Gap year secondary content questions

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Hzreio

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Summarize your activities during the 2019-2020 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)

This prompt is from Brown's prompts last year. I have been told before that gap year secondaries should focus more on simply listing what you have been doing. However, this prompt seems to want more in terms of lessons learned and reflections. When talking about the value of these activities relative to a medical career, it feels like I am telling instead of showing due to the character limit. Maybe it is best to "tell" for things that are shown in other parts of my application and "show" for things that are brand new? What is the best approach to go about these kinds of prompts?

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Generally speaking, yes, you want to show instead of tell. However, for personal statements and other prompts it is best to show and tell which is to say that with someone reading your PS quickly you can't always rely on them to pick up on what you're showing them. 2000 characters is between one and two paragraphs, it is ok to tell while including some important details.
 
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