The summer that took 12 years to pay off

The summer between junior and senior year is when a science major decides, often without realizing it, whether a research career is still on the table. Graduate applications open in the fall, entrance exams have to be scheduled months ahead, and recommendation letters have to come from faculty who already know the student well enough to write something specific. Anyone who reaches September without those pieces in motion has usually made the decision by default.

Nationally, that summer is where the biomedical pipeline leaks hardest, and it leaks unevenly. More than 30% of the U.S. population identifies as belonging to a non-majority racial or ethnic group, while only about 11% of the biomedical workforce does. Four decades of national effort have not closed the gap.

A 2025 paper in the International Journal of Research in Education and Science followed six cohorts of Fred Hutch summer interns for as long as 12 years after their internships ended. Alumni of the Summer Undergraduate Research Program, or SURP, ended up in graduate and medical school at rates roughly double the national figure of 43%, and the students the program was built to reach got there in the same number as everyone else, though they needed more time to do it.

SURP has run since 1995 and draws 300 to 400 applications a year for roughly 25 to 30 spots. Recruiters attend the annual meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos, Hispanics and Native Americans in Science, the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, and they send materials to historically Black colleges and universities and other institutions serving underrepresented students. Priority goes to applicants who have not already done research at a major institution.

During the nine-week program, interns are placed in a Fred Hutch lab matched to their stated interests, and, notably, placed before they receive an offer, which is likely why more than 90% of admitted students accept. Each intern gets a hands-on daily mentor plus a principal investigator for scientific and career guidance, a weekly professional development workshop, and faculty seminars where speakers narrate not just their science but also their career decisions. The program ends with a competitive poster session. Since 2009, participants have been tracked for seven years with annual surveys, supplemented by LinkedIn searches that extended follow-up as far as 12 years for the earliest cohort.

At seven years the data still looked like the familiar national pattern. Among students from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in the biomedical workforce, whom the paper calls under-represented minority or URM interns, 44.9% had earned an advanced degree, compared with 55.4% of their non-URM peers.

Then the researchers looked further out. In the extended follow-up, which runs seven years for the 2016 cohort and 12 years for the 2011 cohort, the gap was gone. Advanced degree attainment stood at 78.8% for non-URM alumni and 80.8% for URM alumni. Across the full group for whom a most recent degree could be confirmed (155 of 163, or 95%), 27.8% had earned a doctoral, medical or dual degree.

"For decades, URM students have been less likely to achieve higher education than non-URM students," said Beti Thompson, one of the study's authors. "In part, SURP was developed to mitigate this disparity. This paper provides evidence that URM students trained in an intensive research environment have similar educational achievements as non-URM students."

The seven-year gap turned out to be a difference in pace rather than in outcome, since gap years and post-baccalaureate programs push the finish line later, and doctoral, medical and dual degrees take six to eight years on their own. A study that stopped counting at year seven would have reported a disparity that the data simply hadn't resolved yet.

Two other numbers are worth sitting with, the first being self-efficacy at program entry, which was identical between the groups at 4.8 out of 5. URM interns also rated the encouragement they received from their principal investigators slightly higher than non-URM interns did, a small difference the authors read against a literature showing that URM students arrive with less social support, which may make faculty attention land harder.

"This work emphasizes the importance of immersive summer research experiences that prioritize supporting individuals from backgrounds historically excluded from the sciences," said co-author Marilyn Drennan. "These findings suggest that structured professional development, mentorship, and ongoing support can strengthen the biomedical workforce by reducing disparities in educational attainment. Sustained funding for programs like the SURP is critical, particularly in the current funding and political environment."

Drennan also named what should come next, including career outcomes beyond the diploma such as retention in biomedical research, leadership positions and research productivity, along with comparison groups that would let a program like this prove its case rather than infer it. To sum it up, the authors concluded that the program works.

Fred Hutch/University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Cancer Consortium Members Drs. Julian Simon and Allison Meisner contributed to this research.

Simon, J., Drennan, M., Meisner, A., Shippen, M., & Thompson, B. (2025). Improving the

biomedical pipeline: Long-term outcomes of an undergraduate internship. International

Journal of Research in Education and Science (IJRES), 11(4), 794-809.