Neurosurgery Research & Education Foundation Medical Student Summer Research Fellowship applicant trends and impact on future career trajectory

OBJECTIVE The Neurosurgery Research & Education Foundation (NREF) Medical Student Summer Research Fellowship (MSSRF) is a prominent research fellowship offered to medical students. The authors investigated how gender and academic characteristics of the MSSRF applicant pool have evolved since the fellowship’s inception. Likewise, they evaluated the impact of the MSSRF on career progression, scholarly productivity, and subsequent grant funding within neurosurgery. METHODS A list of MSSRF awardees (2008–2023) and nonawardee applicants (2015–2023) was provided by the NREF. Demographic and career progression variables were obtained through publicly available platforms, and scholarly productivity metrics were collected using Clarivate Web of Science. The Fisher’s exact test was used to compare categorical variables, the Mann-Whitney U-test was used to compare continuous variables, and the Mann-Kendall test was used to assess trends. Binary logistic regression was utilized to explore factors associated with matching into neurosurgery. RESULTS A total of 297 awardees from 2008 to 2023, 183 awardees from 2015 to 2023, and 355 nonawardees from 2015 to 2023 were included. A greater percentage of awardees attended a top 20 medical school than nonawardees (p = 0.002). There was a statistically significant upward trend in the percentage of female awardees since 2010 (p = 0.01). Between 2015 and 2023, there was no difference in the percentage of awardees who matched into neurosurgery compared to nonawardees (60.5% vs 50.2%, p = 0.07), but awardees matched into better Doximity-ranked neurosurgery residency programs (p = 0.04). While there was no difference in the number of total publications or first author publications before residency between awardees and nonawardees who matched into neurosurgery since 2015, awardees had a higher h-index (5.0 vs 4.0, p = 0.03). Specifically among awardees who pursued neurosurgery since 2008, there was a statistically significant upward trend in the median number of total publications before residency (p < 0.001), first author publications (p = 0.001), and h-index (p = 0.007). Among neurosurgery attending physicians who received MSSRF awards, 64.7% practiced in an academic setting. Across academic neurosurgery attending physicians who received MSSRF awards, the ratio of NREF MSSRF award dollars to subsequent National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding dollars was $1:$9.05. CONCLUSIONS The NREF MSSRF is associated with high-quality research and strong academic productivity among aspiring medical students, with a high proportion of awardees pursuing neurosurgery and matching into top-ranked residency programs. Likewise, this early-career fellowship has a substantial return on investment in terms of subsequent NIH grant funding.