Extra Curricular

[premedCarl]

What type of extra-curricular's are necessary for applying to med school? Ex: volunteer work, shadowing, research, clinical experience, sports, clubs, honor societies, etc.
Which are more important?
Thanks in advance.

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[CyberMaxx]

Hey premedCarl, welcome to SDN!! To preempt any snarky comments, let me say that there are certain basic questions about med school admissions which it is probably easier to search for than by starting a new thread, especially because a lot of good things about topics such as these have already been said.

To the point, all of the ec's you've listed are good and important. Of course your GPA and MCAT are most important, but beyond that you should try to gain clinical experience by volunteering and shadowing to experience medicine first hand. This will help you verify that medicine is really what you want to pursue as a career. I would say that this is the most important because schools want to see that you know what you are getting into. If you are interested, volunteering in a non-medical setting is also good and shows that you care about others and can devote time to helping even when it is not directly linked to your career goals. Research is increasingly more important, and if you want to go to a school with a strong research program, research is probably a must.

Everything else is good and will look good on your app. The most important thing is to follow your interests. Try not to get sucked into the premed trap of making a checklist and checking things off, your experiences may end up looking superficial (and you'll have little fun). Here are some links below which have comments from people who know what their talking about a lot more than I do . Good Luck!!

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=896983
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=942182
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=968616&highlight=good+ecs

 

[premedCarl]

Thanks cybermaxx. But specifically, what if I had a complete lack of volunteer work but had a plethora of research experience, (assuming great gpa and MCAT scores), would I still be a competitive applicant? Ir is well-roundedness more important?

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[wizedw]

Dont neglect volunteering. Even if you love research you can find small chunks of time to do some hospital volunteering or some non clinical volunteering. Your app can be research heavy, it just should not be research only.