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[Scrubadubdub]

 

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[Bambi]

I'm a surgeon. In my view, summers are for relaxation and renewal.

[dragoncat]

It's not a must for most specialties from what I've heard but most programs like to see that you took an interest in a project and saw it through. 

The way I see it, if you have 2 identical applicants in front of you and only 1 did some research in med school and is able to talk about it, who will you pick for the residency spot? 

That being said, summers are 100% for relaxing and I purposefully took on a project that would still allow me to travel and take days off at a time. Lots of projects are also now able to be done fully remotely so that helps.

[shikimate]

Might be worthwhile if carefully targeted, since we don't know what away electives will be like next year and beyond. In case you don't get an away elective for a competitive area, doing summer research elsewhere may be a good way to make some connections.

[AB27]

I get the idea that a large percentage of students are doing summer research, can anyone comment on this? 

[Aetherus]

If you can are going for an ultra competitive specialty, you are doing a disservice to yourself by not taking your summer to be productive. You don’t have to use the whole summer for research but should at least do some project for networking and CV.

[Edict]

7 hours ago, AB27 said:

I get the idea that a large percentage of students are doing summer research, can anyone comment on this? 

It really depends on school, but the more research focused schools have more students doing research. I wouldn't say everyone is doing full time research, a lot of people do part-time clinical research. Help out with a few projects here and there kind of work. 1st year summer should just be for specialty exploration and relaxing unless you know what you want to do. 2nd year summer should probably be spent being more productive if you are trying to match into a moderate or highly competitive specialty especially if you are going for a highly competitive location. 

[dooogs]

My philosophy with this is if you are doing a lot of research any way during the year it should be ok to slow down during the summer and travel. Maybe I'm wrong but why does it matter when the research was done if I did it?