Also think about it this way. There are 15 slots on the application, which is a crapton. For nontrads, it's prob pretty easy to rack up enough activities. For undergrads, it's much harder. I wouldn't be surprised if some undergrads fabricate and inflate ECs just so they can fill up the slots and even the playing field between them and the advantaged nontrads.
It would be much better if AMCAS only had 5-7 spots for activities, but forced you to write an essay about all of them.
Actually most non-trads graduated college with no initial expectations of going to medical school. Since pre-meds don't accurately portray normal human beings, a lot of non-trads won't start a post-bacc program with thousands of volunteer hours or what not. Having work experience, however, comes as an advantage and good selling point. We were still required to jump through the same hoops, just not to the same extent. I was definitely thankful to be a non-traditional student because I actually enjoyed my college years instead of sacrificing everything just for the admissions process.
Innocent embellishment? No such thing. Give the most accurate ballpark estimate possible, and only then is it not morally questionable. If you think you're going over, well..
So how much are we counting this ball park estimate by? 10 hour increments? 100 hour increments? I'm sure a holier-than-thou SDN pre-med will get their hours down to the exact minute if they could, and would think that anyone who tacked on an additional 10 hours is a horrible unethical person. Someone else might think 10-20 hours tacked on is no big deal, and so on.
I think it's worth pointing out that beyond a short threshold, med school adcoms probably don't care about how many hours you have in an activity. After all, even a particularly hardy strain of e.coli could put in thousands of hours at a free clinic's front desk. What matters is what you do in your ECs. Not everyone can raise a million dollars for a charity, or set up a tutoring program for students at an underprivileged inner city high school that boosts passing scores in a particular AP test by 75% within a year, or publish a peer-reviewed journal article. And unlike hours, achievements are verifiable and lies can be easily sniffed out.
All hours show is commitment to an activity and multi-tasking. While both are desirable traits, there's likely a point where you hit rapidly diminishing returns (eg: if one applicant has 500 hours in habit for humanity and the other has 5000, just how much more are those other 4500 hours worth compared to other aspects of the application? Do the extra hours really add anything new?)
I dare someone to apply with a genuinely meaningful volunteer experience that only took place every few months. The AMCAS application asks to list a start and end date plus hours per week. It's definitely emphasizing the length of commitment.
They want to play games, I'll play games.
This facade is getting ridiculous.
Just my $0.02:
I'm not sure about most, but many probably do. When you think about it, the med admissions process is really funny: some things are almost never verified (like EC hours), whereas for the MCAT they treat you like a criminal, tell you to empty your pockets, fingerprint you, and videotape you. I'm surprised a strip search was not involved there somewhere.
What would actually help is if freshmen and sophomore pre-meds better understood the expectations of the schools they'll be applying to, and actually try to accomplish those things. Maybe then the junior won't go "oh, crap" and make up activities to bolster his/her application.
Great point! Maybe if pre-meds were treated more like normal human beings, then people wouldn't suddenly start doing a laundry-list of activities the moment they become a pre-med. I referred to this in another thread as a "ZERO to Mother Teresa" applicant. It's pretty much come down to this:
Whether you volunteer in the ED, volunteer at a free clinic, tutor underprivileged children, work at a soup kitchen, or any of the other things you see time and time again on SDN doesn't say much about applicants anymore.
I don't think it shows that you're passionate about something, it shows more that you are a conformist. There's no point in blaming any pre-meds though because this has become accepted and the requirement.
Here's something to think about. Have you heard of Lenny Robinson? He's the Lamborghini driving Batman that visits sick children in the hospital. Reading his story is extremely inspiring, and definitely makes us feel good.
http://jalopnik.com/5897502/lamborghini-batman-unmasked
But if it turned out that Mr. Robinson were a pre-med, would you suddenly see him differently? I know I would.
🙁
The funny thing is that so many pre-meds are taking part in more "altruistic" activities than people who are genuinely doing it for their own personal fulfillment, yet we're unimpressed when we hear about a pre-med doing it, but are impressed when someone else does it. Isn't this sad?
😕
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Another unique point I wanted to mention is some people can technically lie on their application without the possibility of being caught. With medical schools not looking into a student's performance in their ECs, someone can simply check-in on the volunteer computer, go home, and then come back and check out once their shift is over. At a larger hospital (close to their residence) with many volunteers, this would go unnoticed. People can then rack up countless hours without ever doing anything. There are probably other methods.
We should remember that lying isn't only blatantly fabricating something on the application or grossly inflating hours.
