Do adcoms look at ECs based on hours or years?

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I was thinking of shadowing intensively this summer (before freshman year) and getting it out of way for the rest of college. Will 50 hrs of shadowing in one summer be seen the same as say, 16 hours a year for 3 years?
Also: can I just focus on ECs over summer while focusing on academics during the school year as long as both are done well (lots of hours, high gpa)? I'm just a bit nervous about doing both at the same time because I've seen people who could not balance them well and ultimately failed classes. thanks in advance.

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Cramming in shadowing isn't really an issue. Cramming volunteering would look bad, though.

Don't stretch yourself too thin, but a full-time college student who doesn't have to work many hours on top of studies should be able to manage their time well enough to balance ECs and academic success.
 
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Agreed. Cramming in shadowing isnt a big deal at all.

With the rest of your ECs + academics, do what you can with your ECs while maintaining good grades. Play that more by ear. You'll figure out what works best for you!
 
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As @gonnif said, clinical volunteering is more important. Observing procedures may seem cooler, but interacting with patients and families, even if it's just getting a warm blanket, is more important. Many hospitals have volunteer programs that are year long, 4-6 hours/week opportunities. If you start as a freshman, you'll have over 1000 hours by graduation. That shows commitment and dedication. If finding time is an issue, look for ED volunteering, they're open 24 hours. I had a full-time job and did shifts from 10pm-2am.
 
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Volunteering was the most boring EC of mine. Nevertheless I logged my 100+ hrs as required. I think I learned more by googling than that damn hospital..
 
Volunteering was the most boring EC of mine. Nevertheless I logged my 100+ hrs as required. I think I learned more by googling than that damn hospital..

lol im in the same boat as you. Currently am doing my due dilligence at a hosptial but boy is it boring. Ever so often there will be a situation where I definetly learned more about the healthcare atmosphere and thats what keeps me going.
 
Hours is a very stupid metric hence why all applicants need to put those hours in context in the first or second line of the EC. For example

300 hours volunteering Memorial Hospital . Approximately 3 hours per week per semester beginning as first term freshman as ER volunteer.
compare to
300 hours volunteering Memorial Hospital. Approximately 40 hours per week for summer of ...

Do you see how an adcom will view these similar hours differently in the two different contexts? Do you see how they clearly say something about the character of the applicant? The first one clearly shows commitment beyond checking a box.
Ah, makes sense. I assumed that we just had to write the hours, as many people who post their stats here only specify the number of hours. Thank you!
 
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Doing around 4 hours per week at the hospital
Doing around 5 hours per week at an elementary school
Doing around 4 hours per month at the society(club) meeting
also additional 1 hour per week as a webmaster for that society.

All for continuing till 2019-ish. As you see, this EC isn't as intensive as those summer programs (10 hours per week). But, it shows that I'm not wasting my week doing nothing (or it shows that I'm doing something). I think that's what's important. It's showing who you are, by doing what you like! It's about showing your color, so less worry about having certain hours or meeting up the quota :D

I was all over the place when I started my pre-med journey last year fall.
Since you are in Socal, look into Health Scholars. I've found out about this recently. You can get some clinical hours this way too :)
 
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Volunteering was the most boring EC of mine. Nevertheless I logged my 100+ hrs as required. I think I learned more by googling than that damn hospital..
Clinical Volunteering shouldn't be about learning about medicine, it's about learning about health care - operations, patient interaction, departmental structure, etc.

That's not to say you won't or can't learn medically relevant info while volunteering, but as I've ranted about numerous times, attendings, residents, nurses, etc have no obligation to you until you show an obligation to them. Your job is to make their jobs easier. If you watch, observe and learn how the department runs, you make yourself an active member of the team. I wasn't allowed to to even do CPR on patients in the ED (despite being BLS cert), but I learned the roles and requirements when a TTA was in-bound and knew the full layout of the stock room. I had things out and ready for them before they could get it. They learned who I was and within 2 months was observing thorocotomies and when the the volunteer services staff left, they let me irrigate wounds and auscultate patients. This is no different than the real world. Bust your @$$ and reap the benefits.
 
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Hours is a very stupid metric hence why all applicants need to put those hours in context in the first or second line of the EC. For example

300 hours volunteering Memorial Hospital . Approximately 3 hours per week per semester beginning as first term freshman as ER volunteer.
compare to
300 hours volunteering Memorial Hospital. Approximately 40 hours per week for summer of ...

