Has anyone had their experiences verified?

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CaliforniaAppli

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Meaning did any adcom ever call your contacts?

(Since we have to put contact phone numbers/ emails on our applications now)

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I don't make it a point to ask my contacts if they have been contacted, but I know it happens. According to UMich's twitter, they uncovered 2 applicants who lied about something they did. They check!
 
They might, but I highly doubt it. I bet the people who did get caught claimed some outrageous things that warranted extra scrutiny. I doubt it was a check they do on everyone or even a random check.

Just don't lie, and you don't need to worry about anything. ;)
 
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Don't do anything silly. You're applying for a professional school.
 
It kinda sucked for me this year because I had some experiences for which I have no contact to give, e.g. health fairs, red cross shelters after Katrina. Some of them are kinda stale though. I guess that's the point, to stop people from listing everything going back to kindergarten.

Anyway, I'm still in touch with most of my contacts, and none of them mentioned a call. But only one of my ECs was out of the ordinary (writing an Android app) and it's basically a hobby so the mandatory contact was me. I was asked to demonstrate it at my interview, though. :D
 
If they catch you blatantly lying, then I can see this happening. They interview plenty of people and aren't stupid. Just don't lie! It's not worth it.
 
Listing contacts, emails and phone numbers for your ECs (I assume this is what you are talking about) is OPTIONAL. I did not list any contacts (no names, just the nature of the EC, and where I did it). It never came up in any interview, and I had a bunch of acceptances.

Not to be confused with your letter writers - you have to list them by name, and provide contact info.

If you are confused about this, ask LizzyM.
 
Listing contacts, emails and phone numbers for your ECs (I assume this is what you are talking about) is OPTIONAL. I did not list any contacts (no names, just the nature of the EC, and where I did it). It never came up in any interview, and I had a bunch of acceptances.

Not to be confused with your letter writers - you have to list them by name, and provide contact info.

If you are confused about this, ask LizzyM.

Actually, the AMCAS changed this year, it's not the same as the one you used. Listing the contact name and one way to contact them is now REQUIRED for all activities.
 
Listing contacts, emails and phone numbers for your ECs (I assume this is what you are talking about) is OPTIONAL. I did not list any contacts (no names, just the nature of the EC, and where I did it). It never came up in any interview, and I had a bunch of acceptances.

Not to be confused with your letter writers - you have to list them by name, and provide contact info.

If you are confused about this, ask LizzyM.

It's something they started doing this year, so as a med student already you wouldn't have encountered it. But yes, AMCAS EC section now requires some form of contact, which was really annoying for some of the stuff I did (which there are other threads addressing)
 
Since we are on the topic of activity verification, I thought I would post something that I put in another thread.

I knew someone from my church who was premed since freshman year. What he did was find the hospital with the shortest minimum time commitment. He found a hospital with a three month commitment. He ended up volunteering three months every year up and made sure to be within that time frame when he filled out the AMCAS. Since they ask for a start and end date, he neglected to mention hours. Therefore, according to him, unless explicitly asked about the hours he worked, it was NOT a lie to say that he volunteered all four years. He neglected to mention the nine month breaks, and was able to inflate his perceived commitment by 400%!

So I am wondering if this is a loophole. I noticed that some people who fill out the AMCAS start putting in crazy numbers that they get with heavy algebra when it comes to average hours per week. I volunteer four hours weekly, and that is what I listed. Let's say I had a fulltime job, which is forty hours a week. When people ask how much I work, I would say forty hours a week. Let's now say I take a three month maternity leave in one year. The job is still forty hours a week. It didn't become a 30 hour a week job because of that break. Whether I worked one week, two weeks, five months, a year, or ten years, a forty hour a week job is still a forty hour a week job. Is my reasoning incorrect?
 
Since we are on the topic of activity verification, I thought I would post something that I put in another thread.

