say…alzheimers and other disorders?</p>
<p>Research in the biomedical context usually involves lab testing and animal models. Obviously it involves a lot of reading and writing. Some of it involves computer simulation.</p>
<p>You won’t have to do research to get into neurology, although it’ll help.</p>
<p>Becoming a neurologist does involve treating patients who have degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. You could certainly subspecialize in a specific area to avoid degenerative diseases, but you will still have spent many years caring for such patients. If that’s a problem for you, then medical school as a whole should be out–and certainly neurology should.</p>
<p>Well, I just don’t like touching stuff like Pig’s eyeballs and stuff…I did that at Northwestern, and I don’t mind doing it if i HAVE to but i’d rather not. I chose neurology because I have had a history of migraines and it’s something i want to help other patients overcome. I was also thinking about pharmacy but I wouldnt want to work in Rite Aid. And I want to interact a little bit with patients because I’d probably go crazy working behind walls without anyone there. </p>
<p>What happens if you don’t score a 30 or so on the MCATs? Is it still possible to go to NYU or can it be done with studying? I’m a little worried that if i go into medicine and take all the courses for 4 years, i wont make the cut to a fairly good medical school. i dont hope to get into harvard or anything but maybe USC or NYU, which i know, are still pretty competitive.</p>
<p>You will be doing a LOT of that in medical school. A LOT.</p>
<p>The vast majority of pharmacists work in places other than Rite-Aid. They have some interaction with patients, although admittedly not as much as physicians do. Of course, they also have coworkers and such, so it is not as if they are working by themselves in a small room.</p>
<p>A poor MCAT score will usually keep one out of medical school. However, the definition of a poor score varies depending on your race and home state.</p>
<p>I heard during this winter break that the researchers often spend a lot of time on reading papers while they are waiting for some experimental results.</p>
<p>In DS’s lab, they need to grow some kind of bacteria. A problem is that the bacteria grows extremely slowly: It takes about too weeks to grow. Before the bacteria is grown, the researchers mostly sit by their desk and read one paper after another. This means that before the bacteria is grown, a student doing the research may spend almost 20 hours reading papers as the lab requires you to be in the lab at least 10 hours a week. Most researchers in the lab are full-time employees rather than students.</p>
<p>It seems that there are not many “quick actions” in the day-to-day life of a researcher. Is it the norm or DS happens to join a lab that requires more patience? Also, I heard that if the bacteria fails to grow, 500 dollars are wasted. It is very costly to me. Also, sometimes the researchers do not really know why the bacteria dies out. When it happens, they need to consult with some more experienced researchers who have been there for 4-5 years, from whom they may learn some ad-hoc techniques to increase the odds of preventing this from happening. I heard it is sometimes a hit-or-miss process.</p>
<p>Are many researches in such a slow motion like this? DS said he hopes some day he could do something more with his hands, like doing something to a mouse or rat. It is interesting to learn that the researcher needs to play with a rat even on the day when he really does not have to do research on the rat. The rat is hurt after you have a surgery on it; it will distrust you and you need to re-build its trust by playing with it.</p>