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Clinical Hours Question
Started by velvetcoffee
whenthelightsgo_OUT
Full Member
You obviously have clinical experience. It is now up to you to decide whether or not scribing will be beneficial to you. Application wise, it definitely helps. But if your heart is already set on medicine, I can see why you don't think scribing is necessary.
To be safe, you’d need more than that. 100 hours isn’t much and some admissions readers will write you off if your only experience was playing with kids in the hospital as opposed to something that is more pertinent to their healthcare.
Being with sick/injured children in an in-patient setting is a fine clinical experience. Usually at least 150 hours before you submit the application would be a minimum you should seek to achieve. In some cases, it may be best to apply as a graduating senior rather than a rising senior to maximize things like volunteering as well as (sometimes) giving the gpa a bit of a boost.
If you can, check to see if you can double up on how many times you volunteer during the week then. I would still try to scribe if you want to apply this upcoming cycle instead of waiting till next, though I understand they tend to be rigid about scheduling your shifts. If you’re in Texas, then TMDAS schools should understand the situation more and you have the high GPA they are looking for.
For another opinion, a former director thought having about 110 hours wasn’t enough over 8 months:
Q&A With a Former Dean of Admissions and TMDSAS Director
Session 431 Dr. Scott Wright and Rachel Grubbs join me for a live Q&A to answer questions on clinical hours, personal statements, GPA median,
medicalschoolhq.net
150 is the minimum and you’ll get that, but that tended to be the standard 5 years ago. Things have gotten more competitive
I would focus on the MCAT with your time right now and try to scribe your senior year. Then, you’ve got winter and spring to get your ducks in a row with letters of rec, personal statement, activity descriptions on TMDAS.
Research, I think you’ve accomplished more than most students already. If you’re not interested in MD-PhD, I don’t think you need any more but the timeline works for you to do it if it’s something you enjoy. Baylor would at least appreciate it.
50 hours of shadowing is fine .... 100 is too much! Spend your time doing something rather than just watching.
Hahaha, if you’ve got Baylor high on your list, maybe getting an LOR from there would be good. Then I would definitely take the gap year.
When are you scheduled for the MCAT? And how’s it looking for the other things I mentioned like other letters, personal statement etc? Those things you need about 2 months for, letters are easier if you already know who’s writing them and you can e-mail them January or February.
Yeah as LizzyM said, 50 hours of shadowing with a few different specialities is good. You’ve got that down with your school giving you a scare about needed so much more than that.
I’d be comfortable with 250-300 hours of clinical experience. Scribing can get you there in a short time and that would help, but you can try to volunteer more to get around there if you want to apply this year. Make sure you can talk about specific experiences with kids (while maintaining privacy) in essays, those kinds of things make up why medicine a lot for the personal statement. If you’re drawing up a blank, then take the gap year. But if you can confidently talk/write about it, then here’s what you should do to stay on track:
If your school does a committee letter, then just check with them next month about what they need from you and if you need to provide them names of professors to attach their letters to it. Generally, you need 2 science lors and 1 non science like English, writing, history etc. You can throw a research one in too since you had 1000 hours already and I assume your PI must really appreciate you! The committee can tell you if they wanted anything else, so just keep contact with them to make sure everything is done right.
I mentioned a bit about the personal statement already. See if the committee wants that before writing your letter. Otherwise, you can do most of it while waiting for your MCAT score to come back in April. Also work on the descriptions. The character limits and format are available online and there’s probably a sdn thread about it.
No problem! There are varying opinions about mentioning research. You have a big theme that would be a great thing to base your app on and I will link a person’s application with their essays to give you an idea as you share a lot of similar aspects. She was an MD/PhD applicant but I think (and the reader says it too) the personal statement was a great balance of saying why medicine without randomly injecting her research qualifications/ignoring the person behind each patient.
That’s the mistake people tend to make, or that they have weaker GPAs or MCATs that make research oriented schools pass on them (I don’t mean like 3.7 vs 3.8, but something like having a 3.4 without an upward trend/post bacc work). You have an excellent track record and I think as long as you are in range with the MCAT score, they will love to hear your story.
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You could focus your application on lupus and cancer....
"it was lupus that got the ball rolling. When my mother was diagnosed in [year], I wanted to understand what was going on and how, perhaps, someday I could be part of finding a cure and helping patients like her.
Although lupus got the ball rolling, it has been oncology that has kept me moving forward through research, shadowing and hospital volunteering. [insert a paragraph about each activity.]
Summary paragraph about the myriad specialties that touch on the care of patients with cancer and your hope to be a physician that makes a difference in the lives of individual patients and moves the ball forward in finding treatments and perhaps even cures for patients with cancer and done!
"it was lupus that got the ball rolling. When my mother was diagnosed in [year], I wanted to understand what was going on and how, perhaps, someday I could be part of finding a cure and helping patients like her.
Although lupus got the ball rolling, it has been oncology that has kept me moving forward through research, shadowing and hospital volunteering. [insert a paragraph about each activity.]
Summary paragraph about the myriad specialties that touch on the care of patients with cancer and your hope to be a physician that makes a difference in the lives of individual patients and moves the ball forward in finding treatments and perhaps even cures for patients with cancer and done!
I would say keep working with the kids in the volunteering opportunity you have now and see if you can do hospice/long-term care volunteering as well. That should be more flexible hours and a lower time commitment, but you get exposure to patients near the end of their lives. Admissions doesn’t get too many students who appreciate how emotional that can be, and typically these facilities are open to volunteers. I assume if the oncology wards are open, this should be as well.
Edit: just remembered, the video is AMCAS, so those bigger activity descriptions you see will have a much shorter character limit on TMDAS if I remember right. So that should give you more time to add those things to your personal statement and secondaries instead
We often talk about cookie cutter applicants and scribing is one layer of those cookie cutter sandwich cookies.
Hausfreunde Recipe
Food & Wine’s chocolate-dipped hausfreunde are the perfect Christmas cookies.
Having something a bit different is refreshing. 🙂
You don’t need scribing. Do what you like to do. You seem to like your volunteering so stick with it. Clinical experience can be paid or volunteer, so what you are doing is just fine. And I personally think you have far more interactions with patients and their family doing what you are doing. And you have enough Shadowing. Good luck on the MCAT.
Agree 100% with my learned colleague.
