Jump to content
Premed 101 Forums

Research Assistant positions


Recommended Posts

Under 'Employment/Volunteer' or 'Research'?

 

My roles in these projects were mostly in the data collection phase (recruiting participants, organizing samples, etc). I haven't directly been involved in any dissemination of results.

 

If I list it under Research, what would I put for "Type of Publication"? I'm assuming they only want to hear about pubs/presentations that I am an author on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 years later...

I'm sorry but I would not include "acknowledgements" in the Research section, please do not do that. Being "acknowledged" is not a legitimate type of publication and it will almost certainly look like padding!

If you started as a volunteer RA then got employed, describe both - i.e. two entries, one for volunteer and one for employment. I did the same. Don't worry about your short employment already - put hours until Oct 1st, they will note the transition

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, TwitterMedicine said:

Being acknowledged is not insignificant or illegitimate and is worthy of a research entry. Sure if you have a publication or a few presentations you can omit it from what you include since you've already demonstrated your research abilities. But if someone only has an acknowledgement by the time they apply, then why would they not include that?? You assume it's easy to be acknowledged on a publication (hint: it's not). You are spouting high horse bullshit.

"High horse bullshit" is really strong language, I wonder if your threshold for getting pissed off would also be that low as a doctor.

When I say don't include acknowledgements, I'm saying it based on 1) general consensus from what I've read on forums and 2) personal experience - i've been included in the acknowledgements section of a paper and I know what I did to get there: the wet lab work. My professor was just nice enough to add my name there but TBH she didn't need to. I did not contribute significantly to designing the experiment or interpreting the results or writing the manuscript, or else I would be a co-author on the paper. Everyone knows that and adcoms will see right through it. It is better to describe the research experience in the Volunteer or whatever relevant section.

It is also well known that at the end of the day it comes to your own judgement about what you feel reflects you, so if you would include an acknowledgement then by all means go ahead, no one's stopping you bud.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, TwitterMedicine said:

When I see posts that discourage applicants from including their abilities I get passionate about it. I had a friend who took the "not padding" approach and did not receive a single interview. Reapplied with a different approach and is on his way to an MD. And FYI it gets pretty heated working in healthcare so if the word "bullshit" is your threshold for "strong language" you'll have a hard time. Also you're taking a nice red herring approach to this discussion but oh well...

I'll soften the language, but this is more bullcrap. Where are you getting this idea that adcoms will look down on/see through an acknowledgment?? Authorship criteria is very stringent, so although in your experience getting acknowledged was not significant (in your words), for some people it is a huge deal and they contributed a ton of work. Yes you can capture that in the description of your RA position (employment or volunteering), but an acknowledgment shows you contributed significantly to something that ended up being published and you can highlight a different skillset. 

I don't have an acknowledgment unfortunately, just a publication and some conference presentations, but yes I would definitely include it if I had one.

An acknowledgement is not an "ability"... as for your friend, I can't comment on his approach because you never know what item(s) or what part of his application it was that gave him the edge. I *identified* your strong language but did not *react* with the same language back to you, so I'd say those are some pretty good doctor skills buddy. Regardless I'll put it out there for anyone who ends up on this thread later one day: At the end of the day no one will be disqualified from med apps if they do include an acknowledgement. There are clearly pros and cons. It's your judgement so use it. I have an acknowledgement but I'm not including it.

 It's 10:45 a.m. and med apps are due soon so I'm going to say adios to this discussion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had some lab work where I just did data collection and put that under volunteering (it was unpaid). I had other lab experience where I was involved in the write-up and results interpretation and did some conference presentations so that I put under research. Honestly, I don't think it matters too much where you put your experiences as long as its clear what you were doing, and I would advise that if you're short in a particular area (i.e. paid employment for example), put the experience there. Good luck everyone! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...