Medical Research as an Option for a Premedical Gap Year: Advantage
Technically, research is not a requirement for gaining admission into med school, but most competitive prospective students build their research experience when they were still undergraduates and even after that. This means that you can use your gap year to gain research experience. You can also publish your research if you really want to sell yourself using research as a strong point. This will improve your chances of gaining admission.
Medical Research as an Option for a Premedical Gap Year: Disadvantage
Medical Research can take a lot of your time, especially if you have other issues on your resume that you have to address. In addition, you may not just like research.
If you have great scores and awesome extracurricular experiences, but you feel that you do not have enough research experience or you just want to finish an important work and be exceptional, you can go for this option. You don’t need to pursue this option if you have a lot of issues, such as GPA (which comes first before research), to fix on your application.
To learn more about how to spend your premedical gap year, talk to our medical school admissions consultants.