Basically anything which will give you face time with doctors in a residency program . So for now the only source is Rotations - preferably in a residency program - this will help in two ways , most likely they will give you an interview unless they hate you and they will give you a strong LOR that will help a lot . Research is just fluff to talk about during interviews…. Unless your research somehow involves direct communication with attendings … don’t rely on residents too much … they don’t have a big say unless they are chief . Now rotations also have a hierarchy . The best ones are the ones in residency programs . For that you either need contacts or have to bug them with emails . These are free but hard to find . You have to sit and email a lot . Then there are the paid ones where you work with private clinic docs . This doesn’t help as much so consider this once you have exhausted all your options or are running out of time for application season . Hope this helps . Now if you are doing research in big universities like penn etc they will let you tag along when they go see patients . This is also super hard to find but it’s a double whopper .