Extracurriculars: hours-years-appropriate time

[CaliGirl14]

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I've got a bunch of really simple questions about extracurricular activities:

1) When can you officially start ECs that will count towards your application? Meaning, that if I begin volunteer at hospital X the summer before I'm a freshman at college, would that count? Or do you 'officially' begin the month you start college? I ask because I know Med schools don't care about what you do in HS

2) How are 'years' calculated? 365 days or is it based off of your school's calendar?

3) How are the extracurriculars formatted on the AMCAS? Will they ask you how many hours/week for a given amount of time? Will they ask you for hours total? What happens if you, lets say volunteer 6 hours a week one month, next month you only volunteer one hour, and 2 the following? Do you average the hours out? How will they know how many hours you did?

4) If you started volunteering at hospital X during your high school, and continue to do so during college, would you include the hours you volunteered during high school in your application? Would you put the start date when you were in high school? How does that work?

Thank you 🙂

 

[CaliGirl14]

Just thought of another one!
5) How do you keep track of your hours and extracurriculars? How do you keep it official? How will the med schools know if you actually did do them or not?

 

[CaliGirl14]

bump..

 

[apumic]

I've got a bunch of really simple questions about extracurricular activities:

1) When can you officially start ECs that will count towards your application? Meaning, that if I begin volunteer at hospital X the summer before I'm a freshman at college, would that count? Or do you 'officially' begin the month you start college? I ask because I know Med schools don't care about what you do in HS

2) How are 'years' calculated? 365 days or is it based off of your school's calendar?

3) How are the extracurriculars formatted on the AMCAS? Will they ask you how many hours/week for a given amount of time? Will they ask you for hours total? What happens if you, lets say volunteer 6 hours a week one month, next month you only volunteer one hour, and 2 the following? Do you average the hours out? How will they know how many hours you did?

4) If you started volunteering at hospital X during your high school, and continue to do so during college, would you include the hours you volunteered during high school in your application? Would you put the start date when you were in high school? How does that work?

Thank you 🙂

1) When you start college would be technically correct, I suppose, but you're overanalyzing it.

2) Umm... neither... 12 months=1 yr but it's not so technical. You're overanalyzing again. May-Dec = ~1/2 year; Aug-May=10 mos but if 3 years of 10 mos, it's 3 years. It's not really that technical. Use common sense.

3) Take averages, estimate. Nobody cares about a difference of a few hours (except maybe overly-neurotic premeds). You're way overanalyzing all of this!

4) Start date is during HS, yes. Hours only count since entering college.

 

[TooMuchResearch]

I've got a bunch of really simple questions about extracurricular activities:

1) When can you officially start ECs that will count towards your application? Meaning, that if I begin volunteer at hospital X the summer before I'm a freshman at college, would that count? Or do you 'officially' begin the month you start college? I ask because I know Med schools don't care about what you do in HS

2) How are 'years' calculated? 365 days or is it based off of your school's calendar?

3) How are the extracurriculars formatted on the AMCAS? Will they ask you how many hours/week for a given amount of time? Will they ask you for hours total? What happens if you, lets say volunteer 6 hours a week one month, next month you only volunteer one hour, and 2 the following? Do you average the hours out? How will they know how many hours you did?

4) If you started volunteering at hospital X during your high school, and continue to do so during college, would you include the hours you volunteered during high school in your application? Would you put the start date when you were in high school? How does that work?

Thank you 🙂

1. Yes, the summer before college is okay(, but go out and have some fun instead).

2. Use actual years. The most popular calendar in the US uses 365 days.

3. ...I think AMCAS requests average number of hours per week and start/end dates. If needed, you can explain any weird hour variations (e.g. 40 hours per week during summers and 6 hours per week during the school year) in the comments section. AMCAS does not ask for total hours, but you might as well keep track (loosely, not anally/precisely).

Technically, they probably will not know how many hours you did, but if you're already thinking of starting ECs the summer before college, you probably won't have to worry about your total number of hours.

4. I think the general consensus is that if you're volunteer experience started before college but continues into college, then it's okay to list the entire time. I'm assuming this is something important to you and that is why you are choosing to continue while in college.

5. Keep a spreadsheet of your hours, but (again), don't be anal about it. If you know that you do something about 5 hours per week (+/- several hours), just put it down as 5 hours per week.

6. There is no need to bump threads that are less than one hour old. Someone will find it and post eventually.