Great tips for entering your "Work/Activities" for AMCAS

thanks!

btw, where is MI are you?...i used to be from ann arbor...

thanks sail crazy! i appreciate this

wendywellesley said:

thanks sail crazy! i appreciate this

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ditto!

Sail Crazy,

Thanks for this information. This will be helpful to me in the future whenever I apply, but more importantly it is currently going to be real helpful to my 3 really good friends whom I have back and forth been helping fill out their applications and help get through the MCAT and other stuff this summer. I'll forward this to my roommate and have her look at it over the weekend so she can finish her AMCAS and get it over with, since the only other thing she needs to do is revise her personal statement a couple of times or so and have the admissions committee member whom she knows look over it, since this adcom member often agrees to do such that.

SC,

This thread 100% catered to my problems with figuring out what appropriate info to put for my description portion of work experiences. Thanks man. A lot more clarity is present, aka. I am not clouded by the darkside.

SailCrazy said:

This seemed worthy of its own thread, rather than being buried on page 31 of the "official" thread. (Sorry if you disagree!)

My premed advisor forwarded this on from a list serve in which he participates. It should give you some good direction.
(I won't site the source because one, I'm not 100% sure if I have it correct, and two, I don't want several "overly motivated" SDNers emailing the poor counselor with their own direct questions!)

As requested, here's one medical school admissions perspective:
We want both -- brevity and meaningful information. Brevity because we have to read too many applications and wish to be fair to all. Meaningful information because we can't interview everyone who is "academically qualified" and so the depth and extent of extra-curricular activities are very important -- as has been said before, the more we can find out, the better equipped we are to make decisions.

This is the sort of abbreviated "map" I give to the applicants who ask me how to tackle that section:

• Think carefully about which kind of experiences were really meaningful to you -- don't try to fill out space. We are very good at recognizing bs.
• High school activities are important only to underline continuity during college at increased levels of participation, leadership or responsibility (e.g., you've played a musical instrument, participated in the high school orchestra and are now in the college orchestra, etc.)
• Don't repeat what's obvious from answers to things like experience type, title description, contact name & title or organization name (e.g, don't repeat in the description that you worked on research with Dr. So and So -- that information is above the description of your experience).
• If the organization in which you participated is not well known, give a brief description followed by the role you played there, specially if it involved any type of responsibility.
• If you made Dean's list (or any type of honor like that) for more than one semester, use the description area to list the other semesters.
• If you received any scholarship, fellowship or other honor that is not nationally recognizable, describe it briefly. Don't waste paper on scholarships that are awarded to half the population at the school.
• If you were just a member of an organization, let us know how many meetings/week you attended and why you joined.
• If you list a publication, make sure it's been accepted for publication and cite it properly. If the paper is just being "prepared for submission" or "submitted," include this fact as part of the research description in the part where you listed the research activity.
• If listing a research experience that extends through the academic year as well as summer, use the description area to let us know the time invested during each of those periods (e.g., full time during the summer, 10 hrs/week in the fall/spring blah blah blah)
• Remember that each experience you list is "up for grabs" if you are invited to interview -- you might be asked anything about it and it can make you or break you.

This is just a short list I made after being frustrated reading thousands of applications that didn't give me the information I wanted or asking a question during an interview about an experience I found interesting on the application and learning that the participation had been so minimal or superficial as to make the experience worthless.

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Good to know.

bump, this is good advice

I'm worried about something in my ECs. I listed a shadowing experience that only lasted one day. It was very meaningful, but it was so short that it seems better not to the list it. The problem is that I got a LOR from the doctor, who I happened to already know, and who told me that after spending the whole day with me in a clinical setting he felt I would be a good doctor. So I've read that not including an experience in the ECs that you have a LOR from is a no-no. What do y'all think?

tigress said:

bump, this is good advice

I'm worried about something in my ECs. I listed a shadowing experience that only lasted one day. It was very meaningful, but it was so short that it seems better not to the list it. The problem is that I got a LOR from the doctor, who I happened to already know, and who told me that after spending the whole day with me in a clinical setting he felt I would be a good doctor. So I've read that not including an experience in the ECs that you have a LOR from is a no-no. What do y'all think?

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Tigress, what matters most is what you got out of that experiences. Simple to say that one day of you tentatively observing and showing your physician that you are quite capable to be a good potential doctor is definitely worth listing in AMCAS. The Quality vs. quantity thing really matters in this case.

I've only shadowed a few days and the attending had a good impression and agreed to write a LOR for me, too. We're both in similar shoes walking on the same boat.