Do you see how an adcom will view these similar hours differently in the two different contexts? Do you see how they clearly say something about the character of the applicant? The first one clearly shows commitment beyond checking a box.

Yeah, I agree. I was poking fun at Lawper because he went on a rampage against hours a little bit ago.
 
Where's @Lawper to complain about how using hours as a metric is stupid?

:p

Hours is a very stupid metric hence why all applicants need to put those hours in context in the first or second line of the EC. For example

300 hours volunteering Memorial Hospital . Approximately 3 hours per week per semester beginning as first term freshman as ER volunteer.
compare to
300 hours volunteering Memorial Hospital. Approximately 40 hours per week for summer of ...

Do you see how an adcom will view these similar hours differently in the two different contexts? Do you see how they clearly say something about the character of the applicant? The first one clearly shows commitment beyond checking a box.

Yeah, I agree. I was poking fun at Lawper because he went on a rampage against hours a little bit ago.

AMCAS should get rid of the hours entry. Longevity in terms of years matters way more.
 
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They wont. It is an agreed standard from the committee that developed and maintains the application info as the only way to capture and provide a metric for the vast array of possible ECs. However, applicants are confusing AMCAS, as a centralized application service allows both the applicants to input information is a standardized way once for all schools, with the evaluative process that an individual school will then do with this standardized format of information. This is why, even though application may be screened by some formula, all applications will be read by humans in order to fully evaluate each and every applicant, even those who may fall below screening criteria. Schools can sort and organize ECs in a variety of ways that they choose. Then each sub category will be evaluated by a reader according to some criteria that may be loose to strictly defined, usually somewhere in the middle.

But I thought AMCAS has the hours category which schools use to measure EC quality? If AMCAS gets rid of the hours category, there is no way for schools to compare ECs based only on hours? They have to rely on other metrics like years spent (start and end dates) and experience descriptions. To me, those two are far superior by far.
 
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Hours are not used to measure quality nor are they used to compare across ECs within an application nor across the applicant pool. lt is a piece of data that will be used in context by a reader as part of the evaluation of the applicant

I always viewed hours as being the other side of the coin to start/end date. Hours can show the level of commitment/involvement if you have 300 hours over the course of a year versus 52.
 
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Hours are not used to measure quality nor are they used to compare across ECs within an application nor across the applicant pool. lt is a piece of data that will be used in context by a reader as part of the evaluation of the applicant

Then why is simply listing start and end dates with experience descriptions not enough?

And hours spent in one area needs to be looked at the context of all the activities of the applicant in the same time frame. Someone who is doing 3 hours a week some volunteer gig who is also doing 18 credit hours, 10 hours of research lab, 15 hours part time job, 8 hours of ambulance shift, etc is a different character than someone who does 3 hours, 14 credit hours and little else.

How do adcoms know how many hours per week is spent on an EC?
 
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I always viewed hours as being the other side of the coin to start/end date. Hours can show the level of commitment/involvement if you have 300 hours over the course of a year versus 52.

Here's a problem. Say I volunteer an EC for 4 hours per week for 3 years, but I only showed up for 5 weeks total. The moral/ethical obligation would be to report the total hours as 20. But I can simply calculate total hours as 4 hours / week x 52 weeks / year x 3 years = 624 hours. And I can round down the hours to 500 and adcoms won't suspect me because the math adds up.
 
Here's a problem. Say I volunteer an EC for 4 hours per week for 3 years, but I only showed up for 5 weeks total. The moral/ethical obligation would be to report the total hours as 20. But I can simply calculate total hours as 4 hours / week x 52 weeks / year x 3 years = 624 hours. And I can round down the hours to 500 and adcoms won't suspect me because the math adds up.

Yeah, but the process assumes you're being honest. Anyone can lie about almost anything on there. When you can't talk intelligently about an activity or if they call to verify, you're ****ed.
 
Yeah, but the process assumes you're being honest. Anyone can lie about almost anything on there. When you can't talk intelligently about an activity or if they call to verify, you're ****ed.

Why would the adcoms verify the above example if it makes sense to them? 500 hours spent over 3 years is totally reasonable.
 
Because it is still part of the context that is useful for evaluation. None of these metrics is the "be all, end all" by itself



Because candidates should list it as such as I said previously

But hours can be exaggerated and flat out lied without raising suspicion from adcoms. In the above example I listed, 3 years volunteering with only 5 weeks of 4 hrs/week done can be listed as 500 hours without a problem.
 
