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I love the heading. I'll make that substitution in this case.
Thanks for your response, LizzyM!
Thanks for your response, LizzyM!
Should activities or experiences that were part of a course be listed?
For example, one of my volunteer experiences (approx. 200 hours) was required for one of my courses. Should I list it? Should I mention that it was a course requirement?
Also, I took a Research Methods course in which we were required to complete a semester long (non-medical) research project, though it was never submitted for publishing. Should this be listed?
three questions here:
1) is leadership necessary? im not gonna lie, i have no interest in any club on campus. when going to ug it seemed totally necessary to have some form of leadership. how is it for med school? by necessary i mean will it detract from your app if you are deficient in leadership but still have many other activities.
2) what constitutes a strong clinical base? ive been browsing through mdapps wondering how kids with 40+ mcat and 3.9+ gpa with great activities dont even get an interview at some top schools. when looking further, i noticed that EVERY single one did more research as opposed to clinical work. how can i establish a good clinical base? i plan to shadow a few doctors, possibly do an internship with another, and do clinical research (does this add to your clinical base, ie activities that show you know what medicine is all about?), and misc. hospital volunteering.
3) is it bad to work in one area of medicine exclusively? i am working for a doctor and probably every project i do with him will involve his specialty. his activities will actually take up much of my time...will it hurt me? i am very interested in his work, but i just dont want to get cut short if med schools think i havent seen the whole of medicine.
thanks!
I have heard that its good to shadow several doctors in different specialties but I don't think working in that area of medicine alone is going to hurt you as long as you can show you've been exposed to medicine enough to know what you are getting yourself into to some degree.
Clinical experience is important far more important then research at most institutions because the premise of going to medical school is to become a physician or surgeon, and most will obviously work with patients to some degree either in academia or in private settings. So you know it only makes sense that you need clinical exposure.
The most common way of getting such exposure is via volunteering in a clinical setting through things like childlife dept volunteering doing crafts with kids or reading to kids, volunteering in an ER making beds and making sure patients are ok, volunteering in any other hospital dept., small clinic, or otherwise volunteering in a clinical setting with physicians and or surgeons are present. Also included in clinical volunteerism is overseas volunteering on medical mission trips.
Other ways to get clinical experience are through working in a allied health profession or as a CNA, EMT-B, PCT, etc. in a setting where physicians and surgeons are often present.
I think clinical exposure is extremely important for obvious reasons.
What is not so important is to join stupid organizations around campus. Keep in mind that leadership is not defined soley as being a leader in a club or organization. If you are a dancer, a musician, an athlete, etc. then leadership might be being a team captain of a dance troupe or sport team, being the head musician in a band, etc. If you are a manager at a job then that is leadership. If you are heading a group of volunteers for a continued weekly activity where you are the lead volunteer in designing and implementing the projects and distributing tasks to other volunteers then that is leadership.
Leadership comes in many forms and is often misinterpreted as being something affiliated to positions in student organizations. People who do leadership through organizations do it that way because its the easiest way to get such leadership exposure but the ones at the top most universities who have leadership are more often then not those who are leaders in more innovative ways as presented in my examples in the above paragraph.
Yeah, I'm having fits with the leadership thing.
Just adding a bit to what gujuDoc wrote 👍
Yeah, I had officially nothing I listed as 'leadership' on my application BUT any of the following that I did could probably be construed as leadership:
(1) Tutoring students in a foreign language
(2) Participating in a chamber ensemble (music) -- it took some leadership to organize meetings
(3) Performing on the piano (you don't have to have a group of followers to lead! 😉)
(4) Teaching for a test-prep company
(5) Doing volunteer work where I was 'guiding/leading/advising' homeless people as to their legal rights.
(6) Acting as a research study coordinator.
Maybe some of these help to give you some ideas.
Thanks! I guess if you think about it, you can come up with bunch of stuff.
thanks for your help guys. i have a kinda silly question but...do connections help in getting into a specific med school? say i was working under a doctor who happens to have graduated from and is an assistant clinical professor at the med school. when application season rolls around, what would a letter of rec and possibly a phone call be worth for that school?
this is assuming solid gpa, mcat, and other activities too btw.
Very helpful thread....
1) I have a question regarding summer employment during my undergrad years. I worked full-time jobs (40hrs/week) each summer but they were not clinical in nature and each summer was a different job. I don't want to use 3 of my 15 slots for these so would it be OK to put them all under one heading as "summer employment" to show that I was productive in between school years even though I didn't get much time to volunteer in clinical positions?