I knew someone from my church who was premed since freshman year. What he did was find the hospital with the shortest minimum time commitment. He found a hospital with a three month commitment. He ended up volunteering three months every year up and made sure to be within that time frame when he filled out the AMCAS. Since they ask for a start and end date, he neglected to mention hours. Therefore, according to him, unless explicitly asked about the hours he worked, it was NOT a lie to say that he volunteered all four years. He neglected to mention the nine month breaks, and was able to inflate his perceived commitment by 400%!

So I am wondering if this is a loophole. I noticed that some people who fill out the AMCAS start putting in crazy numbers that they get with heavy algebra when it comes to average hours per week. I volunteer four hours weekly, and that is what I listed. Let's say I had a fulltime job, which is forty hours a week. When people ask how much I work, I would say forty hours a week. Let's now say I take a three month maternity leave in one year. The job is still forty hours a week. It didn't become a 30 hour a week job because of that break. Whether I worked one week, two weeks, five months, a year, or ten years, a forty hour a week job is still a forty hour a week job. Is my reasoning incorrect?

Yes, though some secondaries have you re enter your ECs (which is incredibly annoying) and enter the total number of hours done for that EC. This is also incredibly annoying because many things I did on an inexact schedule, doing a lot on some weeks, and taking some weeks off, so I have no idea what the actual total is, and so just guess. Actually, AMCAS may start doing this.
 
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Since we are on the topic of activity verification, I thought I would post something that I put in another thread.

I knew someone from my church who was premed since freshman year. What he did was find the hospital with the shortest minimum time commitment. He found a hospital with a three month commitment. He ended up volunteering three months every year up and made sure to be within that time frame when he filled out the AMCAS. Since they ask for a start and end date, he neglected to mention hours. Therefore, according to him, unless explicitly asked about the hours he worked, it was NOT a lie to say that he volunteered all four years. He neglected to mention the nine month breaks, and was able to inflate his perceived commitment by 400%!

So I am wondering if this is a loophole. I noticed that some people who fill out the AMCAS start putting in crazy numbers that they get with heavy algebra when it comes to average hours per week. I volunteer four hours weekly, and that is what I listed. Let's say I had a fulltime job, which is forty hours a week. When people ask how much I work, I would say forty hours a week. Let's now say I take a three month maternity leave in one year. The job is still forty hours a week. It didn't become a 30 hour a week job because of that break. Whether I worked one week, two weeks, five months, a year, or ten years, a forty hour a week job is still a forty hour a week job. Is my reasoning incorrect?

I believe it's recommended/expected to describe an extended leave or disruption in participation. Or if you have an activity that doesn't occur weekly/meets a different number of hours every week...instead of trying to calculate an average #/week, you can write a brief blurb about it. For example, I am a member of a medical history society that only meets 3 times a semester. If I put in hours/week for that (I didn't) it would have been like 0.007 hours/week or something. I just wrote about it in the description. Likewise, during the semester I researched for 12 hours/week and during the summer I researched full time at 35 hours/week. The first line of my description was "Semester: 12 hrs/wk; Summer: 35 hrs/wk." It's not required, but it's honest.

The person from your church should have written "summer only" or "month x to month y" to be truthful. If a school calls the contact to verify, he might be in trouble.

In your scenario, you could write "took maternity leave from month x to month y" to be completely truthful. I guess it is somewhat of a loophole for people to lie about their involvement, but since schools now have the ability to verify experiences, I think it would be dumb to overly exaggerate involvement.
 
I knew someone from my church who was premed since freshman year. What he did was find the hospital with the shortest minimum time commitment. He found a hospital with a three month commitment. He ended up volunteering three months every year up and made sure to be within that time frame when he filled out the AMCAS. Since they ask for a start and end date, he neglected to mention hours. Therefore, according to him, unless explicitly asked about the hours he worked, it was NOT a lie to say that he volunteered all four years. He neglected to mention the nine month breaks, and was able to inflate his perceived commitment by 400%!
He's being intentionally misleading, that's dishonest. Leading someone to a false conclusion by what is said, or not said, is a lie either way.

