activities: personal thoughts, or just descriptions?

[boathouse34]

Hi, I am sorry if this is a repeat - I have searched the forums looking for an answer to this question and have not found one. I am struggling with the activities section of AMCAS. For some experiences, I have just a basic 2-3 sentence description. For others, I have a paragraph or two about how this activity fit into my life, affected my decision to become a doctor, how I changed from the activity, etc. Is this too much? Or is it a good way to show medical schools things about yourself that were not addressed in the personal statement?

Opinions? Comments from people who have already applied?

Thanks and good luck!!

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[boathouse34]

To clarify - I realize there has been a ton written on the topic of activities...and I have read a lot of it...I am just having trouble finding something that addresses specifically the types of commentary, if personal reflection should be included...rather than just comments about the overall length. Thanks again.

 

[dopaminophile]

Don't worry about repeat threads too much. If your question isn't explicitly answered elsewhere, people will be happy to address it. When I did my activities section last year, I tried to say how some of the more important activities affected me and how my interest in them highlights the qualities that will make me a good doctor. Of course that had to be brief, and had to include a description, but I think it worked well. Some activities didn't really go beyond the basic description because my involvement wasn't terribly meaningful.

 

[IAMS]

It's vague for a reason. You have the lattitude to fill out your application to best describe your experiences as you see fit - because it gives an overall picture of you and how you see yourself and your experiences.

Obviously, if you write how much fun you had with activities at summer camp, as opposed to all the experience you received doing extractions in a research laboratory - it speaks volumes about you - the applicant in the way you describe these things and what you choose to describe. Just don't put anything you don't want under the microscope.

 

[tigress]

Some of my ECs have a sentence or maybe two about why this experience was meaningful to me. I think it's a good idea to put this for your most important ECs, but I wouldn't overdo it. You mention that you have "a paragraph or two," but you might want to consider cutting it down to be more succinct. There is a debate on sdn about whether the admissions committees will actually read through everything you write. In general there seems to be a consensus that we shouldn't write too much, but how much is too much isn't really clear. Personally I tried to be as succinct as possible and just cut it down to what I did and a quick note on why it was important.

 

[boathouse34]

Thank you! These are great suggestions. I will leave some just as descriptions, and the more important ones I will elaborate. I guess they can take it or leave it

 

[QofQuimica]

I ended up writing quite a lot. But then again, I have 12 years of post-secondary experiences that I can draw from as opposed to just three, so I think the expectation will be different for older students versus traditional-aged students. For every activity, I did talk about both what I did and what I learned from doing it. But I left off many of the standard pre-med activities, such as being a member of AED, because everyone does that kind of stuff, I wasn't very involved in the club, and I had 15 other activities that were more interesting and important to me.

I would include any activity that is important to you personally, and explain why and how you got so involved with said activity. The way I figure it, if the adcoms don't want to read about any of this stuff, they'll skim over it and move on to the PS. But if I don't include it, they definitely won't have the option to read it, right? And I do think that it helps humanize me and gives them something to look at besides my academic stats. Otherwise we are all just names and numbers.