How do you figure out whether or not your EC's are strong at a specific school?

[LoveBeingHuman:)]

For example, suppose I have 300 hours of clinical volunteering/exposure. How should I know that this is good enough at School A but not School B? How about which school values research, community service, shadowing, sports, etc? Which school cares about leadership, and which schoolw ants each applicant to have a unique thing about them?

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[625233]

Almost every school has the same core requirements regarding ECs, one of which you listed. The only aberrations I can think of are the top 20s that emphasize research (expect independent projects, REUs, posters, pubs, etc.) and the religious schools (Georgetown, Loyola? Or Loma Linda? one of them), they emphasize ECs demonstrating altruism at the community level.


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[WedgeDawg]

I'm pretty sure this is not how the evaluation process works...

 

[LizzyM]

Even within schools, some application readers put a little more weight on one thing than another. That's why it seems like a crap shoot but it is, in a sense, luck of the draw, regarding who is assigned to look at your application and recommend you for interview.

I do know that Rush puts a high value on clinical experience such as paid work experience with patient care responsibilities. The person I know IRL who got in there had been an EMT for years while in college & grad school.

 

[tessellations]

I believe I've also heard that Rush puts a large emphasis on volunteering and wants a lot of hours from their applicants - more so than the average medical school. I believe that aligns with their mission. I think most schools want the same things minus some special categories (i.e. mission based schools, religious schools, top 20s/research based schools).