Research Background Activities Section

Hello everyone,


I normally just forum lurk and search for my answers but I’ve looked a few years back in this forum and could not find a topic/question similar to mine. If I missed it, I apologize, but hope my fellow “non-traditional” pre-meds can help me.


I received my masters in science a year ago and have been working as a research coordinator in a lab ever since. I have been very active in research, having been the 1st author on one publication and the coauthor(2nd/3rd) on 5 others. I’ve also attended several conferences to give talks or present posters.


I am a tad bit confused on how to enter these in the Work/EC activities section of AMCAS. The way I am considering currently is to segment the 3 available research tabs into the different area’s of research I have participated and to say at the end that “X papers of which I am a coauthor and X posters have resulted from these studies.” Then in the “Presentations/Posters” and “Publications” tabs cite them accordingly. 1) Does this sound like a sound plan or am I mistaken?


Also, I have seen that the general consensus is that committee letters are strongly recommended even if you haven’t been at a home institution for some time. The pre-med adviser at my University refuses to write a committee letter for anyone until they attend a required orientation. The bad news is there are no scheduled orientations at this time. My masters adviser has offered to write a committee style letter for me and has done so in the past he tells me. 2)Can other University faculty write the committee letter or is this strictly looked down upon unless it is a pre-med adviser?


Any comments or tips are endlessly appreciated! Hope you all are off to an excellent start to July and have your applications in or soon to be in!

Your plan in regard to how to list your research activities/publications sounds correct.


In regard to the letter: a “committee” letter can only come from the individual/s designated at the institution to write such a letter. A faculty member can’t write one if he/she is not a representative of the committee. It works in different ways at different institutions. But an offer from your master’s professor to write a “committee style” letter is not the same as the actual committee letter, which is your institution’s representation of you as a medical school candidate. I hope this helps clarify the issue, which can be confusing.


Cheers,


Liza

  • UCDTRI Said:
Hello everyone,

I am a tad bit confused on how to enter these in the Work/EC activities section of AMCAS. The way I am considering currently is to segment the 3 available research tabs into the different area's of research I have participated and to say at the end that "X papers of which I am a coauthor and X posters have resulted from these studies." Then in the "Presentations/Posters" and "Publications" tabs cite them accordingly. 1) Does this sound like a sound plan or am I mistaken?



I don't remember how I did for AMCAS, but for TMDSAS I did the following:



1) X publications in peer review journals [online link to document with list, I think it was a google document]

2) Y drug patent [added link to USPTO]

3) Z international scientific awards [added link to press releases].

For more info - see my resume [googe doc link here}



I didn't bother listing talks, invitations, posters and so on. It would have been too time consuming and IMHO would have added nothing.

I believe once you have a few peer-reviewed publications, it is assumed (at I think so), that you have given talks and presented your work via posters, workshops and so on. It's just the way the system works.

Thank you Liza and redo-it-all(congratulatio ns on UT-SW acceptance!), this clears up a lot for me.