This person sounds like a Class A jerk. But, he's a regular church-goer, so I guess anything he does is ok?
 
He's being intentionally misleading, that's dishonest. Leading someone to a false conclusion by what is said, or not said, is a lie either way.

This person sounds like a Class A jerk. But, he's a regular church-goer, so I guess anything he does is ok?


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He's being intentionally misleading, that's dishonest. Leading someone to a false conclusion by what is said, or not said, is a lie either way.

This person sounds like a Class A jerk. But, he's a regular church-goer, so I guess anything he does is ok?

No it doesn't make it okay. But since he started volunteering as a freshman and ended once he had an acceptance at the SAME hospital, it wasn't technically a lie since it was never explicitly stated that he needed to mention breaks. He never officially quit until he was offered an acceptance. He let the coordinators know that he would be back the following year. Unless he was required to state the exact number in a secondary, it was not a lie. He was "bending the truth" as much as possible. If you ask a student who is on the semester system if they are in school from August through May and they say YES, are they lying because of the breaks they have?

I don't agree with this. But at the end of the day he was NOT lying, at least on the primary. He started as a freshman and was technically doing it when submitting the primary. As for the example I mentioned above, a student would likely unintentiomally bend the truth without any intention, this guy, however, had a very bad intention. Based on what I have read on SDN, some members here are extremely willing to disclose gaps. For those with different intentions, they will not disclose it. Still, this appears to be a loophole.
 
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You follow a med school's Twitter account? Jesus...*sigh*

+1!!!!! hahaha

Laugh all you want. The twitter is run by the Director of Admissions at UMichigan (@UMichMedAdmiss), and he regularly reads the SDN thread and responds to us. Most SDNers who apply to Michigan follow his twitter (not to mention he has almost 1500 followers). They make the admissions process a completely open book, which is more than the majority of medical schools can say.

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Exactly. Many schools even have psychiatrists on their adcom.

I'm not sure how this is relevant; it's not like psychiatrists are trained to detect lies on paper.
 
I highly doubt they check ECs. They might do a quick google search on interviewees, but that's about as far as it goes IMO.
 
I don't make it a point to ask my contacts if they have been contacted, but I know it happens. According to UMich's twitter, they uncovered 2 applicants who lied about something they did. They check!

I saw this as well. It's safe to assume that any contacts can potentially be called, so just don't lie about your EC's. It's not worth getting rejected over lying about an EC or two.
 
One of my interviewers looked up my PI's lab's website and read up on our research. He asked me some very specific questions about it... I'm really glad I didn't exaggerate my role or I would have been screwed.
 
Nothing prevents you from listing yourself as a contact for an EC. I did for a third of mine.

If the (weeks of service) x (the number of hours per week) is a misleading product, try to mention the actual number of hours in the description. No biggie. I have been an EMT ski patroller for 5 years, though obviously I do very little patrolling in August :)
 
Actually, the AMCAS changed this year, it's not the same as the one you used. Listing the contact name and one way to contact them is now REQUIRED for all activities.

It's something they started doing this year, so as a med student already you wouldn't have encountered it. But yes, AMCAS EC section now requires some form of contact, which was really annoying for some of the stuff I did (which there are other threads addressing)

Gotcha.

Carry on, ignore my out of date comment...
 
I knew someone from my church who was premed since freshman year. What he did was find the hospital with the shortest minimum time commitment. He found a hospital with a three month commitment. He ended up volunteering three months every year up and made sure to be within that time frame when he filled out the AMCAS. Since they ask for a start and end date, he neglected to mention hours. Therefore, according to him, unless explicitly asked about the hours he worked, it was NOT a lie to say that he volunteered all four years. He neglected to mention the nine month breaks, and was able to inflate his perceived commitment by 400%!

Adcom members are wise to this... unless the applicant never left the area near the hospital over the 4 years, it is going to seem odd to have been doing x hours/wk while concurrently doing something else at a distance that seems impractical (no one travels 3 hours each way to volunteer once a week).
 
