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How much research experience is best to have if you want to go to a research oriented medical school?

How much research experience during the undergraduate years looks best to have if you want to get into a research oriented medical school or go for an MD/Ph.D progam?

Public Comments

1. First, I don't know of many medical schools that aren't research-oriented, if there are any. If you're going for an M.D., you don't have any reason to do research as an undergraduate unless you plan on a research career. In which case, you'd be better off with a Ph.D. than with an M.D., or with the extra years required for an M.D./Ph.D. Undergraduate research might look good on your application for a highly competitive school, though. The folks I've known who have M.D./Ph.D.'s mostly didn't do any undergraduate research, and the majority of them never used their Ph.D., which means they wasted a lot of time to wind up in clinical practice anyway. The rest never use their M.D., so there's 4 years wasted of memorizing minutiae to pass Step 1 exams and to get clinical experience that was never put to use. There are some great biomedical scientists out there with M.D./Ph.D.'s, though, and I certainly wouldn't want to discourage someone who might be another one. If you plan to do research, I think the more the better. Many schools have summer research programs where you can work in a lab full-time, and can do it several summers. There are also usually a lot of work-study jobs in labs. They may start out cleaning glassware or making buffers, but if you're bright and ambitious, they can easily move into helping with experiments.
2. although research is looked favorably upon in applying to medical school, the most important factors are in fact ur undergraduate grade point average (GPA) and the GPA of ur science classes only and of ur medical college admissions test (MCAT) scores. everything else is secondary and may actually swing the vote in ur favor if the schools r looking at u and another candidate who r about even on things. one thing to keep in mind though, most undergraduate colleges may have a forgiveness policy but medical schools dont. what i mean is if u get an 'F' and retake the class for an 'A', ur undergraduate GPA from the college may only count the 'A' but the medical school will also count the 'F'. hence ur overall grade is a 'C'. as for the PhD, if u plan to go into research than go for it. if u only want to be a doctor, dont waste ur time. just get ur MD degree and if u want to, u can specialize once ur done with ur residency. good luck.