Publication Impact on Graduate Admissons applying straight from Undergrad (took a year off)

[ResearchLife]

I have been working in a lab for the past two years and will be getting a strong Letter of Recommendation from my PI and two other faulty members. Unfortunately, the PhD student I am working under is having difficulty in publishing a peer-review research article, because the data is not panning out. But I was told I would be on any paper she publishes, but do not know if it will be published in the time of admissions or be sent for review. However, we are publishing a review paper, which I am the second author of in the Journal Cancer. Will the review paper have any impact or would I be disadvantage because I do not have a peer-reviewed paper after two years of working in a lab? 

Edited August 26, 2016 by ResearchLife

[fuzzylogician]

What really matters is the actual research experience -- your ability to talk about it in detail and explain what you did, the letters of recommendation that you'll get that will go into depth about your role in the project and how it prepared you for graduate school. Having a review article is nice, although I don't know how much impact it will have on any decisions. Likewise though having an actual paper is nice but will have limited influence, too. You were just an undergrad helping in the lab, you are not the main person on the paper, and your contribution was limited in at least some aspects (not to dismiss you at all!). This is not to say that having a paper is useless (it's obviously not), only that the way it will be evaluated will probably only assume a limited contribution on your behalf, so I wouldn't worry over much about not having it. Again, it's the actual work and experience that are most important, and the fact that you'll have strong LORs because of it. 

[ResearchLife]

I will be applying to a PhD program, sorry forgot to say that