AMSA Conference... Waste of money or good opportunity?

[Kentobari]

I'm a 28 year old recently returned Peace Corps volunteer with a low GPA problem but am going to pursue medical school.

For this semester, I am working, taking Physics 1, and volunteering as a Spanish-English translator at a community health clinic. I live in downstate Illinois, and plan to move to Berkeley in January to finish up my prereqs at Berkeley Extension.

I noticed that there's an AMSA (American Medical Student Association) conference in Chicago, and was curious about it. Since pre-medical students are part of AMSA's organization, I was considering attending.

http://www.amsa.org/AMSA/Homepage/Events/AMSAConferences/Chicago2012.aspx

I wanted to know what people's thoughts were. Good idea? It seems there will be sessions from which one can learn a lot and perhaps even network and find interesting organizations to work with. I feel like it would also help me jumpstart myself into the "I am a future physician" mindset. Then again,, it could just be a waste of time and money.

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[deleted248403]

If you are interested then go - but its not going to help GPA repair/get you into med school

It won't mean squat on a resume

 

[Kentobari]

Of course it won't do any of those things. I just wanted to know if anyone had any thoughts OR had been to it before and could comment on whether it's a good use of time and resources.

 

[DrMidlife]

I have an AMSA membership, and so far every last thing I've seen about issues and conferences has been around LGBT and cultural sensitivity. These are terrific things to want to improve. And they're absolutely, totally uninteresting to adcoms, times 100 for a low GPA comeback.

So I vote waste of time on premed AMSA participation as an EC.

If you want to make AMSA work in your favor, I think you'd have to invest a bunch of time to get a meaningful activity started within AMSA. In other words, have an influence on AMSA becoming influential to med students in a mainstream sense.

Best of luck to you.

 

[johnnyscans]

I have an AMSA membership, and so far every last thing I've seen about issues and conferences has been around LGBT and cultural sensitivity. These are terrific things to want to improve. And they're absolutely, totally uninteresting to adcoms, times 100 for a low GPA comeback.

So I vote waste of time on premed AMSA participation as an EC.

If you want to make AMSA work in your favor, I think you'd have to invest a bunch of time to get a meaningful activity started within AMSA. In other words, have an influence on AMSA becoming influential to med students in a mainstream sense.

Best of luck to you.

AMSA, for me, is great because of: health insurance, NEJM subscription, discount MCAT materials.

If I'm going to go to a conference it's going to be for my research.

 

[Kentobari]

I have an AMSA membership, and so far every last thing I've seen about issues and conferences has been around LGBT and cultural sensitivity. These are terrific things to want to improve. And they're absolutely, totally uninteresting to adcoms, times 100 for a low GPA comeback.

So I vote waste of time on premed AMSA participation as an EC.

If you want to make AMSA work in your favor, I think you'd have to invest a bunch of time to get a meaningful activity started within AMSA. In other words, have an influence on AMSA becoming influential to med students in a mainstream sense.

Best of luck to you.

Just to clarify to everyone, I was not implying that I thought this could help my chances of getting into medical school in any way, shape, or form. This is many magnitudes of naivete greater than I ever hope to entertain.

My only curiosity was that I might learn something, meet people, connect with organizations. It it was free, I'd go. If it's worthwhile, I'll spend the money, simply because I don't have a whole lot else going on right now.

 

[MDforMee]

Just to clarify to everyone, I was not implying that I thought this could help my chances of getting into medical school in any way, shape, or form. This is many magnitudes of naivete greater than I ever hope to entertain.

My only curiosity was that I might learn something, meet people, connect with organizations. It it was free, I'd go. If it's worthwhile, I'll spend the money, simply because I don't have a whole lot else going on right now.

In my opinion, you should welcome opportunities to entertain naivete.

You never know when naivete will be in a position to return the favor, and entertain you.