Research
?
What’s the
BIG DEAL with research
“One of the things that can make you stand out from the crowd – and trust me, there’s a crowd of them out there – is research.” - Dr. Stephen Hajduk, Head of Biochemistry
By Nina Paletta
Rachel Botljen and professor Mike Strand in Insect biology lab College of Agriculture and Environmental Science
Applying to medical school can be an incredibly daunting task; not only do you have to keep your GPA up, participate in extracurriculars, and find some fantastic letters of recommendation, but you also have to find a way to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Think about it: out of thousands of applicants, each medical school will only take between 60-200 students per matriculating class. Those numbers are shocking to a lot of premed hopefuls. As a future med school applicant myself, I wanted to find a way to make my transcript stand out from the rest. One of the best ways to do that is through one of the most readily available resources on the University of Georgia campus: research. Every time you turn around, you hear something else about the research going on all throughout campus. From CURO research in the Honors Program, groundbreak-
18 premed magazine at uga | February 2013
ing publications from different departments making headlines, or just the posters that line the walls of the science buildings, the University of Georgia is ripe with differing research opportunities. Even though research is typically associated with scientific study, there are research opportunities in virtually every subject on campus, from foreign language, to theater, to statistics and beyond. With that kind of diversity, research opportunities are abundant; according to Dr. Stephen Hajduk, the head of the Biochemistry department, these research opportunities can be a large determining factor as to whether a medical school will accept your primary application right off the bat. Dr. Hajduk was a member on the University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical School admissions board for several years. He has seen a sea of applications every year, and each year he says the photo uga college of ag (foter)