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Any amount of hours at any time can be exaggerated, hence why you need: actual hours, start and end date, and context of hours per unit time

I don't know. Start/end dates and context of hours per time are more than sufficient (and much harder to lie or exaggerate), thereby eliminating the need for actual hours.
 
What if I started a bunch of different activities the semester before I apply because I just wanted to? I did this because I told myself after I was done studying for the mcat, I would devote my time to things I would actually enjoy AND that would help my app. Two birds with one stone. Now that I'm done with the MCAT, I've started volunteering at a hospice (because I found it more rewarding than volunteering in the ER) and with a predominantly hispanic underprivileged community (which I really wanted to do to improve my spanish). I'd want to volunteer several times a week in the summer before I send my app but I don't want to seem like I'm doing it just to boost up my ECs, even though it seems that way.
 
What if I started a bunch of different activities the semester before I apply because I just wanted to? I did this because I told myself after I was done studying for the mcat, I would devote my time to things I would actually enjoy AND that would help my app. Two birds with one stone. Now that I'm done with the MCAT, I've started volunteering at a hospice (because I found it more rewarding than volunteering in the ER) and with a predominantly hispanic underprivileged community (which I really wanted to do to improve my spanish). I'd want to volunteer several times a week in the summer before I send my app but I don't want to seem like I'm doing it just to boost up my ECs, even though it seems that way.
perhaps you could explain that in the "extra information" box that most apps provide.
 
Why would the adcoms verify the above example if it makes sense to them? 500 hours spent over 3 years is totally reasonable.

I may be wrong, but I don't think adcoms only verify pre-interview. If you can't talk about an activity but have 500 hours listed, it is going to look fishy.
 
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as I said to start this, it wont. The politics and reasons of why its there will not change

which is a shame seeing how trivial and redundant (and so easily prone to exaggeration) it is relative to start/end dates and experience descriptions (which includes hours/week)

I may be wrong, but I don't think adcoms only verify pre-interview. If you can't talk about an activity but have 500 hours listed, it is going to look fishy.

if applicants are smart enough to skillfully misrepresent their hours, they are smart enough to convey their passion through ECs and sway the adcoms to believe in them.
 
which is a shame seeing how trivial and redundant (and so easily prone to exaggeration) it is relative to start/end dates and experience descriptions (which includes hours/week)



if applicants are smart enough to skillfully misrepresent their hours, they are smart enough to convey their passion through ECs and sway the adcoms to believe in them.

Doing some simple math doesn't require that much intelligence. It's basic multiplication. I think you're grossly overestimating how easy it would be to trick an adcom into thinking you spent 500 hours doing something when you really only spent 5.
 
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Doing some simple math doesn't require that much intelligence. It's basic multiplication. I think you're grossly overestimating how easy it would be to trick an adcom into thinking you spent 500 hours doing something when you really only spent 5.

Conveying passion through ECs isn't dependent on the total number of hours spent. If these applicants find those 20 hours personally meaningful and can talk about them in detail, adcoms would probably believe them.
 
Conveying passion through ECs isn't dependent on the total number of hours spent. If these applicants find those 20 hours personally meaningful and can talk about them in detail, adcoms would probably believe them.

Maybe, maybe not. Someone with 500 hours is going to have far more to talk about than someone with 20. I think it is pretty easy to tell when someone has a small number of hours versus a large number of hours, simply because they can talk about it longer and have more experiences to discuss. When I interviewed for my linked program, I listed that I had several thousand hours of clinical experience. She wanted to talk about that a lot. If I had grossly exaggerated my hours, I think she would have been able to tell. Someone with less experience just doesn't have the depth that someone with more does.

I'm sure there are some people who are just great liars, but the interviewers have a lot of experience I think.
 
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AMCAS should get rid of the hours entry. Longevity in terms of years matters way more.

Disagree. An applicant spends a lot of time working on one application, but we spend a lot more time working though thousands of them. The hours stat provides a very convenient way to help translate quantitative entries into a meaningful qualitative summary for each applicant.
 
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Conveying passion through ECs isn't dependent on the total number of hours spent. If these applicants find those 20 hours personally meaningful and can talk about them in detail, adcoms would probably believe them.

More and more institutions are moving to verify some percentage of randomly selected ECs in their accepted applicants. Small embellishments, like saying you did 500 hours of something when you only did 400, can be somewhat difficult to detect. Big ones will get your acceptance rescinded and you reported to AMCAS, which will effectively end your chances of getting into an allopathic program in the US.
 
