Should I delay going to medical school in order to conduct research?

I recently obtained my Bachelor's from a well-established university. I'm filling out my application for medical school to enroll in August 2009, but suddenly, I feel I should look into other options I may have (such as maybe getting a PhD instead of M.D.)





I was offered a job at Mount Sinai Medical School in NYC to do research for at least 2 years. I'm so excited about this! Should I take the research opportunity and put off medical school for 2 years?

Should I delay going to medical school in order to conduct research?
Only you can answer that question. What speaks more to you? What's your passion in life? If you find that you prefer to do both, I hope you know there is a 3rd option. MD/Ph.D program. It's more like a Ph.D program than a MD program, but your primary focus is academic research in medicine. If you choose later on that research isn't for you, you can continue on in the MD program.
Reply:If your objective is to go into research and/or apply to a research oriented medical school, then this opportunity is fantastic and you should go for it. However, if you want to do primary care and you intend to apply to a primary care oriented medical school, this research opportunity isn't going to sway an admission committee much.





There's an old adage in medicine that the PhD/MD's are the real doctors and the MD's are simply body mechanics. Obviously, that arises from the PhD/MD's. But I can tell you from personal experience, the PhD/MD's are the ones everybody refers their complicated cases to.





My personal opinion--do the research. It's got you excited and that means a lot in medicine.