2) I did a 5 month placement in my senior year (~15hrs/week) that involved working with severely mentally ill patients. Immediately following that semester I started a full-time job working with students affected with mental illness (lasted 2 years). Should I put these under two separate slots or together since the experiences were similar though the number of hours and locations are different?
Yeah, I'm not LizzyM, but maybe I can be a little helpful.
Yes, based on what I've heard from friends with family members at different schools, connections definitely help. They don't guarantee anything but they help.
You should weigh whether this doctor's letter is going to be good for ALL the schools you apply, to, though. Unless the school s/he works at is your 100% top choice and you have a very good chance of admission.
1. Yeah, you can absolutely lump the experiences. Make sure you clearly explain what happened, though. One, short, succinct separate paragraphs for each job.
"In summer 2007, I worked for blah blah blah blah
In summer 2008, I sold blah blah blah
In summer 2009, I was paid to blah blah blah"
2. Do you mean senior year of high school? Technically you're not supposed to list activities you did in high school. If you find a creative way to lump the two experiences without making the entry too confusing, then you should go for it. Perhaps you could say something along the lines of:
"During my senior year in high school I did X, which further motivated me to do Y while in college." (Unless that's not true!)
Thanks guju and Pianola. I should have been more specific, it was in fact my senior year in university. I'm still not sure if I will lump the two mental health experiences together since they were two very different settings, but it's good to know there is no right or wrong way to present things. Thanks!
If you can spare the spots, it is much easier for a adcom to determine how you spent each summer of college if you list each f/t summer activity as a separate entry, particularly if they were separate items.
I guess I was a little worried that because these jobs had nothing to do with health care and they only lasted 3-4 months, the adcom would consider them as "fillers" in my application. Thanks for the tip.🙂
I guess I was a little worried that because these jobs had nothing to do with health care and they only lasted 3-4 months, the adcom would consider them as "fillers" in my application. Thanks for the tip.🙂
what do you mean weigh the doctor's letter? i dont think he is gonna custom tailor it for that school, but rather just put his credentials at the bottom.
should he custom tailor it for that specific school? and yes, it is my number one, but i of course still want to apply broadly.
Hi guys, I'm on the injured reserve list at the moment but I may stop in from time to time....
I'd separate the two mental illness gigs because the locations are different, the roles were different (I presume) and the time frames and hours per week are significantly different.
If you can spare the spots, it is much easier for a adcom to determine how you spent each summer of college if you list each f/t summer activity as a separate entry, particularly if they were separate items.
what do you mean weigh the doctor's letter? i dont think he is gonna custom tailor it for that school, but rather just put his credentials at the bottom.
should he custom tailor it for that specific school? and yes, it is my number one, but i of course still want to apply broadly.
Would running a little business, that is your main source of income, be considered a hobby, or employment?
I have another question about my ECs. In university (graduated 5 years ago) I was on the tennis team and because our schedules changed week to week, and we were often traveling on weekends, it was very hard to have regular volunteer activities. As a team we decided to do volunteer work every chance we got but the activities changed each time (one weekend we helped with Habitat for Humanity, another we gave free tennis lessons, helped with a cancer walk, etc). I'm trying to decide whether or not I should include these in ONE of my 15 spots since I don't have many spots to spare. The only problem with not including them is that in the last five years I have done some pretty cool volunteer work, but that only began last summer.
If I don't include a list of these random volunteer activities in college, will the adcom think I just wasn't into volunteering back then and I only just recently began doing volunteer work last summer in order to look good on applications? Or will they assume that since I am an older applicant I probably had too many things to include in only 15 spots? Not sure if I should waste my spot on such random/short-term activities when I have done more substantial things since....
Should I list intramural sports in the activities section?
Yes. It gives the adcom an idea of how you spend your free time. It might also provide a topic for conversation during interviews (if the interviewer plays the same sport, or has a kid who plays that sport, etc). Any extracurricular that shows your interests outside of medicine is a good addition to the application.
I have a question regarding employment. As a non-trad now back at school taking classes, volunteering, and studying for the MCAT, I have been working for my dad's company part-time in order to pay my bills. I don't want to add this to my application since it's not a huge amount of work, and it has nothing to do with medicine or anything of interest to me. If I leave it out, will the adcom think I am slacking off with a light course load or is it assumed that we are only putting in the highlights, and not everything we do with our time?
