Tips and Strategies for Matching Into an REI Fellowship - Fellows Perspective

Drs. Victoria Jiang, MD and Zachary Walker, MD tips and strategies on securing research opportunities, cold emailing, and some great strategies from a fellows perspective.

I think this is actually a really good segue into the fellows perspective. Yeah. And I think one thing that I was always considering is, is do I want to do clinical research? Do I want to do basic science research? What is that going to mean with the program that I sign up for and how is that going to affect the programs that I apply for? So how did you think about it? So it's really important to know exactly what you might want to do in the future.

Basic science research is not cut out for everybody. There are programs that will start you off in a lab to do your, um, your project for your fellowship, but there are some that do more translational research and are open to having you do that for your fellowship thesis project. So definitely ask that during your interview to see about the availability of projects and to see what other fellows have done previously at that institution to see if that matches what you're looking for.

And I think that just making sure that you look at prior thesis projects that they've been over published before research groups that many, many have established like through the institutions. If you have a specific interest or even publications related to those topics, mention those in your application, mention those in your interview, because that will really be able to help them select that right candidate because it's easier to hit the ground running when you have a very autonomous and free research year. Yeah.

I think we've discussed a lot. I think we've talked about a lot. And so what do you think we should take away from these key points for our listeners? So the main things we want to have you take away are quality over quantity.

That's a big one. Don't sign up for a bunch of small projects that you're a middle author for. Really focus on getting those hard-hitting projects that you're a first author.

I think the second thing to think about is don't be afraid to cold email people and try to find a good away rotation or research experience that you may be hoping for. In the era of Zoom and Teams and modern day research, your researchers and your research team does not even need to be on the same coast. That is so true.

And our third thing to also think about is just think about feasibility. We want to make sure that the project that you're doing is feasible. And so do something that is actually going to be something that leads to publication and something that you think you can finish within a reasonable time period because you have only a limited amount of time before you're applying for a fellowship.

But thank you for joining us today. Thank you guys for having us here on the ASRM Med Talk. We're happy to talk a little bit more about this if you see us around ASRM or in person.

And we have some more maybe topics that we can share with you in the future. Stay tuned. Stay tuned.

Bye guys.