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Maybe, maybe not. Someone with 500 hours is going to have far more to talk about than someone with 20. I think it is pretty easy to tell when someone has a small number of hours versus a large number of hours, simply because they can talk about it longer and have more experiences to discuss. When I interviewed for my linked program, I listed that I had several thousand hours of clinical experience. She wanted to talk about that a lot. If I had grossly exaggerated my hours, I think she would have been able to tell. Someone with less experience just doesn't have the depth that someone with more does.

I'm sure there are some people who are just great liars, but the interviewers have a lot of experience I think.

So you think more hours mean greater depth of experience?

More and more institutions are moving to verify some percentage of randomly selected ECs in their accepted applicants. Small embellishments, like saying you did 500 hours of something when you only did 400, can be somewhat difficult to detect. Big ones will get your acceptance rescinded and you reported to AMCAS, which will effectively end your chances of getting into an allopathic program in the US.

What is the purpose of verifying randomly selected ECs of accepted applicants?

Disagree. An applicant spends a lot of time working on one application, but we spend a lot more time working though thousands of them. The hours stat provides a very convenient way to help translate quantitative entries into a meaningful qualitative summary for each applicant.

Could you clarify the bold? How is that different from just listing start/end dates?
 
What is the purpose of verifying randomly selected ECs of accepted applicants?

To catch those who would falsify their records prior to matriculation, and in the process incentivize future applicants to be truthful.

Lawper said:
Could you clarify the bold? How is that different from just listing start/end dates?

If I am spending a day reviewing 100 applications, each averaging 10 EC's, that's 1,000 entries that I have to digest in a limited time period. If all I have are start/end dates then I have to do an extra layer of analysis 1,000 times in order to make sense of what applicants have submitted. I would prefer not to do that. Having a raw number of reported hours allows me to triage with relative ease. For example, I might shorthand the ECs on three applicants like this:

Applicant A: Lots of service, multiple organizations, moderate clinical exposure, no research, club soccer
Applicant B: Lots of research, one pub, two abstracts, moderate service, clinical exposure light, violinist
Applicant C: No research, clinical exposure light, some service, division 1 athlete, works part-time

Read/scan the essays, look at the metrics, check the interview feedback, peruse the LORs, and you form an impression. My experiences as an adcom have reinforced the notion that applicants are essentially judged by gestalt. Sometimes people argue over details, but those cases are the exception. Perhaps this reflects our training as physicians, that we have to take what is a fairly large and complex body of data on a given patient and boil it down in a way that gets to the point. Hence, anyone who thinks that sneaking in a few extra EC hours here and there is going to positively impact his/her application is barking up the wrong tree.
 
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How is that different from just listing start/end dates?

Or try this.

Approach #1:
1. 500 hours
2. 300 hours
3. 20 hours
4. 1 hour
5. 1100 hours
6. 80 hours
7. 50 hours
8. 50 hours
9. 8 hours
10. 1 hour

Approach #2:
1. 06/2015 - 11/2015
2. 04/2014 - 06/2015
3. 07/2015 - 08/2015
4. 02/2016 - 02/2016
5. 10/2013 - 03/2016
6. 01/2014 - 01/2015
7. 06/2015 - 08/2015
8. 11/2013 - 09/2015
9. 10/2014 - 05/2015
10. 04/2015 - 04/2015

Which approach makes it easier to do a rapid assessment?
 
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To catch those who would falsify their records prior to matriculation, and in the process incentivize future applicants to be truthful.

What about in cases where the end dates are just before start of orientation, and the hours are projected?

If I am spending a day reviewing 100 applications, each averaging 10 EC's, that's 1,000 entries that I have to digest in a limited time period. If all I have are start/end dates then I have to do an extra layer of analysis 1,000 times in order to make sense of what applicants have submitted. I would prefer not to do that. Having a raw number of reported hours allows me to triage with relative ease. For example, I might shorthand the ECs on three applicants like this:

Applicant A: Lots of service, multiple organizations, moderate clinical exposure, no research, club soccer
Applicant B: Lots of research, one pub, two abstracts, moderate service, clinical exposure light, violinist
Applicant C: No research, clinical exposure light, some service, division 1 athlete, works part-time

Read/scan the essays, look at the metrics, check the interview feedback, peruse the LORs, and you form an impression. My experiences as an adcom have reinforced the notion that applicants are essentially judged by gestalt. Sometimes people argue over details, but those cases are the exception. Perhaps this reflects our training as physicians, that we have to take what is a fairly large and complex body of data on a given patient and boil it down in a way that gets to the point. Hence, anyone who thinks that sneaking in a few extra EC hours here and there is going to positively impact his/her application is barking up the wrong tree.

