Hi Maggie,
Medical scribing is a paid clinical position in which you accompany a physician and assist them with charting their patients which allows the physician to be much more productive. That being said, while scribing is a great opportunity to see how physician’s think and learn the diagnostic process it is by no means necessary to scribe to matriculate into an MD school. According to the MSAR (Medical School Admissions Requirement) provided by the AAMC, even for the top schools in the country, less than a third of matriculants in the last 3 years have had medical/clinical paid employment (which includes other employment positions as well). While clinical experience of any kind is absolutely a necessity to matriculate into medical school, scribing is not the only way to gain that clinical experience. If you are interested in scribing, I personally would recommend to do it during a light senior year/gap year. Scribing can be extremely time consuming and the hours can be very difficult to balance with school. Your GPA is much more important than scribing. To answer the second part of your question, research generally will not replace the “clinical exposure” that you would be fulfilling with scribing. Obviously, there are exceptions to this rule but generally research involves working in a wet lab with chemicals and solutions. Even dry or clinical research often involves data collection and interpretation rather than a true clinical experience. If you have any more questions regarding scribing or research please feel free to drop by our office hours and we can have an extended discussion with you. 
 
-Karan Joseph