Doctors are very intuitive. My hunches are that your doc DOES have a good feel for who you are and that this would only help your app.

nicholonious said:

Tigress, what matters most is what you got out of that experiences. Simple to say that one day of you tentatively observing and showing your physician that you are quite capable to be a good potential doctor is definitely worth listing in AMCAS. The Quality vs. quantity thing really matters in this case.

I've only shadowed a few days and the attending had a good impression and agreed to write a LOR for me, too. We're both in similar shoes walking on the same boat.

Doctors are very intuitive. My hunches are that your doc DOES have a good feel for who you are and that this would only help your app.

Click to expand...

thanks . I just needed this encouragement

bump. thanks for the advice.

bump

I have a question- should these descriptions be written in the first or third person?

"brevity and meaningful" - I think this is the best advice. AMCAS gives you quite a bit of space to describe each activity, but I think the most I wrote for any of mine were 2-3 sentences. And meaningful? I've heard Adcoms like short anecdotes...for example, I volunteered at an orthopaedic clinic. Most of what I did was just follow people around or help out the office staff, but I did get to help the cast tech from time to time. One memorable experience was when I got to help him put a cast on an infant with club feet. It was really cool, because I felt like I was contributing (in a small way) to the ability of this child to walk properly. I made sure to put this on my application, because it made the experience more personal.

SuzieQ3417 said:

I've heard Adcoms like short anecdotes...for example, I volunteered at an orthopaedic clinic. ... One memorable experience was when I got to help him put a cast on an infant with club feet. It was really cool, because I felt like I was contributing (in a small way) to the ability of this child to walk properly. I made sure to put this on my application, because it made the experience more personal.

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Anecdotes do not belong in the EC section. Put them in your PS or in a supplementary essay but don't clutter the EC. The adcom knows what volunteering at an ortho clinic involves. Use a few simple phrases such as, "Assisted physicians with casting" if you feel the need. Don't wear out your welcome by putting stories in the EC section. I don't need to know that you "made up gurneys, stocked shelves, ran errands for staff members, delivered lab samples, made coffee, blah, blah, blah."

LizzyM said:

Anecdotes do not belong in the EC section. Put them in your PS or in a supplementary essay but don't clutter the EC. The adcom knows what volunteering at an ortho clinic involves. Use a few simple phrases such as, "Assisted physicians with casting" if you feel the need. Don't wear out your welcome by putting stories in the EC section. I don't need to know that you "made up gurneys, stocked shelves, ran errands for staff members, delivered lab samples, made coffee, blah, blah, blah."

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How do you feel about the length of descriptions of ECs? Use every last character, or a paragraph at the most?

LizzyM said:

Anecdotes do not belong in the EC section. Put them in your PS or in a supplementary essay but don't clutter the EC. The adcom knows what volunteering at an ortho clinic involves. Use a few simple phrases such as, "Assisted physicians with casting" if you feel the need. Don't wear out your welcome by putting stories in the EC section. I don't need to know that you "made up gurneys, stocked shelves, ran errands for staff members, delivered lab samples, made coffee, blah, blah, blah."

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I have to disagree with this. I know you are on an admissions committee somewhere, and perhaps I wouldn't have done well at your school. But...I had several anecdotes...probably about 3...that were important to me and my interests and growth. I also described my responsibilities in sentences, not phrases. I went further to basically explain why the experience was important/meaningful to me, and I used the majority of the characters for all of my activities except for things like "Deans' List," which really doesn't need much explanation. I think this really helped me. I have friends who wrote choppy phrases or left some of the descriptions blank, and they did NOT do well at all in the application process even though their stats were not much lower than mine. Also, I received interviews almost everywhere I applied--and many of those schools had average MCAT scores at least 2-3 points above mine. And I did not apply as disadvantaged and I'm not an underrepresented minority. I can't stress how much I really believe in the importance of utilizing the descriptions to let the admissions committee know as much about you as possible.

Also keep in mind that while LizzyM gives good advice, there are differing perspectives dependent on which ADCOM you talk to.

adcomm or REL could comment on this if they get a chance. They might be able to shed some light on their perpsectives which may be different from Lizzy's perspective.

My personal opinion is to agree with what Sail Crazy said.

I thought I would bump this up for those of us getting ready to fill out the application in May for the earliest submission possible!

if you apply disadvantaged (economic background), what does that do? does it hurt you?

also, for 2 things i did start when i was in high school and ended up doin 1-2 yrs in college

1) i attended a temple every sunday from like 9th grade to my soph yr. my last 2 yrs, i ended up teaching little kids how to speak and write simple vietnamese. is that leadership?