So hours are a better and faster heuristic than start/end dates and are thus more useful for speeding up admissions workflows?

Or try this.

Approach #1:
1. 500 hours
2. 300 hours
3. 20 hours
4. 1 hour
5. 1100 hours
6. 80 hours
7. 50 hours
8. 50 hours
9. 8 hours
10. 1 hour

Approach #2:
1. 06/2015 - 11/2015
2. 04/2014 - 06/2015
3. 07/2015 - 08/2015
4. 02/2016 - 02/2016
5. 10/2013 - 03/2016
6. 01/2014-01/2015
7. 06/2015 - 08/2015
8. 11/2013 - 09/2015
9. 10/2014 - 05/2015
10. 04/2015 - 04/2015

Which approach makes it easier to do a rapid assessment?

Idk i'd probably say the first one but wasn't there an OB/GYN clinical rule used to quickly calculate the second? And doesn't AMCAS give you the months and years from start and end dates?
 
So you think more hours mean greater depth of experience?

If you spend 500 hours doing something, you are going to have a deeper experience, unless you kept it superficial the whole time, in which case that will probably be seen as a negative too. If you can only discuss the experience superficially after 500 hours, you either fudged your hours or you were not very involved, both of which are probably not good.
 
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What about in cases where the end dates are just before start of orientation, and the hours are projected?

This is uncommon. I can understand it if an applicant is continuing on with something significant past the AMCAS submission. If I notice that someone is starting something just prior to submission and is making a rosy projection about involvement, that earns a big fat ding.

Lawper said:
So hours are a better and faster heuristic than start/end dates and are thus more useful for speeding up admissions workflows?

Yes. Also, consider a situation where someone does some EC for 8 hours in February, 8 hours in May, 8 hours in August, and 8 hours in November. Has that person been doing one thing for 10 months? Or four things for 8 hours each? Or can we just say its 32 hours with the dates specified in another field and call it a day?

Lawper said:
Idk i'd probably say the first one but wasn't there an OB/GYN clinical rule used to quickly calculate the second? And doesn't AMCAS give you the months and years from start and end dates?

No calculation is quicker than one done prior to me opening your file.

AMCAS does indeed collect and display the staring/ending times for each activity, so you are essentially arguing to remove a piece of information from AMCAS that I, at least, find useful.
 
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If you spend 500 hours doing something, you are going to have a deeper experience, unless you kept it superficial the whole time, in which case that will probably be seen as a negative too. If you can only discuss the experience superficially after 500 hours, you either fudged your hours or you were not very involved, both of which are probably not good.

This is why quality of experiences >>>>>>>> hours spent.

This is uncommon. I can understand it if an applicant is continuing on with something significant past the AMCAS submission. If I notice that someone is starting something just prior to submission and is making a rosy projection about involvement, that earns a big fat ding.

Okay this makes sense.

Yes. Also, consider a situation where someone does some EC for 8 hours in February, 8 hours in May, 8 hours in August, and 8 hours in November. Has that person been doing one thing for 10 months? Or four things for 8 hours each? Or can we just say its 32 hours with the dates specified in another field and call it a day?

Or applicants could simply say 8 hrs/month for 10 months and summing to 80 rather than 32.

No calculation is quicker than one done prior to me opening your file.

AMCAS does indeed collect and display the staring/ending times for each activity, so you are essentially arguing to remove a piece of information from AMCAS that I, at least, find useful.

But does AMCAS also automatically calculate the duration in terms of years and months from the inputted start and end dates? Do you see the ECs in terms of years and months as well, or is it just start and end dates (and hours self-reported by applicants)?
 
Or applicants could simply say 8 hrs/month for 10 months and summing to 80 rather than 32.

That would be inaccurate for an activity where it was 8 hours/month for only four of ten months.

Lawper said:
But does AMCAS also automatically calculate the duration in terms of years and months from the inputted start and end dates? Do you see the ECs in terms of years and months as well, or is it just start and end dates (and hours self-reported by applicants)?

No, AMCAS doesn't, the applicant does. I want the person who actually did the activity to make a good faith estimate of the total time involvement. I usually don't have to look at the start/stop dates at all.
 
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That would be inaccurate for an activity where it was 8 hours/month for only four of ten months.

Right but applicants can lie to their advantage when reporting hours, especially if their hours aren't officially recorded somewhere to be verified.

