Mentorship Under Pressure: Insights from National Scholarly Concentration Programs

As research productivity becomes a more visible and valued metric in residency selection, medical students face growing pressure to engage in scholarly work. This has led to an expansion in medical school research programming-but also to escalating expectations for students and faculty. In June 2025, we convened a national roundtable of directors of Medical Student Research Offices and Scholarly Concentration Programs representing over 40 U.S. medical schools. Participants discussed shared challenges and adaptive strategies across three focus areas: mentor recruitment, student-mentor dynamics, and conflict resolution. Seven cross-cutting themes emerged, including faculty fatigue, misaligned expectations, the need for mentor training, and rising inequities in research access. Participants described increasing student anxiety, mentor fatigue and institutional reliance on uncompensated labor, and the growing disconnect between what students must do to remain competitive and what schools are structurally prepared to support. We issue a call to action for medical education leaders to recognize scholarly mentorship as core educational labor. To ensure equitable and sustainable research ecosystems, institutions must align accreditation standards, invest in infrastructure, and design tracking systems that promote depth, not just volume, in student research. The hidden curriculum of competitiveness must be brought into the light.