2) i volutneered at a nursing home from 9th to my freshman yr.

in both "description box" should i just put what i did or expand on somethings and maybe tell a short story

like for the nursing home, i got to know this Vietnam war veteran (who's a Korean) and he would call me "Saigon boy" everytime he saw me since i'm vietnamese.

man this application is a *****

whats considered increased levels of participation though?

does it have to be increased levels of participation from highschool?
eg. i started painting from gr9, currently have sold a few paintings, my skills have improved definitely but the number of hours i spend on painting each week remains the same, can i still say i started in gr 9?
so is my photography, started in gr11, just continued doing so like i did b4........
like how the hell can i increase level of participation? i for sure dont wanna join any guild or anything....

or how about music involvement?
i started playin pinao since 8 yr old, i stopped going for exams when i was 18, but i still play, i also started playing bass when i was 17 but iave no official proof, ive tried to start up a few bands, but didn't work out due to differences in style and also due to monetary issues (renting studio costs a ****load)

clearly, not everyone of us can continue from high school orchestra to college orchestra
but are we considered BSing if we were to list ours?

Should I put down my studies in bumpology?

OwnageMobile said:

Should I put down my studies in bumpology?

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I put this on page four of the AMCAS 2007 link. But perhaps we should get M&M to put this on the useful links page for applications.

Bu-humpty Bump.

bump

When filling out the Contact fields, should I expect the adcom to get in touch with the person I list? I'd like to know whether I should put down my immediate supervisor, who will know me well, or the head of the program, whose name carries a lot of weight but who will not know me nearly as well and may be unable to speak about me if contacted.

We should sticky this thread...

trpng0bily said:

When filling out the Contact fields, should I expect the adcom to get in touch with the person I list?

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I've never known an adcom member to contact someone in the "contact" field on the AMCAS. Maybe it could happen (if the named person was an old pal of the adcom member and the adcom member decides to take a minute to contact an old friend to say "hi") but for the most part adcom members are trying to read & evaluate your entire application in about 30 minutes an there isn't a lot of time to ring up contacts just to say, "did this guy really work for you?"

quality

Blatantly
Useful
Mean
Process

question, if i have 2 years of research, with 4 separate projects, should i explain what each one was, 2 of the projects was when i was under a paid fellowship, and the 2nd two was volunteer, should i separate them into two fields?

alo, most of my shadowing was with two doctors, should i put all my shadowing experiences under one activity?

also, how did u guys order your list? did you put them in chronologically? or by importance?
thankyou
dave

anyone wanna try to answer my questions?

davee said:

question, if i have 2 years of research, with 4 separate projects, should i explain what each one was, 2 of the projects was when i was under a paid fellowship, and the 2nd two was volunteer, should i separate them into two fields?

alo, most of my shadowing was with two doctors, should i put all my shadowing experiences under one activity?

also, how did u guys order your list? did you put them in chronologically? or by importance?
thankyou
dave

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I can give my two cents on your questions:

I also shadowed a few doctors, and I grouped them under one activity. But I did explain each experience, what I learned, why it was important to me, etc.

I also had the same question about how to enter the activities. Basically when you note the date of each activity while filling out the application, AMCAS automatically sorts them chronologically. At least that's what AMCAS said when I called them So you don't have much control over that...

I hope this helps!

LizzyM said:

The adcom knows what volunteering at an ortho clinic involves. Use a few simple phrases such as, "Assisted physicians with casting" if you feel the need. Don't wear out your welcome by putting stories in the EC section. I don't need to know that you "made up gurneys, stocked shelves, ran errands for staff members, delivered lab samples, made coffee, blah, blah, blah."

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WOW, the audacity of some adcom members blows my mind. I can't stand this attitude of "we know everything you mindless little peons, stop insulting our almighty intelligence". I applied last year in late October and didn't get in. Obviously I was really late but I did not want to apply without knowing my scores. Imagine dropping $600 and finding out your score was less than competitive. Ouch. That would have hurt more than not getting in. Anyway, I called to get feedback on my application package from several schools. One adcom member wrote me back after a "detailed review" of my application. This person actually told me that I should continue my volunteer work b/c the adcoms look for volunteer experience of at least one years duration. This blew me away. I had my voluteer work listed on my work/activities section which clearly indicated I had been doing it for over 2 years. My personal statement also said in my work at XXX hospital, where I have been volunteering for over 2 years. Additionally, the secondary for that school asked me about my volunteer experiences and as a result I told them for the third time I had volunteered for over two years at this hospital. To put the cherry on top I had a nurse from the hospital I volunteer at write me a LOR. So this school was told that I had been volunteering for over two years FOUR TIMES and they tell me they need at least a years worth of volunteer work to consider it substantial. Maybe what they meant was that they want one years worth of volunteer work = to 2000 hours, but I seriously doubt this. So given all this I have a very VERY hard time believing that I should let adcoms make assumptions about anything, especially based on a simple title of my work/activity section. I can't make an adcom member read anything on my application. If they don't want to know the details they won't read them but I'd be an ass to hope that they were going to read my mind and assume certain things.

