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892002
Hi Everyone!
I’m currently serving with CityYear-AmeriCorps for my gap year. It has been one of the most amazing and meaningful experiences of my life, and I would highly recommend it for anybody looking for a unique, fun, and rewarding gap year experience!
What Is City Year?
CityYear is an educational non-profit that is part of the AmeriCorps network. We are in 28 cities across the US and in hundreds of elementary, middle, and high schools. We work in low income neighborhoods to help bridge the gap between what students need to succeed and what the school/community can provide with their limited resources.
What do you do as a member of CityYear?
As a member of CityYear, you’ll be divided into teams of 6-12 with each team having a leader/manager. Each team will be assigned to a particular high-need school, and each team member will be assigned to work closely with one teacher at that school. In the classroom, your job is to support the teacher with their lessons as well as work one on one with easily distracted high-need students. You will also identify a focus list of high-need students and work with them in small groups throughout the year with the goal of improving their attendance, course performance and behavior. In addition, you will work with your team to plan whole-school/community events.
What are the hours like? What’s the pay?
The hours are LONG! I get up at 5:30am every morning and get home at 7:30pm at the earliest and 11:00pm at the latest. You get paid the standard AmeriCorps stipend of $629 bi-weekly (pre-tax). You also qualify for food stamps. It’s not much, but it is enough to live on, I promise! There’s also an education award that’s around $4,500 that you get at the end.
Why is CityYear a good gap year experience?
1. You gain 1700+ hours of non-clinical volunteer experience! If you’re lacking in non-clinical volunteer hours, then this is an amazing opportunity! Even if you’re lacking in clinical volunteer hours (I only had 30hrs of clinical volunteering by senior year of college), CityYear can still be a great opportunity!
2. You will be able to build/demonstrate a lot of non-academic qualities that medical schools look for. For example: Communication skills (teaching and designing lesson plans/working with students in small groups), Relationship building (building relationships with your students is one of the most important parts of the job, and you’ll have the opportunity to build close relationships with a diverse group of students), determination/perseverance (this job is NOT easy! You will face countless hurdles/setbacks that you will learn/grow from), team-work (you work very closely with your team and the school staff), compassion/understanding (a lot of negative events occur in the communities we’re in, and your students will need your emotional support to get through troubled times), dedication to service (obvious).
3. There are many opportunities for leadership/professional development! Opportunities vary by site, but may include: giving Ted-talk style presentations to groups of over 200 AmeriCorps members/directors, planning a city-wide spring break service learning program for high school students, designing murals to paint in schools, various project leader opportunities to lead over 100 people, AmeriCorps council representative, representing CityYear at local and national conferences, planning various school and community events, interacting with wealthy/powerful donors. You will also be given professional development training (very useful stuff like resume writing and interview prep) by City-Year's national partners (Comcast, Deloitte, Microsoft).
4. The opportunity to make your experience your own! Since our community (and almost all of the communities we work in) are food deserts, I started a nutrition program at my school! Many corps members start programs based on things they’re passionate about.
5. Great stories/content for secondaries, interviews, updates…etc. You will never run out of significant update material, which is amazing for schools that welcome frequent updates. At almost all of my interviews, my interviewers were extremely interested in my experience. They pretty much ignored the rest of my application and asked me exclusively about my students and my experience. Also, I'm one of the few ORMs at my site. Not a lot of ORMs do CityYear, so this might be a way to stand out.
6. It’s a unique, memorable and meaningful experience that you’ll never have the opportunity to do again. You’re going to be devoting your ENTIRE life to research and clinical care, so spending a year doing something completely different will be extremely memorable, and the service itself is infinitely rewarding.
Other concerns.
- You will have enough time for interviews/secondaries.
- Health insurance is provided.
I know a few people who applied to medical school this cycle from our site. ALL of us got into US MD schools, and most of the acceptances were at mid tier/top 20 schools!
If you have any questions or want to know about CityYear, feel free to reply to this thread or to PM me!!
