^This. I had an incredibly hard time finding people to let me shadow because I was not from the area + didn't have physicians in my family with friends I could shadow. Even the physician group associated with my school wouldn't let pre-meds shadow.
For freshmen/sophomores, it might be helpful to provide a rundown of what's important--newbies, esp. those without physician family members, may not even know they need to carve out time to shadow (I know I didn't). Also would be wise to mention that they should start an Excel sheet like, last week and keep track of all of their service activities, other ECs, and awards as they occur instead of trying to retrace their steps.
For those applying:
-a PS workshop would have been really really welcome--you might even get together with your school's writing center (i.e. people who have a lot more writing experience than most pre-meds) for help/advice.
-How to construct a school list/using MSAR: If you take a look at the What Are My Chances thread here, you can see that even people who seem to have it together (stats, ECs, research, etc.) often have trouble coming up with an appropriate school list, me included. We don't know what we're looking for any more than we know what medical schools are looking for. What kinds of things are selling points? Should I want my med school to be P/F and unranked? Do I want required lectures (jk, no one wants that) or watch-at-home recordings? How can I tell if I fit with the school's mission? How do I know if a school has a strong in-state preference? Is it safer to apply to mostly schools where your stats put you in the 10th %ile or closer to the median? What if my stats aren't stellar--how do I find schools that value my strengths? Do I have any chance if I don't do bench research, and if so, where? Is there an optimum class size? What kind of academic help should I be looking for? Do I need to be worried about the size of the anatomy lab? What counts as a good match rate? How the hell does anyone have time for figuring all this out?
That last one was a joke. Sort of.
A lot of us have no idea what we're doing, and this process is too important and too expensive to not know. But... finding out what med students think about problem-based learning or trying to figure out the importance of class ranking/AOA for matching is not at the top of my to-do list when I'm trying to study for the MCAT and my biochem and p-chem finals all at once. Then suddenly it's time to apply and I still don't feel like I know what I should be looking for.
