2) Only have 7-8 slots for activities on AMCAS, but require a longer essay for ALL of them.
I think the problem that traditional premeds have is that at the age of 21-23, it's really, REALLY hard to get 15 activities to write down on the application. So they pad the application with numerous other activities that they do not for their own sake, but to fill slots on the application. I think that's sad, and promotes both a bad attitude amongst premeds towards community service or research, and negative perceptions among other people.
To counteract this, I suggest including a smaller number of slots for activities, but requiring more out of them. I want it to be made clear that premeds have put their heart into activities that they care about, not just gone through the motions so they can dump it on the AMCAS.
Basically: fewer but more meaningful activities.
Better yet, do away with slots technically. Instead, switch the programming so you enter a single activity, then click a button to add a new one. If there were 10 lines, people would shoot for 10. If there were 20 lines, people would shoot for 20. It's completely arbitrary. So why 7-8 when you can just remove this all together? This might help out.
That said, it would be a mistake to take this view and now decide that everyone who accomplishes such things are therefore "fakers" just trying to look good. Hard as it may be for many people to believe, there are individuals who actually care about others and feel compelled to do something about it. There are people who enjoy playing 3 varsity sports. There are people who want to work because they want to buy things with that money. There are people who have to work because they need to buy things with that money. Some people have actually grown up with unique backgrounds (gay parents, 134/157 Cherokee, etc).
There's a reason why these people are viewed as "fakers." Somehow pre-meds, and now high school students, are developing a reputation as "fakers." It really sucks for the people that do these activities because they genuinely enjoy them. It's kind of hard to prove when the group of people you're in are expected to be putting on a facade. So we can all blame the general pre-med and other student populations for ruining the authenticity of extra curricular activities for everyone else.
Every now and then I see someone posting on SDN asking about whether they should do an EC. They say something like, "it's a good EC because I am actually interested in doing it." Umm... Okay. So are you saying that someone is going to go to an interview and tell the ADCOMs how much the activities they did sucked?
The same goes for other things that might be considered an "advantage," like background. I know someone who is a gay pre-med. He has a partner, but has no other interests or connections to the "gay community." However, he said he is trying to play the "gay card" and is therefore doing numerous ECs in the gay community to boost his chances. He never cared about this community beforehand. Well anyway, imagine that... The medical school admissions process can bring about things that people never thought existed.
Involved Parenting: helping a child with math homework.
Tigering: Teaching your child how to effectively present ADD symptoms so you can score some methylphenidate.
It's funny you mention this. It has become a huge issue among high school students in my area. In the midwest, students predominantly take the ACT exam. Back when I was in high school, it was incredibly easy to get extended testing on the exam due to learning disabilities. Unlike the MCAT, the ACT exam is
not flagged! Therefore, it can only be advantageous for someone to get extended time. So I'm sure parents are doing everything they can to get a diagnosis of ADHD or whatever else so their kids can get stimulants. But if they don't use stimulants, they can do the next best thing, take the ACT exam with absolutely no negative consequences. Now if the MCAT wasn't flagged with "special testing conditions," then I'm sure loads of college students would do everything they can in order to get extended time.
Secondly, in many of these countries you get accepted to "medical school" out of high school. Even if we were to assume that their high school were similar to the way that we treat medical school, are you somehow suggesting that it would be better to sit next to the guy in med school who spent years memorizing organic mechanisms and various prep crap so he can get a 44 MCAT? My stance does not change--at no level do I want an admissions scheme where we simply take the top GPA/MCAT or GPA/SAT.
Even if we take the most pessimistic view that students do all these things out of desire to beef up the resumes and none of them do it out of interest, I would rather students be volunteering, working, researching, and producing things rather than sitting in their room devouring Kaplan books or memorizing the AMU of every element in the periodic table to 6 significant figures.
This is a great point and I never thought of it. Of course I would rather suffer through a four hour volunteer shift doing scut work at a hospital rather than spending those four hours buried in a textbook. But here's the problem, you say that even if students do all of these things to beef up their resumes, you would still prefer this over the massive examinations. Sure, I'm sure many people would. But at the same time, if all of those activities are part of a facade, then what does it actually say about a student? What does it say about their interests? It's hard to tell when it's all fake. I thought fake usually meant that things are meaningless.
2 week trip to India: 13 days sight-seeing, 1 day observing a clinic = Medical mission to impoverished area = win
I forgot to mention that this will look good for high schools I bet. But this doesn't apply to medical school admissions anymore, unless you're doing Peace Corps, military, or extended trips over many months or years. She is right about starting a charity though. I've recently heard of SDNers opening up non-profit organizations to beef up their resumes. So until ADCOMs catch onto this elaborate facade, this is probably a good way to help yourself with the admissions cycle.
...which is good, unless we're going to give people gold stars for effort. Frankly I'm impressed if someone can do better than me on exams and spend a tenth of the time studying. I don't get bonus points because of my "work ethic." At least for the pre-clinical years in med school, work ethic is entirely unimportant. What ultimately matters is that you learn the material and demonstrate that knowledge on step 1. Same with the MCAT. Why does it matter how much time is spent studying if mastery of the skills being tested is demonstrated?
Exactly. This is why I don't understand the notion of why the pre-med journey must be such a meaningful amazing experience. You're trying to get into medical school. That's the ultimate goal. You don't get bonus points for learning a lot in a class but ending up with a C or doing an EC that you "genuinely" care about (because
everyone genuinely cares about their ECs). Medical schools don't care about those things. They want to see a high GPA, high MCAT, and ECs that look like you at least pretended to care about others. This means that picking up a laundry-list of ECs during your sophomore year of college will look much better than picking up the same laundry-list of ECs within a year of applying (this will actually look
bad). Even though intentions might be the same, you actually get screwed on the latter. Therefore, you might not get bonus points for anything, but you need to carefully plan everything so you don't lose them.