I’m currently serving with CityYear-AmeriCorps for my gap year. It has been one of the most amazing and meaningful experiences of my life, and I would highly recommend it for anybody looking for a unique, fun, and rewarding gap year experience!
What Is City Year?
CityYear is an educational non-profit that is part of the AmeriCorps network. We are in 28 cities across the US and in hundreds of elementary, middle, and high schools. We work in low income neighborhoods to help bridge the gap between what students need to succeed and what the school/community can provide with their limited resources.
What do you do as a member of CityYear?
As a member of CityYear, you’ll be divided into teams of 6-12 with each team having a leader/manager. Each team will be assigned to a particular high-need school, and each team member will be assigned to work closely with one teacher at that school. In the classroom, your job is to support the teacher with their lessons as well as work one on one with easily distracted high-need students. You will also identify a focus list of high-need students and work with them in small groups throughout the year with the goal of improving their attendance, course performance and behavior. In addition, you will work with your team to plan whole-school/community events.
What are the hours like? What’s the pay?
The hours are LONG! I get up at 5:30am every morning and get home at 7:30pm at the earliest and 11:00pm at the latest. You get paid the standard AmeriCorps stipend of $629 bi-weekly (pre-tax). You also qualify for food stamps. It’s not much, but it is enough to live on, I promise! There’s also an education award that’s around $4,500 that you get at the end.
Why is CityYear a good gap year experience?
1. You gain 1700+ hours of non-clinical volunteer experience! If you’re lacking in non-clinical volunteer hours, then this is an amazing opportunity! Even if you’re lacking in clinical volunteer hours (I only had 30hrs of clinical volunteering by senior year of college), CityYear can still be a great opportunity!
2. You will be able to build/demonstrate a lot of non-academic qualities that medical schools look for. For example: Communication skills (teaching and designing lesson plans/working with students in small groups), Relationship building (building relationships with your students is one of the most important parts of the job, and you’ll have the opportunity to build close relationships with a diverse group of students), determination/perseverance (this job is NOT easy! You will face countless hurdles/setbacks that you will learn/grow from), team-work (you work very closely with your team and the school staff), compassion/understanding (a lot of negative events occur in the communities we’re in, and your students will need your emotional support to get through troubled times), dedication to service (obvious).
3. There are many opportunities for leadership/professional development! Opportunities vary by site, but may include: giving Ted-talk style presentations to groups of over 200 AmeriCorps members/directors, planning a city-wide spring break service learning program for high school students, designing murals to paint in schools, various project leader opportunities to lead over 100 people, AmeriCorps council representative, representing CityYear at local and national conferences, planning various school and community events, interacting with wealthy/powerful donors. You will also be given professional development training (very useful stuff like resume writing and interview prep) by City-Year's national partners (Comcast, Deloitte, Microsoft).
4. The opportunity to make your experience your own! Since our community (and almost all of the communities we work in) are food deserts, I started a nutrition program at my school! Many corps members start programs based on things they’re passionate about.
5. Great stories/content for secondaries, interviews, updates…etc. You will never run out of significant update material, which is amazing for schools that welcome frequent updates. At almost all of my interviews, my interviewers were extremely interested in my experience. They pretty much ignored the rest of my application and asked me exclusively about my students and my experience. Also, I'm one of the few ORMs at my site. Not a lot of ORMs do CityYear, so this might be a way to stand out.
6. It’s a unique, memorable and meaningful experience that you’ll never have the opportunity to do again. You’re going to be devoting your ENTIRE life to research and clinical care, so spending a year doing something completely different will be extremely memorable, and the service itself is infinitely rewarding.
Other concerns.
- You will have enough time for interviews/secondaries.
- Health insurance is provided.
I know a few people who applied to medical school this cycle from our site. ALL of us got into US MD schools, and most of the acceptances were at mid tier/top 20 schools!
If you have any questions or want to know about CityYear, feel free to reply to this thread or to PM me!!
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