Help, no honors to put on my CV

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stormjen

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I'll be applying this year for entry into a PGY1 Path position next year. My CV looks okay enough in terms of my education and work history, but it totally bombs when it comes to honors (and volunteering, for that matter). Some people seem to have tons of scholarships to their names, but I have nothing. Not a single award, honor, scholarship, fellowship, nada. Am I going to have a big gaping hole in that section in ERAS?
 
I think it would be a big gaping hole if you failed some classes. But just passing is usually quite satisfactory. There are some med schools out there that only give pass/fail anyway. As has been stated before, grades aren't everything.

I think that a lot of times, "scholarship awards" and the like are not necessarily a great feather in anyone's cap. People get scholarship awards for everything, possibly including: Parts of their ethnic heritage, their skin color, the fact that they played tennis when they were 15, having a family member connected to a philanthropic society, living in a small town that throws out scholarships as tax benefits, owning a Borzoi, being an expert fruitcake chef, or because, paradoxically, their grades have always been low.

Honor societies are nice to have, but also are nothing incredibly special. They also don't often say too much about who you are. Certain ones like AOA or phi beta kappa indicate you have been a successful student.

I guess the question is what else you have on your application? Do you have a lot of pertinent work experience or research experience? Are your board scores high? Do you have good LORs?

They might wonder what you do with your time if you aren't volunteering or on any committees or whatever. But I think, given a solid remainder of the application, it won't make a ton of difference. They are looking for intelligent people to become pathology residents. They aren't looking for future politicians.
 
If your undergrad GPA was good and/or you were on the dean's list or something like that, you could put that under "honors and awards". If you graduated any level of cum laude, put that in there as well.
 
Yeah, it's totally legitimate to list non-med school honors. That's what I'll do, because I didn't have any awards/honors specifically from med school.

There really aren't that many awards and scholarships given out in med school (at least at Michigan). A significant proportion of scholarships are not even based on academic achievement. A significant proportion of awards are handed out during M4 year/graduation when people have matched already anyway. So many people list things like what DoctorB said.
 
I dug through my files and unearthed a couple dinky scholarships I got back in undergrad, so I put those on my CV. I can't remember for the life of me if and how many Dean's Lists I made in undergrad. I really hope I have my AMCAS information in a box somewhere.
 
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