Question about EC hours per week, and what is considered "longitudinal experiences"

[Slopes&Stethoscopes]

Hello Everyone!

I had a question regarding my extracurricular hours as I continue to engage in meaningful experiences leading up to my application next cycle (I am currently a junior, and plan on applying May/June 2024 of my senior year).

I'll start by saying that during my freshman year, my school was completely remote for the entire year because of COVID, so I really didn't begin to get involved in my activities until my sophomore year, but even then, my involvement was relatively light. To give myself some sort of target leading up to my primary application submission, I am hoping to accumulate about 800 hours each of research, clinical experiences, and community service/non-clinical volunteering.

My question is, if some of my experiences say that they began only ~1.5 years before submitting my primary application (from 01/2023 - 06/2024), would this still be considered a longitudinal experience, or might I run the risk of this coming off as cramming? Also, I worry that adcoms would look at quite a substantial amount of hours coming in a relatively short time frame and question whether I am engaging in these experiences for the right reasons, or even worse, question if I am exaggerating my hours (I keep a detailed excel sheet of all of my hours to ensure my application is truthful!).

In reality, I am just trying to catch back up from my lack of freshman year involvement due to fully remote school, as well as a "light EC" sophomore year as I was trying to acclimate to being on campus for the first time. I am glad to finish out my undergrad being very busy with my extracurriculars (about 45 hours a week!), as I truly enjoy all of them and will have tons of additional free time senior year once my MCAT is over with. I am just worried that adcoms might calculate my weekly hours allotted to ECs and result in raised eyebrows.

I would love to go to a "top 20" school due to my interest in a competitive specialty, and my stats are on track for this goal, but I don't want my work and activities section to raise any red flags and hurt my application. Am I overthinking this?

I appreciate any and all advice anyone has for me, thank you again for all of your help!

@Goro @Faha @chilly_md @Mr.Smile12 @LizzyM

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[LindaAccepted]

You're overthinking.

Med schools heard about the pandemic and realize that many students were learning remotely and didn't have the volunteer options in 2020-21 that they had before and after. If you have the amount of hours you plan to have and serious commitments for the two years prior to your application, you can check the hours box.

However, I have interviewed many med school admissions directors and what they are really looking for more than X hours is your perspective on the experiences you have had: What have you learned? How have your changed and grown? How have these experiences influenced the kind of physician and human being you intend to be? The insights you bring to bear about these experience matter a lot.

Regarding longitudinal experience, it is experience over time. A one- or two-year commitment looks very different than 12 different experiences over the same period. That doesn't mean you can't change an activity if you don't like what you're doing or if something else more appealing comes along. However, a pattern of frequent changes over a short period with few longitudinal (AKA long-term) commitments would be less desirable than longer terms commitments and experiences or a least a mix.

 

[Slopes&Stethoscopes]

Thank you so much for your advice! I appreciate you clarifying what would be considered a longitudinal experience. All of the experiences I plan to include on my work and activities section will be at the minimum one-year long commitments leading up to submission of my primary app. Ideally, I would have spread all of my target hours over the course of 4 full years, but I hope that schools will understand my situation when they see a large uptick in EC hours and new activities in the final 1/1.5 years of my college career.

Would schools look any less favorably on activities that I will only have been involved in for 1.5 years prior to applying rather than the full 2 years of commitment that you mentioned? I have found a lot of joy in service-oriented activities and would love to get involved in a few more, but all of my non-clinical volunteering activities unfortunately will fall short 2 years of commitment by next May.

I will certainly make sure to reflect on each of my experiences, I have kept notes on various emotions/thoughts I have had throughout my activities so that I can meaningfully write about them and the lessons I learned. I have tried to be very intentional about choosing extracurriculars that I am actually passionate about and can write/speak in depth on.

Thank you again!

 

[LindaAccepted]

1.5 years is a serious commitment. It's fine.

I'm glad to hear you're taking notes on your experiences. They will really help you when it comes time to apply.

 

[Psyched*Out]

You're overthinking.

Med schools heard about the pandemic and realize that many students were learning remotely and didn't have the volunteer options in 2020-21 that they had before and after. If you have the amount of hours you plan to have and serious commitments for the two years prior to your application, you can check the hours box.

However, I have interviewed many med school admissions directors and what they are really looking for more than X hours is your perspective on the experiences you have had: What have you learned? How have your changed and grown? How have these experiences influenced the kind of physician and human being you intend to be? The insights you bring to bear about these experience matter a lot.

Regarding longitudinal experience, it is experience over time. A one- or two-year commitment looks very different than 12 different experiences over the same period. That doesn't mean you can't change an activity if you don't like what you're doing or if something else more appealing comes along. However, a pattern of frequent changes over a short period with few longitudinal (AKA long-term) commitments would be less desirable than longer terms commitments and experiences or a least a mix.

For the questions you pose in the 2nd paragraph, how would you recommend going about answering them uniquely? I see a question like that and I think of some sort of patient interaction that may have made you want to be a physician, but that is likely generic thinking, so what makes it unique?

 

[LindaAccepted]

For the questions you pose in the 2nd paragraph, how would you recommend going about answering them uniquely? I see a question like that and I think of some sort of patient interaction that may have made you want to be a physician, but that is likely generic thinking, so what makes it unique?

Excellent question, but it is hard to give general advice on how to be specific without specifics. Still I'll try. on an admittedly superficial level.

If you answer the questions I posed in my previous post, just go deeper than your first response. For example,

"Why do you want to be a doctor?" (I realize this wasn't on my earlier list)
"I want to help people."
"Why do you want to help people in this way? Plumbers help people too, and they don't have to go to medical school"
"I like the combination of human interaction, science, and helping people."
"Can you give me an example of an experience that illustrates the appeal of medicine to you? How does it combine those elements.

Related to your question, Dr. Leila Amiri, Associate Dean for Admissions at Larner UVM, said on a recent Admissions Straight Talk podcast:

"Reflection is most important to us. The experience itself isn’t that important, it’s what the individual has taken away from it. We want to know about challenges that an individual may have faced during their life and for them to share a little bit about that with us as well. What we’re hoping to see is really reflection, resiliency, and how individuals learn and recover from obstacles that they may have dealt with."

Or this comment from Dr. Linton Yee, Assoc. Dean of Admissions at Duke Medical who was responding to a question about mistakes that he sees.

"We like to look for patient interactions. I may have talked about this three years ago, but some of the better essays have been, for instance, like in hospice, what the student actually learned from the patient that they were paired with about going through the latter stages of life and exiting gracefully and how they got a chance to really appreciate the power of the human spirit. That’s the type of experience we would prefer to read about and see that the applicant has a really good understanding of why they’re in medicine and how to deal with people and communication skills and developing relationships."

Anyway, I hope this helps even if I can't be as specific as I would like.

Also realize that in secondaries you also have to make sure that you are answering the question posed.