No, AMCAS doesn't, the applicant does. I want the person who actually did the activity to make a good faith estimate of the total time involvement. I usually don't have to look at the start/stop dates at all.

I just think hours metric allows applicants to be dishonest when reporting them just to look good to adcoms.

All that tells you is they were "involved" for X years. 700 characters isn't enough to give enough detail to show how in depth your involvement was.

Concrete, memorable experiences can be described as examples in personal statement, secondary responses, and interviews.
 
Right but applicants can lie to their advantage when reporting hours, especially if their hours aren't officially recorded somewhere to be verified.
Applicants can still lie if you take away the hour component. In your scenario what's stopping me from saying I did something for 4 years, and then giving a beautifully written fiction about it? Or maybe it doesn't even have to be a lie, i participated in X experience for 3 years from this date to this date. Then explain how moving and meaningful it was to them (reality, 1 hr a year for those 3 years). This technically wasn't a lie, and without the hours may sound like a good extracurricular.

I'm having a really difficult time seeing your point. Why take away something that can only add more context? I know you're concerned about lying, but if you're going to be dishonest to get into medical school you'll find a way to do it.
 
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Applicants can still lie if you take away the hour component. In your scenario what's stopping me from saying I did something for 4 years, and then giving a beautifully written fiction about it? Or maybe it doesn't even have to be a lie, i participated in X experience for 3 years from this date to this date. Then explain how moving and meaningful it was to them (reality, 1 hr a year for those 3 years). This technically wasn't a lie, and without the hours may sound like a good extracurricular.

I'm having a really difficult time seeing your point. Why take away something that can only add more context? I know you're concerned about lying, but if you're going to be dishonest to get into medical school you'll find a way to do it.

Start and end dates are concrete and can be established/verified very easily by contacting the supervisors of that ECs. Hours are generally not recorded in many ECs besides volunteering work for record keeping purposes. So hours are self-reported and can be easily exaggerated.

And while someone can spend 1 hr/yr on an EC for 3 yrs, they still have to describe their experiences and what they learned about it. But there's some continuity involved here even though it's sparse but I think they can handle it better than someone who crammed 300 hours last second.

Hours are a poor context because they are not easily verifiable compared to concrete start/end dates, and can be freely exaggerated to applicant's benefits. And sure people can lie their way into medicine and not get caught because they are merely exploiting the loopholes in the process. And to me, hours is the biggest loophole that's freely exploited.
 
Just stop obsessing about this already. The system isn't going to change.

Start and end dates are concrete and can be established/verified very easily by contacting the supervisors of that ECs. Hours are generally not recorded in many ECs besides volunteering work for record keeping purposes. So hours are self-reported and can be easily exaggerated.

And while someone can spend 1 hr/yr on an EC for 3 yrs, they still have to describe their experiences and what they learned about it. But there's some continuity involved here even though it's sparse but I think they can handle it better than someone who crammed 300 hours last second.

Hours are a poor context because they are not easily verifiable compared to concrete start/end dates, and can be freely exaggerated to applicant's benefits. And sure people can lie their way into medicine and not get caught because they are merely exploiting the loopholes in the process. And to me, hours is the biggest loophole that's freely exploited.
 
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Right but applicants can lie to their advantage when reporting hours, especially if their hours aren't officially recorded somewhere to be verified.

I just think hours metric allows applicants to be dishonest when reporting them just to look good to adcoms.

This is why you now have to give contact information of a supervisor (or similar person) for each EC. And why we audit some of them.

It's also why we don't bother nitpicking over the hour totals for most things. Worked in a lab for 6 weeks during a summer? Claiming 250 hours? Sounds right, whatever!
 
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What about volunteering at a rural clinic during the summer over several years? I live in a rural city and am very passionate about rural medicine while my university is more urban. During the school year, I do about six hours of volunteering a week, have another EC that takes about 15 hours a week, and research that's about 15 hours a week. I guess my point is that if I make sure I'm active EC-wise during the school year but choose to do most of my clinical experience during the summer, will it be frowned upon?
 
What about volunteering at a rural clinic during the summer over several years? I live in a rural city and am very passionate about rural medicine while my university is more urban. During the school year, I do about six hours of volunteering a week, have another EC that takes about 15 hours a week, and research that's about 15 hours a week. I guess my point is that if I make sure I'm active EC-wise during the school year but choose to do most of my clinical experience during the summer, will it be frowned upon?

No. People who arrange their ECs around their academics with surgical precision might get picked up. It's more common for folks to get over-involved in EC's and have their grades slip.
 
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