extracurricular activities. what happens if i have little/no clinical experience?

[mrh125]

Bc I have a 3.60 gpa (hopefully at the end of this quarter i have a 3.59 gpa right now and i have my last final in a few hours), am expecting to get a 30 on the mcat and my extracurricular activities are this and I just lack clinical experience: more than a couple hundred hours interning/shadowing a cosmetic dentist (she's awesome and I learned a lot about independent practice and dentistry through her, most of which is applicable to the medical field. I did this instead of major shadowing with doctors bc I couldn't really find a good doctor match to shadow)

one visit shadowing a cardiologist (meh)

thousands of hours working for a non-profit involved with providing quality healthcare to india, regions in africa, and Indonesia and helping prevent food contamination issues (such as aflatoxin in grain). I coded their website and did research for them and put together their grant proposals (edited the format). unfortunately my name wasn't on them. The person in charge who was my genetics professor was going to give me an internship with a chance to publish on transferring some enzyme from tobacco to rice, but he never followed through even after i followed up a ton bc grad students were higher priority and i dont have lots of lab experience.

Couple hundred hours researching water contamination in the new york water supply and I provided the professor lots of new insights. I was going to work towards being published but there wasn't enough

Some generic plant biology research (like 50 hours of data inputting, manipulation, and counting plants in green houses. really lame)

misc. non-profit work with toy-drives, fundraising to provide an underprivileged school laptops

I've also worked at CVS for a few hundred hours and at a winery and in between classes I tutored/helped other students and studied various languages and cultures (arabic, german, italian).

Is this decent enough even without clinical experience? I dont have hospital clinical or real many specialities experience. It was also very difficult to even get time to do this stuff with all my classes and the work they required. I heard the average applicant 40-60 hours clinical experience across number specialities and im not really looking forward to spending my entire year off padding my transcript.

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[487806]

Bc I have a 3.60 gpa (hopefully at the end of this quarter i have a 3.59 gpa right now and i have my last final in a few hours), am expecting to get a 30 on the mcat and my extracurricular activities are this and I just lack clinical experience: more than a couple hundred hours interning/shadowing a cosmetic dentist (she's awesome and I learned a lot about independent practice and dentistry through her, most of which is applicable to the medical field. I did this instead of major shadowing with doctors bc I couldn't really find a good doctor match to shadow)

one visit shadowing a cardiologist (meh)

thousands of hours working for a non-profit involved with providing quality healthcare to india, regions in africa, and Indonesia and helping prevent food contamination issues (such as aflatoxin in grain). I coded their website and did research for them and put together their grant proposals (edited the format). unfortunately my name wasn't on them. The person in charge who was my genetics professor was going to give me an internship with a chance to publish on transferring some enzyme from tobacco to rice, but he never followed through even after i followed up a ton bc grad students were higher priority and i dont have lots of lab experience.

Couple hundred hours researching water contamination in the new york water supply and I provided the professor lots of new insights. I was going to work towards being published but there wasn't enough

Some generic plant biology research (like 50 hours of data inputting, manipulation, and counting plants in green houses. really lame)

misc. non-profit work with toy-drives, fundraising to provide an underprivileged school laptops

I've also worked at CVS for a few hundred hours and at a winery and in between classes I tutored/helped other students and studied various languages and cultures (arabic, german, italian).

Is this decent enough even without clinical experience? I dont have hospital clinical or real many specialities experience. It was also very difficult to even get time to do this stuff with all my classes and the work they required. I heard the average applicant 40-60 hours clinical experience across number specialities and im not really looking forward to spending my entire year off padding my transcript.

You need ACTIVE clinical experience and this doesn't have to be volunteering at a hospital. Try hospices and free clinics. But @Goro emphasizes in WAMC that you need clinical volunteering since you need to show adcoms that you're comfortable with sick patients. Shadowing is too passive.

And 3-4 hrs/week isn't that much.

 

[mrh125]

You need ACTIVE clinical experience and this doesn't have to be volunteering at a hospital. Try hospices and free clinics. But @Goro emphasizes in WAMC that you need clinical volunteering since you need to show adcoms that you're comfortable with sick patients. Shadowing is too passive.

And 3-4 hrs/week isn't that much.

how easy is it to find clinical experience? How do I even find this stuff easily?

 

[mvenus929]

You need enough clinical experience to be able to describe why you want to do medicine and that you understand what the daily job of a physician is. I can tell you now that you don't have enough clinical experience to do that. You need to shadow a physician, whether this is working in a free clinic or actually shadowing. You don't need to spend hundreds of hours shadowing different specialties, just focus on areas of interest. Talk to your professors and see if they have any medical colleagues they can refer you to, talk to your or your family's physician. Seek out an adviser and see what other people from your school are doing.

 

[Goro]

Strongly concur. Visit some local hospitals and simply ask if they have a volunteer department.
Not all volunteering needs to be in a hospital. Think hospice, nursing homes, rehab facilities, camps for sick children, or clinics. Check out your local houses of worship for volunteer opportunities, too.




You don't need to spend hundreds of hours shadowing different specialties, just focus on areas of interest. Talk to your professors and see if they have any medical colleagues they can refer you to, talk to your or your family's physician. Seek out an adviser and see what other people from your school are doing.[/quote]

 

[mrh125]

so do i need to skip applying this cycle? :\

 

[487806]

so do i need to skip applying this cycle? :\

No. It's six months from now. You can rack up a good 100 hours if you start ASAP

 

[mrh125]

No. It's six months from now. You can rack up a good 100 hours if you start ASAP

would you recommend one doctor/clinic or many? i'd really just like to focus on one and have it be meaningful

 

[487806]

would you recommend one doctor/clinic or many? i'd really just like to focus on one and have it be meaningful

One is fine.

 

[Ismet]

a 3.6/30 with no clinical experience would probably spell rejection/waitlist at most schools. You can definitely get a good number of hours of clinical experience between now and June. Check out volunteer services at a local hospital and shadow a few more docs. I know it seems like you'd just be padding your resume, but if you get to interact with patients, you'll probably get some enjoyment out of it (after all, you're going to be interacting with patients for the rest of your career).