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Volunteering in a foreign lab


ninjabro

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I have been given the opportunity to volunteer in a medical laboratory in Afghanistan. My friends father is the director of the facility and he's offered us both the opportunity to go and work for a few months.

 

Do such experiences reflect well on a premed CV or are they regarded as ordinary work, or even disregarded due to being in a foreign country where one could buy themselves into such a position?

 

Thanks.

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I have been given the opportunity to volunteer in a medical laboratory in Afghanistan. My friends father is the director of the facility and he's offered us both the opportunity to go and work for a few months.

 

Do such experiences reflect well on a premed CV or are they regarded as ordinary work, or even disregarded due to being in a foreign country where one could buy themselves into such a position?

 

Thanks.

 

 

If I was evaluating your application you would not get points given or taken away for a research experience based on geographic location.

 

Take this opportunity if it is something that interests you. It isn't going to be the thing that gets you into med school. And it isn't going to prevent you from getting into med school either.

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I have been given the opportunity to volunteer in a medical laboratory in Afghanistan. My friends father is the director of the facility and he's offered us both the opportunity to go and work for a few months.

 

Do such experiences reflect well on a premed CV or are they regarded as ordinary work, or even disregarded due to being in a foreign country where one could buy themselves into such a position?

 

Thanks.

 

Are people in Canada so provincial that they would assume anywhere "foreign" is too backward to screen applicants for research positions, or so much more corrupt than Canada that selection processes are meaningless in the portion of the globe known as "foreign"?

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I have been given the opportunity to volunteer in a medical laboratory in Afghanistan. My friends father is the director of the facility and he's offered us both the opportunity to go and work for a few months.

 

Do such experiences reflect well on a premed CV or are they regarded as ordinary work, or even disregarded due to being in a foreign country where one could buy themselves into such a position?

 

Thanks.

 

You can buy yourself into a position in canada too...

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I have been given the opportunity to volunteer in a medical laboratory in Afghanistan. My friends father is the director of the facility and he's offered us both the opportunity to go and work for a few months.

 

Do such experiences reflect well on a premed CV or are they regarded as ordinary work, or even disregarded due to being in a foreign country where one could buy themselves into such a position?

 

Thanks.

 

It will be a point of interest and something you can talk about later, but the rest of your application needs to be solid for it to get any real attention. Ideally, you should also have a reason why you're doing this beyond simply putting a line on your CV.

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It will be a point of interest and something you can talk about later, but the rest of your application needs to be solid for it to get any real attention. Ideally, you should also have a reason why you're doing this beyond simply putting a line on your CV.

 

Yep. I'd say the same thing. #1 priority are: GPA, MCAT, LOF... and everything else (ie. EC) just paints a picture of who you are and what you are interested in. I'd go for it, every experience will make you decide if medicine is really for you. That's what EC/work experience are for, even though some are not medicine related, they can hit on another skill such as leadership (ex. sous chef). Also, the journey there and back can make you more interesting as a person (ex. explore the streets, neighbourhood if safe). There must be a story, lesson, epiphany to what you are doing; that will make you well rounded.

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Any research experience is golden if it leads to a publication in a known reputable journal (not some Afghanistan journal of medical paraphysiology that no one's heard of)

 

any research experience is equally useless if it doesn't lead to anything

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Any research experience is golden if it leads to a publication in a known reputable journal (not some Afghanistan journal of medical paraphysiology that no one's heard of)

 

any research experience is equally useless if it doesn't lead to anything

 

Can you elaborate on that? Are you saying that research that does not lead to a publication is useless?

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

honestltly, if not for passionate md/phd's who treat obscure conditions generalists **** up horribly, most would not only oversimplify the obscurity and give semi-inappropriate treatment, but get it wrong completely and make it worse, we're in the realm of genomics and personalized medicine now, and honestly if you want to even be a caple family doctor, which, sorry being honest, are rare in my experience, simply because of the lack of training in two years, and further ignorance ecause they know so little as to not even know they don't know anything, personally, i think our new capabilities to treat people individually with success we could never imagine a decade ago is amazing, but i also feel that it'll finally weed out the linear get into med as an ends types, because eventually, that approach won't be able to handle the critical thinking patients will expect in a decade or so, even from our most general practitioners

 

Any research experience is golden if it leads to a publication in a known reputable journal (not some Afghanistan journal of medical paraphysiology that no one's heard of)

 

any research experience is equally useless if it doesn't lead to anything

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  • 2 months later...

It depends on the uni as well. If it's reputable internationally, then I guess it would be okay. But as this is a research position, I think a question they would ask is why go all the way to afghanistan to do research at a university which is (I am assuming) most likely inferior to the university you go to or a another in Canada?

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