Hey, my friend! I’m so glad you’re here. In today’s blog post, I want to talk about ways to improve your research output as a student.
Many of you are medical students or pre-medical students who are looking for a way to optimize your productivity specifically for residency/medical applications.
So, let’s start there. How is research output measured on these applications and thus, programs and schools?
There are THREE ways.
1. Publication
Getting a publication should be your main goal in doing research (especially as a medical student). When you’re just learning the ropes as a pre-medical student, it’s totally fine to focus on understanding the concept of research and getting experience under your belt.
As a medical student, hopefully you’ve been exposed to some research and know how it works. So, you should be thinking about your own projects and conducting them from beginning to end (of course, under guidance of your research mentor).
While publications aren’t everything, these hold the most weight as far as what you can have on your application.
2. Presentation (Oral or Poster)
Next up, we have conference presentations. These are in the form of oral or poster presentations. Both are great to include on your CV as it shows programs that you can effectively communicate your research findings to an audience.
Note that oral presentations hold more weight than a poster presentation. If you’re just getting started with research, I suggest doing a poster presentation first, then an oral presentation.
In order to get accepted to these, you need to actively be looking for opportunities to share your research. One way you can find conferences is to Google “[your research topic or specialty] and “research conference 2021.””
3. Research Experience
If you’re not able to publish or get a conference presentation, that’s okay! This can be common if you just started a new research position. However, you can still make it count on your application by listing it as a research experience in which case you will describe your roles and what skills you gained from your involvement.
Anytime you put something on your application (whether for medical school or residency), make sure you are able to substantially discuss it in an interview. It’s fair gain. You should know why you’re doing the research, how our team conducted the study, and what the outcomes are (if available).
Optimizing your research experience will vary depending on what stage your in. First you want to make sure you get some experience. After that, start looking for conferences to submit your projects to. Concurrently, you can submit your project for a publication.
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