Thanks for this thread. I've got a question about a specific thing I do:

I volunteer for an organization in which college students pair up with an elementary school student and do science experiments with them. We teach them the concepts they need to know and then proceed to have fun making bottle rockets or candy atoms I'm also the president of the organization, which involves a lot of responsibility including volunteer recruitment and coordination with elementary schools.

My question is: what category does this fall under? Should I list it as:

-Community Service/Volunteer (not medical/clinical)
-Teaching/Tutoring
-Leadership (not listed elsewhere)

I was thinking of putting it under community service/volunteer and then describing the leadership position in the description. However, I wonder if I should put the "president" in the experience name or some place more obvious... what do you think?

Thank you in advance for your responses!

Mariella Mecozzi needs to let non-UMich people be part of that listserv, it is absolutely FANTASTIC... I'd like to make a giant file of it all, but don't know if that would violate some kind of policies

silverlining1 said:

Thanks for this thread. I've got a question about a specific thing I do:

I volunteer for an organization in which college students pair up with an elementary school student and do science experiments with them. We teach them the concepts they need to know and then proceed to have fun making bottle rockets or candy atoms I'm also the president of the organization, which involves a lot of responsibility including volunteer recruitment and coordination with elementary schools.

My question is: what category does this fall under? Should I list it as:

-Community Service/Volunteer (not medical/clinical)
-Teaching/Tutoring
-Leadership (not listed elsewhere)

I was thinking of putting it under community service/volunteer and then describing the leadership position in the description. However, I wonder if I should put the "president" in the experience name or some place more obvious... what do you think?

Thank you in advance for your responses!

Click to expand...

::growl:: bumping this because things get pushed off the front page so quickly!

silverlining1 said:

Thanks for this thread. I've got a question about a specific thing I do:

I volunteer for an organization in which college students pair up with an elementary school student and do science experiments with them. We teach them the concepts they need to know and then proceed to have fun making bottle rockets or candy atoms I'm also the president of the organization, which involves a lot of responsibility including volunteer recruitment and coordination with elementary schools.

My question is: what category does this fall under? Should I list it as:

-Community Service/Volunteer (not medical/clinical)
-Teaching/Tutoring
-Leadership (not listed elsewhere)

I was thinking of putting it under community service/volunteer and then describing the leadership position in the description. However, I wonder if I should put the "president" in the experience name or some place more obvious... what do you think?

Thank you in advance for your responses!

Click to expand...

Bumping again. I'd really appreciate a response!

silverlining1 said:

Bumping again. I'd really appreciate a response!

Click to expand...

I'd put it under Comm. Service.

I'd put the president in the description rather than the heading.

silverlining1 said:

Thanks for this thread. I've got a question about a specific thing I do:

I volunteer for an organization in which college students pair up with an elementary school student and do science experiments with them. We teach them the concepts they need to know and then proceed to have fun making bottle rockets or candy atoms I'm also the president of the organization, which involves a lot of responsibility including volunteer recruitment and coordination with elementary schools.

My question is: what category does this fall under? Should I list it as:

-Community Service/Volunteer (not medical/clinical)
-Teaching/Tutoring
-Leadership (not listed elsewhere)

I was thinking of putting it under community service/volunteer and then describing the leadership position in the description. However, I wonder if I should put the "president" in the experience name or some place more obvious... what do you think?

Thank you in advance for your responses!

Click to expand...

Bumping as well as asking a question!

I'm having trouble figuring out what to name each experience; I'm especially having trouble with the volunteer/tutoring/leadership experience that I described above. I was thinking of something like "Volunteer at elementary school" and then describing what exactly I do in the description box. Should I be more/less specific, or include other information?

Basically... how should experiences be named?

If we talk about a particular activity in our personal statement, should we mention it again in the activities section. I am not sure if it warrants being mentioned twice or if does in fact belong in the activies section anyways...

thanks

i have some questions about this section...

1. is it ok to not list things like honor societies and deans list? i have 15 things that i want to enter but that doesn't leave room for these, is it safe to assume that if i have a good gpa i would be on deans list, and if i do activities i would at least be invited to be in honor societies? also i have a national merit scholarship from high school but i get money every semester at school, is that worth putting somewhere? or is it not really very important?