Who do you put for your contact for shadowing when you've shadowed more than 7 physicians?
 
Hmmm thats unfortunate. I was planning on putting down I traveled to a remote African village and cured AIDS
 
What would stop someone from overexaggerating the time spent volunteering or shadowing? Like stating you have 120+ hours when you only have 40? I doubt an adcom would verify something as small as that but it makes a big deal in the mind of an interviewer.

PS I didn't do this... Just wondering for curiosity's sake
 
In Canada, if you lie or cheat on your application and get caught by one adcom, they will notify all Canadian med schools and you will be blacklisted across the Country. I believe you are blacklisted forever.

Don't do it!
 
What would stop someone from overexaggerating the time spent volunteering or shadowing? Like stating you have 120+ hours when you only have 40? I doubt an adcom would verify something as small as that but it makes a big deal in the mind of an interviewer.

PS I didn't do this... Just wondering for curiosity's sake

Based on what LizzyM wrote, adcoms can sniff out suspicious listings. In the case of the guy from church, he was at the same school and lived in the same area so it probably would not have raised any suspicions based on four straight years of volunteering.

Unless you blatantly lie and put down something improbablr such as what LizzyM mentioned, I bet the only real ways of getting caught is if you significantly embellish the hours but have nothing significant to talk about at the interview. Unless the adcoms contact the volunteer director, subtle embellishment in hours will go unnoticed.
 
man i really hope this is true. i know someone who's a huge liar and wrote an entire paper (10+ pages) on on of his "clinical volunteering experiences" for a class. he passed but he made the ENTIRE thing up from the names of the doctors to the time commitment to his duties, etc. the only real thing in there was the actual program and hospital. i brought it up with him that he shouldn't do that, but he said no one would ever know. i really hope he doesn't attempt to do the same thing for med school apps, but if he does, i hope adcoms are smart enough to figure this kid out.
 
man i really hope this is true. i know someone who's a huge liar and wrote an entire paper (10+ pages) on on of his "clinical volunteering experiences" for a class. he passed but he made the ENTIRE thing up from the names of the doctors to the time commitment to his duties, etc. the only real thing in there was the actual program and hospital. i brought it up with him that he shouldn't do that, but he said no one would ever know. i really hope he doesn't attempt to do the same thing for med school apps, but if he does, i hope adcoms are smart enough to figure this kid out.

Wow. This is just like playing Russian roulette or cheating on an exam where the penalty is expulsion. The pay-off is huge for these people, but if their luck runs out, then its all over.
 
I had one applicant who listed a contact who had left the organization before he began volunteering there (which I knew from professional credential web site and her start date at another organization) .... it looked mighty suspicious.
 
I have a question as well. How do we list people that don't remember us? I have shadowed a few physicians, but it will be one more year before I apply. I have this fear that I will be unable to get them to verify my shadowing. Getting your volunteer work verified is pretty easy because there are generally records of it, but shadowing seems to be a different beast.
 
I have a question as well. How do we list people that don't remember us? I have shadowed a few physicians, but it will be one more year before I apply. I have this fear that I will be unable to get them to verify my shadowing. Getting your volunteer work verified is pretty easy because there are generally records of it, but shadowing seems to be a different beast.

I've seen people list just one doctor as a contact but then in the description they list many more:
Dr. Jack Sparrow, emergency medicine, shadowed 8 hours, May 2008
Dr. Luke Skywalker, aviation medicine, shadowed 4 hours, November 2010

They don't provide contact info for each doc. We can only guess if those are real or made-up names but nothing stops us from googling if we have suspicions. :rolleyes:

Meanwhile, you will find that people may remember you. Hey, this time of year why not send a holiday card with a family picture and a "thank you for letting me shadow you?" Go on to say that you'll be applying in 2014 and are grateful for .... Shadowing is not such a high stakes situation that a school would feel the need to verify.
 
I shadowed a doctor over the summer 2 years ago, and I recently found out that she retired and no longer works in the office. What number should I list when it's now disconnected? :/
 
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