I'm getting the opportunity to do summer research in the lab of a well-respected neurosurgeon at a well-respected program.
HOWEVER, they are not offering any stipend or pay or accommodations or any financial support. Its in a different city so I'll have to pay my own housing and everything else.
Is this normal? Or is it a scam?
Thank you so much
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Totally normal. It is probably too late now but there are a number of summer research grants that students can apply to to help cover the costs.
Oh ok thank you so much. This gentleman publishes a lot, but I just wanted to make sure it was not a scam.
Not normal. Your post does not include the stage you are at in your education. But if the neurosurgeon has nothing to offer you, they may not believe that you have anything to offer in return. Sometimes these stories play out as "the best decision in my life was when I paid my own way to work in so-and-so's lab, it opened so many doors and the rest was history!" And perhaps, if you are super bright and super resourceful and super hardworking, you'll knock it out of the park. But more often than not, that is not what happens. You teach people how to treat you, and, all else being equal, the rest of the lab will likely look with pity at the person who is paying an arm and a leg for the opportunity that it would be standard fare to be paid to do. At a certain stage, you owe it to yourself not to be somebody else's free labor.
^^ Thanks so much for this insightful post. I'm first year, so this will be after the 1st year of med school.
However, I have lots of research experience and several publications. I have a master's degree also. So that is what made me question this. If I had no research experience I would grab this opportunity, but I do so I'm not sure what to do.
However, I also go to a gutter-tier med school so I don't have any home program or anything. So this is really my only option to work with a well-known surgeon.
This is completely normal. There are medical student research grants for this type of thing that are pretty common. You are an MS1. If you have several publications and a masters, surely you have come across similar types of situations like this one in the past. You are talking about a summer research experience. At best you will get a few clinical papers from it, maybe included in an ongoing basic science project, but it is too short a time interval to make a meaningful contribution to a lab where projects often take years with several people involved. So yes, this research experience between MS1 and MS2 are very rarely paid. It is not toxic of this person to not pay your way - think of it from their perspective, why would they finance someone to come chip away at a project for a few weeks over the summer when they surely rely on postdocs or PhD candidates/techs that they actually employ. What you get out of it is some experience, maybe your name on a few papers, and some face time with a well known neurosurgeon, so its good. What they get? Not as much as you will honestly. If they have to train you to do anything in particular, they will get even less.
So yes, this is completely normal. Show up, be cordial, make some connections, do what you can to be as productive as possible in a short amount of time, and tune out people on here telling you this is a scam or red flag. They dont know what they are talking about.
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If you want to take a couple years off and be employed by a lab that is different, but the idea that they're going to hire you for two months is a little silly unless they have a specific (usually medical school based) pipeline established to do so.
Thank you so much to the above 2 posters. My school has research opportunities where they pay you but you have to work with a PhD so you won't get to work with a NS. this guy I'm getting is a well known NS, so I think its worth it. It would be great to make connections as well as learn from a NS.
Trouble is lots of kids at my school, being gen Z and millennials, tell me its just free labor, exploitation, taking advantage of you etc so these fools are brainwashing me. Glad I came here to get some sense.
Thank you again
I mean, it is exploitative. I’ve been involved in residency admissions for a number of years now, and never had a “summer research experience “ make a difference in where I ranked an applicant. Not have I read a LOR from such an experience that swayed my opinion. I don’t really care what a neurosurgeon says about u during a summer research experience. I want to know what a neurosurgeon has to say about u during ur Sub-I. If you want to do it for your own growth and curiosity, then go for it, there’s nothing wrong with that. And u might prove me wrong and use the time to get ur name on some publications, which always has some value. But I’m skeptical you’d get much research done in two months (unless ur name is just getting slapped on to some projects that the surgeon already has running). My feeling is that it will be an expensive waste, and ur time will be better spent getting to know ur own home program (they are the ones that will really go to bat for u when the time comes for applications)
^^ Thank you for this post. The research would be all stuff like retrospective studies, meta-analysis, informatics stuff, etc. I forgot to mention this. So I would be able to continue it for a while, and those types of studies are easy to publish. So it won't be bench research, which of course is worthless in 2 months.
Problem is, I don't have a home program. I also hope this might be beneficial when I apply to sub-i's, and that will more directly help me.
I think I'll go for it because this is really the only opportunity I have. Beggars can't be choose, as they say.
Thank you everyone once again.
