Community Service

[heysup]

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Although Research and Shadowing (In that order) are the most important extracurricular activities for pre MD/PhD (correct me if I am wrong)

Curious if certain community service choices (like volunteering at an animal shelter vs volunteering cleaning up something vs soup kitchen etc) appeal to medical schools?

Whether or not there is, I really need some community service ideas! Especially for those like myself with a very not uniform schedule (and busy) throughout the week...

Anyone volunteer in something that really felt good to do, like a real difference was made?

General Ideas, since you know we all live in different places one cant recommend a specific location..

Any help would be very much appreciated!!!

 

[Lil Mick]

I never shadowed (not college or after college), and most programs didn't really care. My best volunteer experiences were 1) at a free clinic near my school (we were in the inner city), 2) public health programs (might not work for you--I took time off to go abroad), and 3) with a service organization helping soldiers' families and veterans in need. For me, these were good ways to combine clinical experience with volunteering...

 

[obscurehero]

I was a little odd. I decided to make the switch from PhD track to MD/PhD my senior year of my undergrad. I did have two "gap" years, but I had to work full-time and I was only able to shadow doctors at the hospital where I worked doing research.

As such, I had no actual clinical volunteer experience. I volunteered for three weeks in Africa playing with orphans and doing quality-of-life things for AIDS patients, but it wasn't in a clinical setting and it wasn't exclusively health related as much as compassion related. Otherwise, I had volunteer experience from college and high school, but not much clinical.

However -- I still was accepted. I'm not sure if that gives you a lot of wisdom, but suffice it to say that I think adcoms know that getting a lot of research experience and great grades sometimes makes it harder to have as much clinical experience as normal pre-meds.

 

[ImagineThis]

Volunteering abroad seems to be popular at my school for students (including myself) in a similar situation. Since most of the programs are set for breaks you can get in some good clinical experience in a developing healthcare system without sacrificing productivity in research or classes.

I went to Africa to teach about HIV/AIDS and making the most of the foods available for a healthy lifestyle. I think we had a decent impact (it could have been more if we could have stayed longer/had a continuous program) but I really felt that it was an important experience for me, like obscurehero said, in terms of compassion. If something like that is available to you, I'm sure you can't go wrong.

 

[heysup]

It has been a while.

Currently my schedule is 40 hours a week not including driving time and studying etc. 40 hours of me having to be somewhere is what I mean.

Courses, 6 hours a week shadowing, and 15 hours a week of research in a dev bio./cancer lab.

I'm concerned that, although I have a strong GPA, (am working hard for a good MCAT score, will take in april), and have extensive research experience, my 0 hours of volunteer service during college will be a deal breaker.

(I do have 302 hours of Volunteering in a Hospital during high school, with patient contact)

What can I do? I only have nights, and sundays to volunteer with....

Keeping in mind I will be appling for MD/PhD programs which should care more about my research than anything..

(I am third year)

I will be away for the summer on internship....

My application will be done by the end of may; should I try to cram in 20 hours of volunteering somehow????

Does shadowing in the ER count at all?? Or it must be community service specifically???

Please, I could use some advice!!

 

[Raziela]

I didn't have any volunteering. I did start volunteering at a hospital during the application cycle, and I updated schools about this as soon as I started. I'm betting it probably hurt me, and I would recommend you do something while you still can. But if you have great stats and a lot of research, this is what will matter most. It didn't shut me out from MD/PhD, and I got the feeling that many other MD/PhD applicants had less volunteering than MD-only applicants.

 

[Tesseract]

I got the feeling that many other MD/PhD applicants had less volunteering than MD-only applicants.

This. I've only met 3 other EMT's (one was a current fellow) while interviewing. Ambulance work is a good time. If you want to volunteer, then find something you'll enjoy. Enthusiasm is important. Your ER shadowing is clinical exposure.

 

[SilverBvllet]

I applied this year and got accepted. I have 0 hours of hospital volunteering. I did not go to an African village for 2 weeks. I did do maybe 8 hours of shadowing. That said if I applied MD-only I probably would have been rejected immediately. For MD-PhD research is the most important based on my experiences.

 

[wuhanese]

from what i've noticed in my interview track, the better the md/phd program was, the less volunteering and community service the applicants i talked to seemed to do

 

[URHere]

You are right that research is absolutely the most important EC when applying to MD/PhD programs. Shadowing, however, is far less important for dual degree folks. Yes, you do need some sort of clinical exposure so that you can keep the MD folks happy, but it can come in a variety of ways (as clinical volunteering, shadowing, or in come cases, even clinical research with patient exposure).

Non-clinical volunteering is also not vital - if you have great research, a solid GPA, and a very strong MCAT you are likely to get in somewhere even if your volunteering resume is non-existant. However, I would argue that volunteering and other non-standard ECs can be very useful for those applicants who are imperfect in some way (low MCAT score, etc). Personally, I had a great deal of volunteering experience when I applied - mostly with children with disabilities, Make-A-Wish kids, or children in the foster care system. All were great experiences, and I really believe that they helped programs see past my MCAT score.

My advice would be to volunteer if you want to. There are plenty of evening and weekend gigs out there, you just have to look for them.

 

[Neuronix]

There's two things I get flamed about, both online and IRL... And this is one of them. So I tread here knowing someone will be unhappy with what I'm about to write.

The MD/PhD committee at a large number of (most?) programs makes the decisions about who gets accepted to the MD/PhD program with little if any input from the medical school. Many of those committees don't really care about shadowing/volunteering/community service types of things, and instead are pretty much completely focused on the usual things--GPA/MCAT/research experience/academic potential.

