Closing doors

[vitaminD]

I hear a lot that for the more competitive specialties you need to do research and a lot of electives in it, and basically need to know from the beginning of med school what you want.

 

I have no idea what I want to do yet - I'm not particularly interested in a competitive specialty per se, but I haven't ruled it out either since I don't know a lot about them.

 

So I have some questions about research:

-By not doing research, are you automatically closing doors to those specialties?

-if research is important, what kind of research? does it have to be clinical and in that specialty, or is any research a plus? If you don't have a specific specialty in mind, should you just pick any and go from there?

-wouldn't it look very bad if you did do research and many electives in, say, ophthalmology if you apply to a different specialty for carms, maybe as a backup or if you just change your mind?

 

any general advice or tips would be appreciated too!