EC's in highschool question

[Manbean2]

Hi, I'm currently a junior in high school and already have ~70 volunteer hours in the ER at a local hospital. Can these be included when I apply to med school, or do you only include what volunteering you have done during undergraduate?

Thanks

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[peripherin]

Most of your high schools ECs will be irrelevant after you get into college. The only exceptions are if you have published a paper or book, or if you want to show commitment by continuing with the same hospital in college. If so, you will be able to mention your high school experiences in your personal statement but I don't think you will be able to (officially) enter them in as an EC.

 

[GoodmanBrown]

It's possible for you to put whatever you want in your 15 slots of the AMCAS application. You could put that you were the lead role in "Humpty Dumpty" in 4th grade. You could put you were in a 4-man kazoo band in middle school. You could put... Well, you get the drift. Essentially, you have 15 spots and you put everything from jobs to scholarships to research to shadowing to volunteering to hobbies. Those 15 slots can be filled however you want.

Now, as for whether it's appropriate, that really depends. If you have one "activity" that lists all your volunteering and you make a quick bullet-point list of all the volunteering you've done, then yeah, maybe tack it on. If you're considering using 1/15 of your spots for some high school volunteering, I'd say you should be worried that you don't have enough stuff that pushes that out of the top 15.