So you absolutely can get admitted to top MSTPs with none of the volunteering/shadowing/other ECs. When I was a first year I went around asking some of my classmates about these sorts of things for SDN/my own curiosity, and several of them had none of these activities.

I still say to be on the safe side you should probably get 50+ hours of experience doing some kind of volunteering/shadowing. This should serve to satisfy the MD adcoms who could veto your application at some schools and who are aware that you are planning on a mostly research career and thus have extensive research experience. Though if your application really undergoes a thorough review by the medical school before going to the MD/PhD program (a small minority of programs, but everyone always throws UCSF in here), 100+ hours is probably better, and for the MD-only crowd I say that 500+ hours is what they should be shooting for to stand out.

In the end you can't be everything to everyone. Should I thus be recommending everyone have extensive shadowing/volunteering/ECs? I don't think so. I think 50+ or perhaps 100+ hours is a reasonable guideline. You can apply with none, and even in this thread we see people who were successful with none.

I also frequently hear that you should do volunteering/shadowing to know what you're getting yourself into as far as medicine goes. I personally think that almost no matter what you do as a pre-med, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into. You should probably have other ECs just so you aren't a very one-dimensional person. Then again, if you want to be a top physician-scientist researcher, it's probably better that you are very one-dimensional and don't like leaving the hospital or your lab (half-serious on that one).



Ok... So for specific ideas as to what to do, I did Saturday night volunteering in the ED. I mean I had no social life in undergrad anyways, so that was about as cool as I was gonna get on a Saturday night. Nobody else wanted that shift, so I had free reign. I saw a lot of good stuff there. The only downside was my car breaking down in the summer in my college town and me wearing that ****ing candy striper outfit with no jacket trying to get my car towed/fixed in that outfit.

 

[bd4727]

As others have commented, by-and-large volunteering is not a main consideration in MD/PhD admissions.

The programs want to see that you have taken some approach to try to understand what it is like to be a physician (although I agree with Neuronix that you can't really do this), and most students go about this by shadowing/volunteering. That is the aspect that they are looking for, not the fact that you are willing to devote your free time to bringing people soda in the ED waiting room.

If you enjoy volunteering that is great, and it will be nice fodder to chit-chat about during the interviews, but it will not be the deciding factor for or against any applicant at a competitive MD/PhD program.

 

[Argon]

There's two things I get flamed about, both online and IRL... And this is one of them. So I tread here knowing someone will be unhappy with what I'm about to write.

The MD/PhD committee at a large number of (most?) programs makes the decisions about who gets accepted to the MD/PhD program with little if any input from the medical school. Many of those committees don't really care about shadowing/volunteering/community service types of things, and instead are pretty much completely focused on the usual things--GPA/MCAT/research experience/academic potential.

So you absolutely can get admitted to top MSTPs with none of the volunteering/shadowing/other ECs. When I was a first year I went around asking some of my classmates about these sorts of things for SDN/my own curiosity, and several of them had none of these activities.

I still say to be on the safe side you should probably get 50+ hours of experience doing some kind of volunteering/shadowing. This should serve to satisfy the MD adcoms who could veto your application at some schools and who are aware that you are planning on a mostly research career and thus have extensive research experience. Though if your application really undergoes a thorough review by the medical school before going to the MD/PhD program (a small minority of programs, but everyone always throws UCSF in here), 100+ hours is probably better, and for the MD-only crowd I say that 500+ hours is what they should be shooting for to stand out.

In the end you can't be everything to everyone. Should I thus be recommending everyone have extensive shadowing/volunteering/ECs? I don't think so. I think 50+ or perhaps 100+ hours is a reasonable guideline. You can apply with none, and even in this thread we see people who were successful with none.

I also frequently hear that you should do volunteering/shadowing to know what you're getting yourself into as far as medicine goes. I personally think that almost no matter what you do as a pre-med, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into. You should probably have other ECs just so you aren't a very one-dimensional person. Then again, if you want to be a top physician-scientist researcher, it's probably better that you are very one-dimensional and don't like leaving the hospital or your lab (half-serious on that one).



Ok... So for specific ideas as to what to do, I did Saturday night volunteering in the ED. I mean I had no social life in undergrad anyways, so that was about as cool as I was gonna get on a Saturday night. Nobody else wanted that shift, so I had free reign. I saw a lot of good stuff there. The only downside was my car breaking down in the summer in my college town and me wearing that ****ing candy striper outfit with no jacket trying to get my car towed/fixed in that outfit.

Out of curiosity, what's the second thing you get flamed about?

 

[Neuronix]

Out of curiosity, what's the second thing you get flamed about?

The MD/PhD is only really useful for/meant to produce basic science/translational researchers. All other pathways don't really need a PhD.

Note that I don't actually believe this myself, but it's the view of a lot of people out there, so I repeat it in certain contexts to get people to really think about what they're planning to do. I also believe people should do shadowing/volunteering before starting an MD/PhD program, but you still don't actually need it.

 

[PfNO22]

How about doing community service because it is the right thing to do?

 

[MrNeuro]

The MD/PhD is only really useful for/meant to produce basic science/translational researchers. All other pathways don't really need a PhD.

Note that I don't actually believe this myself, but it's the view of a lot of people out there, so I repeat it in certain contexts to get people to really think about what they're planning to do. I also believe people should do shadowing/volunteering before starting an MD/PhD program, but you still don't actually need it.

could you elaborate on "basic science/translation researchers"....