Also, I would like to point out a few things.
There is actually a category for intramural sports/athletic acvities in the drop down menu of different categorizations of activities. I don't think this or artistic endeavors would be there if all they wanted to see was what you did academically. So I'd venture to guess adcoms consider it important enough to have a category specially made for these 2 major groups of extracurriculars.
That said, team sports like intramurals show a commitment to something, if you were team captain then it shows leadership, and it is also a good way to show teamwork effort. You can illustrate this all through your sports. You can show them both that you are not a boring bland cookie cutter and have outside interests while also showing them that you are participating in something that has taught you important lessons in teamwork, leadership, sportsmanship, determination and diligence needed to complete a task (in this case winning a game or putting your best foot forward).
So I'd definitely list sports for which you were on a team via intramurals or varsity athletics or which you coached i.e. little league coach or some school coach role.
The only time I'd not list a sport is if it was like shooting hoops outside of my house by myself. But intramurals is something I'd consider putting in AMCAS because it shows true teamwork and is part of being a greater team who participated on some level competitively.
Participation in sports also shows a commitment to physical fitness and exercise.
Doing sports by yourself is OK if it is a solitary sport like running. Training for a marathon or half marathon or even running 5K and 10K races on a regular basis is worth putting on your application.
so i've started writing descriptions of my activities and they are coming out to be about 130 -160 words each (they're under the character limit set by amcas) is this to much.. or to little?
i just don't want to write so much that they dont read it
quote]
- High school activities are important only to underline continuity during college at increased levels of participation, leadership or responsibility (e.g., you've played a musical instrument, participated in the high school orchestra and are now in the college orchestra, etc.)
Great advice on all of them, but for this one, Im a freshman in college and I started volunteering for American Red Cross on my senior year in high school and I stopped due to the fact it was a Youth volunteering group for age 18 and under, should I register for the adult volunteer and continue it just to put Red Cross as one of my activities?
Im a freshman in college and I started volunteering for American Red Cross on my senior year in high school and I stopped due to the fact it was a Youth volunteering group for age 18 and under, should I register for the adult volunteer and continue it just to put Red Cross as one of my activities?
a strange question, but can anyone give me any ideas on outstanding activities i could do? i just have so much free time right now, and i really want to do something that stands out. yes yes, i know i should find something im passionate about, but i am interested in everything and i just dont know what to do. thanks.
LizzyM,
I have read several differing opinions about the format for the experience descriptions of extracurricular activities. Some have said that the descriptions should be in first person narrative. Others have said that simple bulleted lists should be used to list out what was accomplished.
I would personally prefer to use first person narrative so I can tie in what I learned from the various experiences that I had and how this was valuable to me.
Do you know if the Adcoms have any preference? Your insight would be most helpful.
The essay is a narrative. The experience section is more of a list. When we look at this we are usually asking ourselves:
has the applicant done anything in a clinical setting? what & for how long?
has the applicant done research? what & for how long?
what has the applicant done as service to the community/to help others?
what does the applicant do for fun?
what did the applicant do during summer vacations in college?
did the applicant have work responsibilities or play varsity sports?
At my school, at least one member of the faculty will read every word of your application. Most hope to be able to do that in 20-30 minute. Slogging through too much chatter can be annoying. Being able to scan the experience section quickly and answer those questions is efficiently is the goal. What you learned from your experiences or how you tie it together can be something to discuss in your interview. I've also seen it addressed well in the essay but limit yourself to three experiences (employment/research/volunteerism).
You can call something employment, non-military or you can call it volunteer, clinical. In either case, we're going to read the name of the place, your job title, and the description you provide.
I wouldn't advise splitting a full-time activity into 3 parts. It looks much stronger to be out of school with a 32-40 (or more) hr/wk "job". Just describe what you do in the text section. It should be pretty obvious that you are working with mentally ill clients and some of these folks are hospital patients.
Discharge planning and health insurance advocacy aren't really blood & guts sorts of services. Have you had any interactions with the physically ill?
so you don't think it's a red flag if none of my experiences are listed as "volunteer, clinical?" because the only *volunteer* clinical experience i have was when i volunteered in a hospital the summer before i started college, which i thought i wasn't supposed to include. i've also shadowed a bunch, so that will be in there as well.