Doing research and ec's with a family

i wonder this too. i imagine not because we are only human and there are only 24 hours in a day.

my circumstance is a little different. i currently live part time with my cousin who's husband is overseas in iraq. i spent friday morning through late monday night helping her out (or giving her time to get out of the house). and this leaves me with very little time to do any research or volunteer work, especially because tuesday through thursday i'm in class or studying for the mcat.

what i planned on doing was incorporating what i am doing now into my personal statement. this works out pretty fantastically well because i want to go into family practice in the navy.

good luck!

 

Unfortunately, while adcoms might cut you some slack as far as family obligations in terms of explaining gaps or weaknesses in the past, I don't think they'll see family obligations as a legitimate reason to not have the types of things they expect from other applicants.

I sympathize with the time crunch you have. But you still have to find time to do the things that will make you a competitive applicant. Telling med schools that you simply didn't have the time isn't going to fly.

But while difficult, it can still be done. It just means being efficient and picking your spots. Balancing family with career is something that all of us will grapple with for the rest of our working lives.

Good Luck! I know it's not easy.

 

Some suggestions:

1) Physician shadowing is an relatively quick and time effective way to bolster your application.
2) Volunteering doesn't have to be time-consuming either. An hour a week over the course of many months is all it takes. Quality and length of commitment trumps killing yourself to volunteer 10+ hrs/week for only a few months.
3) #2 doesn't apply to research though. A quick but intensive research experience over just a couple of months can often be very fruitful. Sometimes even netting you a name on a paper (if you impress).

 

I second the previous post- you have to be able to demonstrate that you have the time commitment the ad com perceives is necessary to succeed in medical school.

I recommend volunteering and working with the department as to a schedule. I volunteer once per week on Sundays with a local ED- they are flexible and open to me coming in at whatever time works best that weekend. I go in for a few hours (usually after the NFL game in town is over- it is amazing the number of car accidents/injuries/just plain weird situations come up after people have been drinking WAY too much) and help out where they need me.

Length of time is better than lots of hours in a short time frame. I started just walking patients from triage to a room. Now that I have been there for over six months, the docs have me do vitals, go through test results and imaging with me, and I have been able to do more shadowing of the physicians and PAs.

I also took a few half-days off of work to do more formal shadowing- my employer was very cool about it, though, so it depends on that situation for you.

I have three small little ones, so I can totally relate to the time crunch- the key for me was to find the flexible options (and keeping my spouse's focus on the end objective every weekend).

Good luck