2. i do research and i have presented at my school a few times. is it ok to just put in my description that i have presented without listing the presentations as separate activities?

3. i got to church every week and i run almost everyday. however, im not really involved at my church anymore and i dont run in races or anything. are these things that i should put as activities or are they even worth putting on my application?

4. i have tutored all through college but not as a regular job. for example, when i come home for breaks i always tutor my neighbors for their finals and i often tutor people from my school. can i put this as an activity?

ok that's all for now!
thanks!

Smile193 said:

i have some questions about this section...

1. is it ok to not list things like honor societies and deans list? i have 15 things that i want to enter but that doesn't leave room for these, is it safe to assume that if i have a good gpa i would be on deans list, and if i do activities i would at least be invited to be in honor societies? also i have a national merit scholarship from high school but i get money every semester at school, is that worth putting somewhere? or is it not really very important?

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Absolutely ok to leave it out of the experience section. Almost every excellent applicant qualifies for these honors.

2. i do research and i have presented at my school a few times. is it ok to just put in my description that i have presented without listing the presentations as separate activities?

Click to expand...

Sure, that's ok. If you presented at a national meeting you might want to highlight it by breaking it out and noting it separately.

3. i got to church every week and i run almost everyday. however, im not really involved at my church anymore and i dont run in races or anything. are these things that i should put as activities or are they even worth putting on my application?

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Weekly worship service attendance really isn't much to write home about. If you were in a leadership or ministerial role (e.g. choir director or reader) that might be notable. Some folks want to avoid any possible religious discrimination (conscious or unconscious) on the part of adcom members and so they leave out religious activities.

4. i have tutored all through college but not as a regular job. for example, when i come home for breaks i always tutor my neighbors for their finals and i often tutor people from my school. can i put this as an activity?

ok that's all for now!
thanks!

Click to expand...

Freelance tutoring is to professional tutoring as babysitting is to employment as a nanny. That is to say, neither your tutoring nor babysitting is very impressive to an adcom but you can list it as an activity. If you've got 15 better things to list, then leave it off. Heck, if you've got 10 better things, then leave it off.

DrVanNostran said:

If we talk about a particular activity in our personal statement, should we mention it again in the activities section. I am not sure if it warrants being mentioned twice or if does in fact belong in the activies section anyways...

thanks

Click to expand...

Yes, put it in the activities section. That quantifies the hours per week and the time period, something you may not want to include in the personal statement for lack of space. Also, sometimes an adcom member will make a quick look through the experience section and note a lack of clinical experience or research listed there and that can hurt you --

silverlining1 said:

Bumping as well as asking a question!

I'm having trouble figuring out what to name each experience; I'm especially having trouble with the volunteer/tutoring/leadership experience that I described above. I was thinking of something like "Volunteer at elementary school" and then describing what exactly I do in the description box. Should I be more/less specific, or include other information?

Basically... how should experiences be named?

Click to expand...

You have two things: one is the header for the activity (chosen from a drop down menu) and then there is a second activity description or title (I don't recall exactly).

Doing science experiments with elementary school kids I would use the lable

community service/Volunteer, non-clincial

and then title it: Elementary School Science Class Volunteer

Description:
Assisted students ages x to y (or "in grades x to y") with laboratory experiments and engaged in discussions of basic science concepts.

silverlining1 said:

Thanks for this thread. I've got a question about a specific thing I do:

I volunteer for an organization in which college students pair up with an elementary school student and do science experiments with them. We teach them the concepts they need to know and then proceed to have fun making bottle rockets or candy atoms I'm also the president of the organization, which involves a lot of responsibility including volunteer recruitment and coordination with elementary schools.

My question is: what category does this fall under? Should I list it as:

-Community Service/Volunteer (not medical/clinical)
-Teaching/Tutoring
-Leadership (not listed elsewhere)

I was thinking of putting it under community service/volunteer and then describing the leadership position in the description. However, I wonder if I should put the "president" in the experience name or some place more obvious... what do you think?

Thank you in advance for your responses!

Click to expand...

I'd list this separately as Title: President Category: Leadership and the organization whatever it is called. Then in that description put all the details of recruiting and deploying voluneers including how many and from what schools and how many classrooms or schools or whatever are served.

I'm volunteering for an organization with many different outpatient clinics ( for example they have urgent care, diagnostic and surgery centers). Should i put all the clinics under one activity, and describe what i did in each center in description section. my responsibilities were pretty much the same, checking patients into the clinic, but other centers gave me more some more responsibilities.

also i am getting one letter from the supervisor of volunteering for all the clinics, idk if this affects how i should put in this activity in amcas.